Recovery pt1

Its been almost a year since I last posted but due to a recommendation someone has made I would like to share how I got to a much stronger self this year 2014.

Around christmas time 2013, life got really hard, my parents inevitably found out I was gay; my dad was more open to the idea than my mum so she tried to get me to search for a way to “pray the gay away”. At around this time my self-hate levels were skyrocketing and I was self harming at least on average 2-3 times a week it got even worse when my parents found out I felt like I could never speak to my mum again and I wanted to die everyday.

Then one night my mum and I got into an argument about me self harming but fortunately we realised how much we loved each other and how heartbroken my mum was at me physically hating myself. She told me also that she would never treat me differently after I told her I was gay even if she didn’t agree with it. So what I really love my mum for was that she never treated my any differently and loves me to this day. I knew however how she really didnt like the thought of me being gay because she sent me videos of ex-gay people and how they now live a more holy life and all that crap(no offence to my mum) and occasionally we had arguments about gay marriage or just being gay.
Now around this time my religion christianity was definitely losing its grip as the last time I prayed was probably the late summer of that year and after reading about people who left christianity my anger at christianity grew. By the end of 2013, I realised that I don’t give a f*** about religion anymore.. I still believed in God but in a religious context he didn’t exist. I realised that christianity is just one worldview of many. I decided to identify myself as a Deist who is someone who believes in a God but doesnt believe in religion which is man made and doesnt have the full truth.

Finally the shackles of this mental oppression that I had for about 3 years started to fall off. On Boxing Day, I was at my grandma’s house celebrating christmas and then an impulse came over me. I decided to put my shoes on, drag my cousin with me and run all the way down the middle of my grandma’s road. The feeling was amazing. Me and my cousin were just laughing our heads off as I ran down the road acting like a bird and waving at the bus driving past me. I was free, alive and young. At that point I had an epiphany that I was born with one life to live and I want to live it the way I wanted to without any ideologies racking my brain. I wanted to be a teenager again and be adventurous, make stupid mistakes and just be free.

It was that Boxing day, even though it wasnt new years eve, was the real start of my NEW YEAR.

YOLO

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“We Accept The Love We Think We Deserve”

The quote, “We Accept The Love We Think We Deserve”I honestly love and it’s from the movie “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and it sums up exactly what’s been happening in my life lately. I’ve always wanted to be in a relationship with someone who treated me right but I always fell for someone who gave me mixed signals or just plainly treated me like shit. I started to have a crush on this guy recently who annoyed me but had the potential to be nice. But one day, I playfully teased him about his tie and without no provocation he threw my classwork onto the floor, everyone was laughing and I was humiliated. After that I knew that one; I’ll never have a crush on him again and two; that I’ll never have a crush on anyone who takes the piss out of me or gives me mixed signals. I realised that I really do deserve better, a more uplifting kind of love that makes me feel good about myself.

I’m Not Crying On Sundays

The phrase “I’m not crying on Sundays” was sung by singer Mary Lambert in the song “Same Love” by Macklemore and her new single “She Keeps Me Warm”. Mary Lambert is a Christian who happens to be a lesbian and was raised in a Pentecostal background just like me. I love this phrase because it represents the refusal to choose between who you are and your belief in God.

 

A few days ago, I had an argument with my parents about gay marriage and even though I didn’t expect it to go totally in my favour, I was shocked and saddened by how my resolve and support for gay marriage was crumbled by my parents arguments. They talked about the “slippery slope” of allowing gay marriage that it would then allow incest and I couldn’t counter the argument, I was tongue-tied. My mum talked about the usual arguments such as how it goes against nature and it can’t be love it has to be lust then she talked about how people who were “saved” from homosexuality and that some are now happily married  to the opposite sex. 

It felt awful the amount of opposition they had to it. Every reason they gave me for their opposition was like a dart hurting me one by one. I was on the verge of crying thinking, “maybe I was wrong, maybe it is a sin against God” but I couldn’t let my feelings totally show because they would’ve been suspicious as to why I am so passionate about gay people.  My hurt made me naturally think of going back to self-harm, I started looking up programs where they can “cure” me. But the self-hate abruptly stopped. I changed my hate to an anger of the church, anger at my religion, anger at the teachings. I realised that I’m not the problem its the teachings and the opinions which are. My individual mind became stronger and less submissive to teachings which are human interpreted which meant that it was open for re-interpretation. After that day, I stopped listening to particular pastors who had teachings which were against who I am and only listened to ones which talk solely on how I can improve my relationship with God. 

Now don’t get me wrong during the past few days I have been angry at my religion, but not God. I can never be angry at God because us humans are the ones who make ideas of who he is and what he believes to be sin or not.

This whole experience has made me stronger and less fearful of the uncertainties because I am an INDIVIDUAL with my OWN OPINIONS and everyone in the Christian faith has different perspectives on what God teaches us. There are many uncertainties and mysteries this world has but as the French philosopher Rene Descartes says, “I think therefore I am”.  

 I will not, “cry on Sundays” because I strive to not be ashamed of who I am because of a person’s opinion of my eternal future. Simple As. 

 

 

 

Opinions Just Inform Me Not Control Me

“Opinions just inform me not control me” this is what I’ve learn’t after my own acceptance of my sexuality. 

When I was still in a battle with my feelings, my opinions were controlled by religious interpretations for and against homosexuality and non religious ideas which even though are mostly for things like gay marriage a good amount who are not religious are still against it. So my stance on me being gay, was put into an awful cycle of me accepting myself then reading or watching a religious or non-religious teaching against it and then feeling bad about myself. My life was controlled on what different people thought of who I was which was not a good place to be…

When I finally chose a few months ago to accept who I was, whenever I saw an article or a person on the internet who was openly against who I was, I got back into depression. My mind was going totally haywire over all these ideas, theories, understandings of what people think homosexuality is. I saw stories of people who were saved from the “homosexual lifestyle” and them saying that God told them personally that it is wrong and then on the other side of the spectrum I saw people saying that God told them it was okay and that it was who they were. People kept putting God’s name in every life change and they all claimed to be right. This got me seriously confused and I was freaking out. I was so unsure of my salvation in Jesus Christ. 

One day I told one of my close friends who was also a Christian that I was gay and fell in love with a boy. She tried to persuade to me that what I was feeling was wrong and that if I pray to God he will save me. I told her that I’ve been praying for years but she replied that basically I wasn’t praying hard enough. My mind was about to go into depression again but then I realised…. Wait a sec how does she know what it is like to have these feelings since 5 years old and to fall in love with someone of the same sex. I found that the majority of people who talk about their negative opinions towards homosexuality are not even gay or “ex-gay” but straight as a pole. So how would they know what it is like to be a gay person and what it feels like to fall in love with someone of the same sex and want to be with them for the rest of their life.

Christians who are not judgemental of gay people but do not agree with their feelings (like my mum) want to help them be “saved” from this sin. What am I being “saved” from exactly?  Some like my mum say that it is the promiscuity that gay people have. Well that’s totally stupid stereotype, not every gay person wants to have thousands of sexual partners. A good amount of gay people like monogamous relationships as well as their straight counterparts who some want to be promiscuous and others want to just be with their one and only. 

God said to us not to do things such as adultery, promiscuity, divorce and even simple things like lying because they have negative consequences not just to be an annoying God. For example adultery is a sin because of the bad affects to both the wife and husband destroying trust in a marriage and promiscuity increases risks of sexual diseases. God wants the best for us not to give us a set of rules. So a consensual married gay couple who love God as far as I know doesn’t really produce negative consequences for people around them and for themselves. It’s a loving relationship.

So as I am accepting of myself I have learn’t that I have my own experiences and ideas which makes me the individual that God made me to be and that just because someone has a particular opinion doesn’t mean that it has to control me. Simple as.

Coming Out to my Parents..

Well firstly, I’m not planning to tell my parents about myself being bisexual for a few years. I’m just not ready and I believe that you have to feel truly ready to tell anyone about this important part of you.

Both of my parents are christians and are against homosexuality. However, my mum and dad have different degrees of opposition towards the issue. My mother is openly against it and when gay marriage comes up in news reports she always vocalizes her opposition towards it which does make me sad. She does believe in “hate the sin love the sinner” so she doesn’t hate gay people but is totally against the lifestyle and sees it as perverse. She doesn’t like it when I watch shows like Glee because it shows many gay couples which is ironic because, she likes watching Modern Family which has a gay couple in it. My mother does believe that some gay people were born that way however she thinks it is comparable to being born with a birth defect so they should come to Christ and be saved from it and she also thinks that the majority of gay people are promiscuous.

My dad is different to my mum in the way that he doesn’t vocalize his beliefs of what he thinks of homosexuality. There was this show that my dad and me watched and it was this story of these black gay men meeting up after talking on the internet. When the guys met they kissed, I was okay with it but my dad looked away from the screen, but not in a hostile way. He looked away from the tv screen like a young child is disgusted by PDA (Public Displays of Affection). I asked him why he did that and was it because they were black. I was pointing out, I guess that being gay and black isn’t rare and also hinting that gender didn’t mean anything, a kiss is a kiss. My dad laughed and said he just didn’t like to see two men kissing. I wasn’t hurt, I understood because at one point I didn’t like it. Many people are just not used to public displays of affection between two members of the same sex. But what was interesting was my dad never said it was wrong what the two men were doing, he just didn’t like to see them kissing. Fair enough. We both were talking about the two guys relationship like it was a straight couple. My dad is just a little more open than my mum because if she was watching the same programme she would turn it over to another channel in disgust.
One night, the news were talking about how the UK government were debating whether to legalise gay marriage. As I predicted, my mum vocalised her opposition to it. I didn’t show that I agreed with her or disagreed, even my dad didn’t say anything. He picked me up from my out of school club and we talked about how we don’t know whether gay marriage is wrong or right and that he sees these social issues as not being a simple yes or no.

I always thought because of my dad’s lack of hostility to the subject even though he is sort of against it, that when I come out to my parents, if I ever in the future, that I would tell my father first. I love my mother so much but I do think she is very much narrow minded on the issue and that she doesn’t understand what gay people are going through because she’s never been in that position. I think if I tell her first, the first thing she will do is grieve at what she thought her son was. Her acceptance to who I am will be much longer than my dad but she will still love me and not desert me.

God is Love

My opinion on this issue has changed a lot but my belief is much more clearer now. I think whatever you do, make God number one in your life and have a relationship with him whatever happens that’s what gets you into heaven. Everyone sins, that’s just human nature and it’s what we are born with.Everyone has got some struggle with something, that’s what makes us equal before God. But I believe Jesus Christ went on the cross to cover every sin that was done and that will be done, that’s the good news. We are not perfect, we are imperfect.
Some christians put themselves higher than others because it seems that another person’s sin is worse than theirs but that is totally wrong. Believe it or not the sin of lying is just the same as something awful like rape, the circumstances are different but both come from the root of going against God. For example a judgmental christian can completely judge a gay person calling it an abomination and stuff but this christian sins as well. Everyone is equal in Jesus Christ.

Now I can’t be totally sure whether being gay, bisexual, transgender is wrong and a sin because for me it feels natural and loving a person of the same sex is a gift because it’s just an expression of God’s love. Trust me falling in love with someone of the same sex is the same as if it was for the opposite sex. People who are against will never understand what it is like to be gay. Just because you can’t understand something doesn’t mean it should be shunned.

But one thing I can be sure of is no matter if you’re lgbt or straight or have a smoking addiction, sex addiction etc you have to have a relationship and faith in God so if there is anything that is wrong in God’s eyes he will highlight it to you in his time, most problems don’t disappear overnight just because you dedicated your life to God.

So for me, I have a feelings for boys, I’ve been hiding it and pushing it away and it hasn’t helped, it’s been harmful. Sin or not it is a part of myself and who I am. I kept asking God whether being gay was wrong and I never got any answer and I believe it was because it may not be very important to him right now. Maybe even funnily, further down in God’s checklist. All I got to do for myself and improve my relationship with God is to just express and love myself but still have a growing relationship with my creator. God loves me no matter what. Simple As.

My Opinion Part 1

In the political world, gay people should have the right to marry as all people should be equal under the law. The conservative arguments that marriage is for procreation is honestly rubbish because, couples who are infertile and can’t have children wouldn’t be able to marry. The argument that marriage is a religious institution and having gay marriage will destroy that is stupid as well because, then atheists would not be able to marry. These inconsistent arguments fail badly.

A group of people who have a specific belief cannot take away the rights of others who may not have that belief. People throughout history have tried to take away the rights of other people because of their own beliefs and opinions which they do indeed have a right to BUT it is an injustice to take away other peoples rights. For example, the groups of conservative, religious and racist white people used their beliefs to say that it is an abomination to have two individuals from two races marry so they set a law against it. For groups such as Jehovah Witnesses who don’t believe in celebrating birthdays, would you like it if they took away your right to celebrate your birthday???

Abolishing of slavery, Women’s rights, Inter-racial marriage and Gay marriage all follow a pattern in human history. The groups opposed to these social changes, always feared that their country would suffer major setbacks. In the opposition towards the abolishing of slavery in the USA, they believed that their beloved country would’ve been destroyed and for religious groups that God will bring judgement on the country. For Women’s rights some people feared that the “traditional” family would be destroyed because of women having a right to be a working woman. Inter-racial marriage arguments were that it was “unnatural” and even “disgusting”, also that the children born from these marriages would be badly effected in ways such as birth defects and some people considered them as half-breeds which is unthinkable in this day in age especially as the president of the united states is mixed raced. For Gay marriage, the arguments are quite similar such as, “its unnatural and disgusting” “the country will be destroyed”, “the traditional family destroyed”, “the children will be badly affected”. Gay marriage is just another element in social progression. Maybe in 40 years, generations will think of the people who opposed gay marriage and be in shock and wonder why people would oppose it like how our generation sees inter-racial marriage.

In the USA, I researched and found that DOMA (The Defense of Marriage Act) is a federal law that doesn’t acknowledge the marriage of same sex couples and therefore prevents them from federal benefits such as if someone in a gay couple dies then the widow has to pay expensive taxes which they wouldn’t have if their marriage was legal. Also if in a married same-sex couple one of them lives in another country then they cannot gain citizenship in america to live with their partner(look up the DOMA project:http://www.domaproject.org/). Sorry but this is an injustice and is against gay people’s rights.

So to summarize, politically gay people should be able to marry. What I say to groups of people who oppose it is, “If you don’t like gay marriage don’t have a gay marriage. Simple.”

The next post and part of my opinion is the religious aspect.

Part 13: Closure

The morning after prom, I was extremely ill. The stress from last night made me feel like I was suffering a hangover, just thinking about last night made me honestly, want to vomit. I was going through so much emotional pain and heartbreak that morning..

I decided that I had to speak to Kevin online, I had to make the pain end, so I went onto Facebook and spoke to him saying that I knew he didn’t like me but I hated the way he was playing games with me. Everything was cleared up. He was asking whether I was bisexual to my friend Sarah because there were rumors going around that I was and that he was looking at me at prom because he was in shock at how I was smoking. He asked why I was so mad at Lorraine but I didn’t say that it was because I was jealous. I did confess to him that I was bisexual and that I did have feelings for him, but I reassured him because I thought I needed to, that I did not perv on him and he accepted that. So we wished each other good luck for the future because we knew we would never see each other again and the conversation ended.

It was weird after, I felt numb. It was over. For all those 3 years, I felt like Cupid was orchestrating some cruel joke against me and that prom night was just the twist of the knife but I took control the morning after and Cupid didn’t have any power anymore.

I felt free, like I could really move on. Don’t get me wrong, it was hard to move on and I still am but I still and always will love him, I pray to God that he has the best future. I was given the freedom to know that there were other and better boys out there because I had to be honest with myself that I didn’t have that many things in common with Kevin. There’s a much wider world…

My next post will be what I’ve learnt and what I believe about things such as gay marriage.

Part 12: The Climax

It was the last week of secondary school and I felt like I really moved on from Kevin and I was a bit more comfortable with my sexuality because, I told my friends about it and how I had feelings for Kevin, lets call them Sarah and Lorraine. Things were good.

At the start of the last week, my friend Sarah told me that Kevin was asking her whether I was Bi or not. I was freaking out, it was almost the end of school and now he was starting to ask, bad timing or what. Sarah said that she never said anything to him so he was left not knowing whether that was a yes or no, this dialogue went on for the next few days. My feelings for him came back to the surface again and I began to think that maybe why he was asking was because he liked me and couldn’t bare to not see me again as we were leaving school.

It was the last day of school and that night it was the prom celebration. I was so happy that whole day, that I finally was leaving school and I was looking forward to prom. But from the moment I walked into the prom venue, it was drama. The reality that Kevin did not have any feelings for me and that I will never see him again hit me. I grew very depressed, just seeing his face enjoying himself with his friends, I needed air so I walked out of the venue. The area outside the venue was a smoking area that our year made. I asked some of my friends whether I can borrow their cigarettes because I needed some escapism. While I was smoking, my inhibitions almost vanished and I told about 7 of my friends that I was Bisexual and all of them accepted me. It was a great feeling, like a liberation, but the feeling wasn’t as strong that night because I was literally mourning over what I had for Kevin.

While I was outside smoking feeling honestly crap and I felt like I was going to fall on the ground, I saw my friend, Lorraine talking to Kevin. Now I knew that Kevin liked girls so as he was talking to my friend I grew extremely jealous. Then it got worse. Kevin put his arm around Lorraine in quite a seductive way and this was literally a few feet away from me. I was devastated, I wanted to punch Lorraine in the face. I called her to say to come here because I didn’t want her near him but she walked off with him. I stormed into the prom venue where she was and I shouted at her, saying how could she do that and that she knew I had strong feelings for him and then without her making her point I stormed away. Later on also I found out that while this was happening Kevin saw… I felt so exposed and embarrassed.
I called my dad to pick me up and I never said bye to really anyone.Because, my dad never knew about what was happening, in the car I had to act like it was a great night. I was hurting so badly inside.. alone.

Please stay tuned for my next story.

Part 11: Heartbreak + Self-Hate

It was the start of my final year of secondary school, Year 11 and even though I was convinced that I moved on from Kevin, I never did. I couldn’t face the reality that there were many signs that he just didn’t reciprocate my feelings towards him. I just held onto the signs and hopes that he felt the same way about me which was later on dangerous..

One evening, just before the Christmas holidays, I decided to strike a conversation with Kevin on Facebook and while we were talking I asked him what he was up to and he said just talking to his girlfriend. I was devastated. I had to continue the conversation like nothing happened but it was very much shortened. After the conversation ended, I started having thoughts such as, “Don’t you blame him for having natural feelings”, “You have disgusting gay feelings towards him while he is normal, you are a freak”. The thoughts became more self-hating and that was when I started to self harm. I convinced myself that I was a freak for loving a boy. I started to use kitchen knives and scissors to severely scratch my arm, but I never thought of making myself bleed. Just very small cuts so that it can create some sort of mark on my skin. I saw the scars on my skin and called them the punishment of my homosexuality.I put salt in my cuts on purpose to have them sting more so I can feel the pain. I couldn’t even talk to my auntie, I wanted to be alone. It was Christmas, a happy time for all the family but for me I had to act happy because it was a dark time.
After the new year celebrations which rang in 2013, I stopped the self harming because I realised that no one was worth cutting for and that I didn’t want to see my scars in adulthood. Now my scars aren’t as easy to see, still there, but fading…

Around February, I mentally removed Kevin from my mind, I couldn’t take the emotional heartache and pain to keep my hope going. It worked very well, I started to not think of him all day every day and I was more happier getting on with life, still not comfortable with my sexuality but I didn’t think on it. My last few weeks of year 11 were near and I thought the story of me and Kevin was over. I was wrong again..

Please stay tuned for more of my story..