It’s Okay To Be Queer At The Academy

 

My name is Matthew, I’m standing in the Director’s office in the Academy waiting for my release papers. I always imagined that the sky from this room would be a baby blue but what little I can gleam through the shuttered blinds is not blue but a mixture of gray and white. Nothing is as you imagine it to be.

I’m 22 and there are things that should make sense to me now but they don’t. My parents, well, my dad, insisted I go to this Academy to “toughen me up”,  I don’t even know what that means but to him it means  “becoming straight.” As if. I am who I am, who I have always been but he won’t accept that, he thinks a therapist or a school could change me. I AM me.

My militant father refuses to accept all gay people, as if we have a choice. We were born this way! Hey, it’s a lot easier to be straight with prejudiced people like him than it is being gay.

Once, when I was younger, I challenged him about his narrow-minded views. He looked at me for one second and then pummeled me so badly I was black and blue for a week.  I looked so bad my mom called the school and said I was in a car accident. She tried to stand up for me but I said it was okay, I didn’t want him to hit her too.

My mother accepts me being gay and loves me for who I am. I have confided in her and while she worries that it is a hard life (and it is) she has accepted my choice and she loves me and supports me. My father is a mean bastard, when I first told him, he threw chairs around the room and would not let me even say the words out loud, ever. I tried to tell him that I was still his son but he viciously replied “I have no son, I have a faggot. You are not part of this family anymore.” How could he do that? I haven’t seen him since.

I love men, not women, is that such a crime? I wanted to go to college and be free but my dad forbid it. He sent me to this stupid Academy “to make a man out of me.”  I guess he thought the Academy would make me straight and I would start liking girls. I had the last laugh though, all the other guys were there for the same reason.Their parents sent them there to “toughen up” too. My father had no idea that most guys in the school were gay. I guess the joke was on him.

We call each other “queer” here in the Academy, it’s used as a term of endearment, I don’t understand how a parent can just stop loving a child, I really don’t but a lot of the guys here have had the same experience. I envy the men and women whose family love and support them no matter who they choose to love.

My mom has tried to talk to my dad many times about accepting me but he won’t budge. Fuck it, I guess I’m better off without him. I don’t need his lectures, his abuse and his screaming. All i ever wanted was his love. But, I knew, I always knew that I would never get that, ever. Yet, deep down, in a child-like way, I still hope that one day he will change and he will accept and love me for who I am. Yeah, I know, keep dreaming.

Dedicated to the LGBT community who do not feel loved by their families.

No photos due to Zemanta broken.

Loving Luka

F/NF words

What do I have to say here, that hasn’t been said before? It’s an ongoing battle, repetition begets boredom, boredom, depression. I’m weary from all our conversations that end up the same way, one of us hanging up on one another. I can’t do that anymore, I won’t.

I’m sitting in a coffee shop, near your apartment, trying to drink a cup of black coffee in a white mug, my hands shake, while the rain continues to flood the streets. I just think about trying to jump over the massive puddles but I don’t have any more energy in me to even try. When I was younger that was my favorite thing to do. Not now.

View image | gettyimages.com

I feel paralyzed from pain, the pain you inflicted on me. Once, I used to be carefree, like a child, happy and silly and stomp in the puddles.  I am so ANGRY at you. In the past I cared too much and where did that get me? No where. So, instead of being disappointed like I have been in the past, I am turning into myself, safe guarding my heart and not showing it anymore, at least not to you.

I don’t WANT to care anymore, I’m past that point. I’m not lying, I have cared too much in the past, believe me, you know, I wasn’t always like this. People who have known me for years will reassure you that yes, I have changed but I have chosen that change. Why? Self protection. I’m tired of being bullied and pulled apart like a hungry street dog lunging at a piece of a steak.

You know who you are. You blame me but you never look inside yourself. You need ME? That’s not good enough. You don’t treat me well enough to be on your side. You accuse me of everything you do to me, did that ever occur to you?  I just handle it better. I don’t

need to whine and carry on the way you do, I’m an adult now.  Yes, I went through hell to get here but I survived, barely, but I survived and I am strong.

Don’t you see how your view is warped? I don’t live in the past, I do acknowledge it but deep inside YOU are the one who hasn’t moved past it. Why is it that your true emotions only come out when you were bare to the bones, out of your mind? You loved me then, you needed me then. Not since then with all your false bravado. Because if you did love me why would you be so mean to me all the time?

It’s not a big dark secret, it’s an illness. Like diabetes or cancer, get over yourself. I know you think the world revolves around you, you make it that way, you make it that way. Not everybody else does that.

View image | gettyimages.com

I know you put yourself first, well, who doesn’t know that? You admit it with pride. ‘A great quality of yours, I’m sure you think.’ Me? You don’t care about me as much as you think. Because if you did you wouldn’t be a bully like you always have been and you still carry on the same way, even after all these years we’ve been together. You could work on a compromise instead of saying “Well, I  just can’t do it, I won’t do it. ” Maybe you can but you have never tried.

I was happy in the past to mediate to reach a solution we can both live by, I will not be influenced by your outbursts anymore. I will stay away. I don’t trust you since you have broken the rules of our relationship time and again and you know you have.  Deep inside you are a very troubled child. I can’t see our relationship continue on the way it has, not at my expense.

I need to put myself first, to care about me now. I hope one day you will be happy without making others unhappy.

 

Haiku Horizons. Justice

#175533592 / gettyimages.com

 

Justice, Party, Peace

cures agony, provides hope

Love, a fighting chance.

 

 

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Justify justice

mom’s face etched in deep scars, pain

Guns, death, her one son.

Grief (Photo credit: Wikipedia)




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Haters Gonna Hate (Without Me)

English: Gwyneth Paltrow at the 2011 Venice Film Festival (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve read that there are people who “hate” Ann Hathaway just like they used to hate Gwyneth Paltrow. Hate? I read it in at least three or four different sources and an additional two at the end of the long supermarket line.

Where is all the “hate” coming from these days, I have no idea. I don’t get it. Is it a new “trend” to hate someone? I thought we were moving back to a “kinder, gentler nation.”  I guess I was wrong.

People are now hating  people they don’t even KNOW?

My God, (gasp!!), are we all back in middle school? Does he have”cooties?”Does SHE? UGH, she smells like a monkey, he smells like poop, hey he said a curse word, SHUT UP!!! Dad, he’s screaming at me, MOMMY….. and so it starts….unless the behavior can be changed right away.” Hate is a very strong word my parents told us,” “Hate is a very, very strong word, we told our children.”

I do know grown up people that are obviously mean and negative but, I make an effort to try to stay far away from them. Anyone who is consistently like that is NO longer in my close circle of friends. It wasn’t good for me and I’m much happier now. I know these past friends or acquaintances will stab anyone in the back, some would be shocked to think that they do it, many people are unaware of how they come across.

Apparently the movie “Mean Girls” lives on but instead of being ashamed many people are proud of their status or have no idea what pain they are inflicting on others. There are quite a few “Mean Girls” that grow up without learning lessons, they become “Mean People.”

I’d rather someone be mean to my face than behind my back because you know someone will always delight in telling you. This way, if someone attacks you to your face you can decide to fight back or walk away saying “This is YOUR problem, not Mine.”

So, hate away, haters. I’m not joining in. There’s too much negativity in the world already, I’m not getting involved in anything remotely mean, gossipy or unkind. There is enough pain going around in this world without me adding to it. Even though some people don’t show it, we all have issues we are dealing with inside.

Am I changing the world? I know I’m not. I’m just changing my teeny, tiny piece of it, that’s all I can to do. If I can change one person to stop saying one mean thing I would be thrilled. I’m not changing the world but to me it’s still worth the effort.

Plinky Prompt: Can anything be funny, or are some things off limits?

• 

  English: Ellen DeGeneres in 2009. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  

• Can anything be funny, or are some things off limits? See all answers

• Edit answer |
• August 29, 2013 by hibernationnow

• Too funny? Not funny?

• I’m pretty conservative with this, there are things that are not funny to me.  Anything to do with race, religion, hurting a group of people’s feelings is unnecessary in comedy. Do you need it? No. Why market your comedy to offend people?  That’s not my type of humor. Ellen Degeneres? She’s my type of comedian, Jerry Seinfield too. Making fun of race and religion, never good. A joke about the holocaust, slavery, obesity? ALWAYS WRONG.  To me, anything that JUDGES other people is prejudice not comedy. You are funny without it. Oh, and keep all the swear words to yourself, while you are at it.
  

• I love you, Eddie Murphy, but clean up your mouth. You’ve made it big, you don’t need to sound like a 16-year-old anymore. It doesn’t do you any good.
• Call me old-fashioned (which I probably am) but I am not going to spend good money on trash talkers OR haters. Just my opinion, but I’m sticking to it.

Haiku Heights – Betrayal

Sadness (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You stabbed me with words,

Emotional betrayal

Blood drips forever.

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Dark, cruel side, unknown

I trusted your heart as mine

Your kindness, a joke.

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Haiku Heights – Soul

Sun Catcher (Photo credit: ecstaticist)

Soul mates intertwined

Staring at the starry night

Sun, moon, darkness, love

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Deep inside, my love

Bleeding hearts echo in sin

Learning not to kiss

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Sinewy angels

Dip their glittered souls in rage

Their throaty laughter

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The red flower laughs

A life to be reckoned with

we, of the same earth

Carry On Tuesday – Everybody hurts sometimes

Cover of Tea for the Tillerman

Katie remembers clearly that when her older sister, Susan, had bi-polar episodes, more than she could count on one hand, Susan was always so loving to her. She was warm and kind, she would take her trembling hand and stroke Katie’s cheek softly, like a moth circling around soft yellow light. Susan would also apologize to her then, telling her how much she REALLY DID love her and appreciate her and they would be best friends for as long as it lasted.

Now, they fight often, usually on the phone or misinterpret what the other one says on e-mail. Katie takes things too personally, Susan thinks about herself first. It’s been an on-going battle for years.

“I won’t change” said Susan, defiantly. “I am who I am and you are a martyr” and finally, about a year ago Katie said, “I will not take any more pain from you.”  It was hard and she cried but she could not stand the constant anxiety she felt when she was on the phone with her older sister, assessing her mood, her tone of voice, her impatience, the thick tenseness of her angry words. The proportion of pain to happiness was so unequal that she wanted to stop the bad feelings altogether.

There was pain, all the time, consistently flaring up old feelings; it felt like the same serrated knife that had plunged in her epiglottis when she was so, so sick except this pain stabbed her heart. Everybody hurts sometime, Katie thought but the pain from her older sister was constant. They had tried too many times to fix it without success. “I’m trying” Katie wanted to scream out, but Susan would not listen or did not hear her. “Look in the mirror” Katie yelled ” I’m not the only one who feels this way.”  She was fighting a losing battle in which she felt so emotionally destroyed she decided to finally end the war. However, In a war, no one comes out unscathed.

That’s not to say that there weren’t good times too. In the past, among long bouts of feuding and not speaking, there had been good talks and family fun. When it was only about the two sisters, it was never a safe topic and tension filled the air like a smoke bomb which everybody inhaled, even the cousins.

They had exchanged roles when Kate was 15 and Susan, 21 when Susan first was “sick.”Kate became the older sister and Susan, the child.  Even though it was the last place Kate wanted to be, she thought maybe Susan never forgave her for that. Not even when they sat in the back seat of their parents car, holding hands and singing “Sad Lisa” by Cat Stevens together, a song they had both listened to individually. It was NO ONE’S FAULT they all know rationally. No one. If anyone was to blame it was their parents who abdicated their position of decision-making to Kate. On the other hand, Kate had disappeared to them as a child. She was hushed when she tried to come in the apartment door because Susan was trying to sleep, their parents held different standards for the two sisters and it started then and never changed.

Things don’t always come out the way you want them to; it would have been sublime to be one happy family with equal part of love and nurturing. For a little while it was, when their father was alive and he was the moderator, Katie’s soul-mate of a parent. When he died, their mother lost a spouse, their daughters both lost a dad but Kate lost a friend and ally, someone who understood her sensitive personality perfectly. It became a war, two against one and Kate felt very much alone with two strong, self-involved women and herself. She survived for a number of years playing that game; she took it for as long as she could.

One Mother’s Day brunch, two years ago, she slid back from the table, wiped her lightly pink lipsticked mouth with the white linen napkin, collected her matching pink pocketbook from her lap, smiled sadly, and stood up. She would no longer participate in a war she didn’t believe in. She walked away but she couldn’t help it; she always looked back.

The Last Living Girl In Kentucky

Image by geojanitor via Flickr

F**k you and the greedy, wife-beating, drug addicted husband of yours. He should be in jail, right next to you since he has such a quick and angry temper. Was it the police who came to your house for a domestic abuse phone call, yes, I think so. Better yet, you deserve each other. You should be close together in isolation. You should live a long and painful life and die for fraud and embezzlement, murder of innocent people and animals. Take your stupid ass alcoholic son with you too, he’s clearly as dumb as a post. I have nothing bad to say about your two older sons except that they are the alien spawns born from you two evil bastards.

I hate liars, but people who lie and cover-up their lies to make other people suffer for their crimes are miserable human beings. As Sue Hawk, one of the first person on Survivor once said “if you were on the street covered with blood, I would walk over you.” I finally know what she meant. No one deserved what you both did. People who are dead were good people, decent folks and would never, ever be malicious or cruel. You allegedly killed three people.

I hope you are happy. You have ruined lives, torn families apart. People are living in a state of hell because of you. You are not, nor were you ever a good person and our people never trusted you. Your small and squinted eyes fit on a rodent’s face not near your greasy head. I believed that good people get good things back and I don’t know what to believe in anymore. In my innocence I still hope that the vicious wolves and coyotes that live in the darkness of your back yard will find you, attack you and make you bleed.

If I Could Banish Someone From My Life

This has to be one of the stupidest prompts ever. Sorry. First, if you really wanted to banish someone from your life, would you actually name them here? I hope not. Second, there are people I dislike, one I dislike intensely but banish her? Why bother? I leave that up to karma; whatever goes around, comes around.