Thursday, October 7, 2010

It Does Get Better.

Hello readers. (My very few, but lovely) readers. :o) I must apologize for my long absence, but life has gotten in the way of writing. Of course, if I'm to be a writer, I need to fix that. :o) I actually did attempt to write a few blogs, but with taking care of a very precocious toddler, I never found the time to finish and post them.
When I last wrote I was down in West Palm Beach, visiting my mother for about 5 months. I didn't intend to be visiting for that long, but I did, and I'm glad I did. I needed the time away, and Korah (my daughter - for anyone who just happened upon this blog) progressed a lot in her development during that time, and I think it was mostly due to being in a "happier" environment. Since then, I've returned to Fernandina Beach, FL, and shortly after that, moved up to Woodstock, GA. I'm settling in, and I'll be writing about that at a later date. My husband is currently gathering, packing and cleaning, and will join me in a couple weeks. I think.
On a related note, I'll be starting a new blog that'll be solely about my family, family life and family related...stuff. I know, I know, I'm not doing such a great job at keeping this blog going, but I think I'll find myself updating that more. Why not just include those things in this blog? Because this blog is about me, and all the things that are going on in my head and in my life, separate from my family life. I see myself as a big strong, beautiful tree; (no, I couldn't just a be a regular ol' tree!) and my family is just a branch of the tree. A very important, large branch, mind you. :o)

So, what's been going on since I last wrote, other than my daughter turning 2 ::sniffle sniffle::, a move from FL to GA, Sookie finally kickin' Bill to the curb, summer's over and autumn's arrived, and a bunch of other stuff that I've been too busy to take notice of, I'm not too sure. One thing that I have taken notice of, however, is the recent suicides of gay teens due to bullying. ::sigh::

It's hard to think that there are still so many issues based in pure ignorance that exist in 2010. 2010!

I grew up in Miami, FL. Most people think that's a great thing since the city is known for its diversity. You often here, "Oh you're from Miami, there's a bit of everything there." Yes, that's true, but "like also sticks to like" in many areas down there. Me? It was hard for me to fit in anywhere. (Still is, really.) I was born a black girl (eff all that politically correct stuff, I don't know a damn person in my family or history that's from Africa!), and in my younger years I was raised in Liberty City, FL. Which, if you know anything about Miami, you know that's the "hood", I mean, true "hood". Demographically, it's like 95% black, 3% Hispanic, and I guess 2% white. I'm guessing they're counting that old white couple that stayed in the neighborhood and refused to leave. :o) I grew up there, but I wasn't like the people there. I talked differently, walked differently, dressed differently, thought differently. I left that neighborhood after kindergarten and moved with my mom to a more diverse neighborhood with better schools and such. (I was living with my grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, sister, and cousin) However, neighborhoods like that are everywhere, and a lot of magnet schools are in those areas, and by fifth grade I was a magnet student. I didn't call it bullying then, but I guess that's what it would be considered today. I got made fun of. Other black students would say, "Why you talk like that?" I guess proper use of grammar and sentence structure was not how I was "supposed" to speak. Even some of my own family kinda picked on me, and to make matters worse, I had no ass! I mean literally, a black girl with no badonk! What kind of joke is that, God!? I was too "white" for the black students, and too "black" for the white students, with a flat behind. Where then, did I belong? I'm a pretty strong and smart chick though, and I managed to fit in. OK, so I was kinda known as the "weird" one, but I wasn't hiding in a corner alone, or being beat up. I think I just let the kids get to know me. Yeah, I might be a little different than what you expect, but I'm still cool people. I adapted to them, they adapted to me. I fit in, in my own way. That was part of elementary.

(I didn't fit in with my Girl Scout troop. I hated my girl scout troop. Buncha' ghetto ass mofos, always pickin' on me. One nearly drowned me! I wonder where they are now, probably all have 5 babies with 6 baby daddies...bitches!)
Excuse me! Sorry. Rant over. I must have been harvesting that for some time.

I was raised in a very strict Baptist household. My gosh, everything was a sin! And I come from one of those really old fashioned black Baptist families where you have to go outside and get a switch off the tree and then get a beating by the syllable. No, I didn't say spanking. Spanking is what you saw on tv sometimes when little Timmy strayed too far from the house and let the dog fall in the well. Anywho, one of the biggest sins was girls being with girls and boys being with boys. Such relationships and feelings were wrong. "God didn't make Adam & Steve..." You know the saying. So from a very early age, I was confused about who I was, who I should be, because I liked girls. I liked girls in the way that other girls liked boys. I knew I had those feelings, and they were supposed to be wrong, but there was no one in my family I could talk to about it. I'd overhear one of them talk about this "dyke" or that "fag" with disgust; or maybe not so much disgust as incomprehension. It wasn't until middle school that I really realized those feelings wouldn't go away. Middle school is bad enough. For part of middle school I was still in the magnet program, and us art students were known as weird anyway, so that was a good fit. There was a girl or two I liked, and even one boy (he was kinda weird too), but when I went to a "regular" jr. high...::sigh:: I don't even like thinking back. Still too white for the black students, and didn't quite fit with the white students, but luckily I found my place with others who didn't quite fit in either. Actually I'm still friends with them today. :o) There was a time where I really felt like being more my true self, but then the rumors started to surface that I liked girls, and I didn't like that attention, so I ran back into the closet of my own secret thoughts. (which included a major crush on this girl named Sandy) :o) Middle school was really tough, and I'll admit there were times when I contemplated suicide. Some days it just seemed like it would be better alternative than to endure another day of the crap you can go through. I was just never like the other kids, but in my own way, I fit in. It was hard, but I did it.

I'm bisexual. I hate saying that because it's always sounded like I'm confused, like I couldn't make up my mind which way to go, and so I chose to go both ways. Ugh. I hate that. "I go both ways." One of the most annoying phrases I hate to hear. To me it just sounds promiscuous. And I am neither confused, nor promiscuous. I was born with an attraction, physically/mentally/emotionally to women, and men. Do I lean more one way than the other, yes. I lean more toward an attraction to women. However, there are certain men (Viggo Mortensen, Alexander SkarsgÄrd (as Eric Northman), Robert Pattinson, Jonny Depp...) that would make my head turn in a sex. I mean sec. They would make my head turn, in a second. However, all of those men do seem slightly effeminate. (sorry guys!) :o) This is who I am, what I am, it's the way that I was born, it's the way my brain works. I offer no apologies, neither to myself nor the world for who I am. Not anymore I don't.

High school seems like a flashback of the 70's, even though it was the 90's. I wore tie-dye shirts, Birkenstock sandals (the official sandal of lesbians), and at the time, obnoxiously wide legged jeans were in (for the "rockers", which I associated more with). Today I think I'd be "emo"? Hippy-emo? Empy? I don't know. There was a tree where all the pot smokers hung out, the "tree people". For some reason, high school was a lot more tolerable. (Not just because I skipped half of it) I was pretty comfortable with not being "normal" and I could take most things in stride. My friends were among the geeks, dorks, International Baccalaureate (IB), and "tree people". I had random friends all over the school, and for some reason I was pretty well known. I still haven't figured that out yet. I was a member of our high school GLBT "support group", which all schools should have. They should have groups for everyone, because in high school, no matter what you're going through, you often feel alone in it. Usually there's at least one other person that knows exactly what you're going through, usually more than one. :o) For me, there were still comments, or "jokes" or whatever you want to call it, because I was different, and even though I still didn't quite fit in, I kinda did. :o) Even though I climbed a tree barefoot and ate my lunch in the tree.
College is a little different in that the people that are there actually want to be there. OK, not all of them, but most of them. You still have your jerks, of both genders and every ethnicity. But what I've come to realize over the years, after going through those school days, and teaching adolescents, is that...kids are assholes! More specifically, teenage kids. Between 13 and say, 20, some sort of biological asshole trait comes out and kids can be pricks. But, it does get better. As long as you hang in there, and stay true to who you are, you wade through all the crap and come out on the other side. You look back, and you say, "I got through that." And you just keep on treading. And it's a better road.

Bullying doesn't just occur to GLBTs of our communities, it happens to the white-black girls, and the black-white girls, the little Asian kids whose parents push them to do well in school, the Middle Eastern kids, the emos, and WOW addicts; that kid who got a lifetime worth of acne in one year, that girl who happens to grow just a bit more body hair than what's considered attractive by American standards, that girl whose glasses are just a little too big and her braces a little too...showy. Even the head "jock" can get bullied by his teammates, or the head cheerleader, or that girl who really just wants to be a girl but has a woman's body. It happens, it's sad, and as has been proven over and over through the years, whether in the form of suicide, or acts like that at Columbine, it can be deadly. We have to teach those that do the bullying, teasing, joking, whatever you want to call it, that It Is Not OK! And to the victims of such, It Does Get Better! :o)

So, that's me. Bisexual, purple-headed, no booty havin' black chick (that "talks white"). I didn't really fit in back then and I don't really fit in now. But I'm here. And I'm livin'. As the great Einstein once said (he didn't exactly fit in either!) "Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow."
I'm not sure who will read this, if anyone reads it at all. But maybe someone who's feeling bullied, or simply "lost" amongst their peers, will stumble upon this and be reminded that "It does get better."

Well, that's it for now, folks. Until next writing. :o)

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” -Oscar Wilde.

4 comments:

  1. I thought you wore pantsuits in 10th grade! All kidding aside, it was rough in middle school. I didn't feel like I fit in either, or like I really belonged, and I still feel that way to a small extent. But you're right, it's something that I overcame, and being myself is something I can be proud of.
    xoxo, Angie

    ReplyDelete
  2. LoL The pant suits were between 7th and 9th grade. By 10th grade I was full out hippy. :o)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well, I hear ya! Being homeschooled for most of my school years (yes, homeschooled!), I didn't fit in too well when I went to public high school. And I would say I was bullied--by the kids who were supposed to be the "nice" kids. "Nice" is such a relative term! I think part of bullying is the need to feel like you're better than someone else. And some kids just can't get enough of that feeling. I can't say that I've forgotten how they treated me, but you're right, it does get better! Good for you for living your own life (barefoot tree-climbing hippies FTW!), and not allowing anyone to tell you that you needed to put your shoes on.

    ReplyDelete
  4. We have even more in common than I ever assumed. Minus being raised in the hood. Thank you for posting. You are a very cool lady! Xoxo

    ReplyDelete