(S)E(x)[q]uality

Man oh man does it feel good to be back.

It’s certainly been some time since I have last posted, but I am sure I have written about 973 other blogs in my head by now. Of course, now I find myself here because I am feeling very passionate at the moment so all my excuses of too much screen time, I’m too tired, I’ll do it tomorrow, don’t work.

[If only I was passionate about everything I did then I would accomplish so much more.]

Lately, I’ve been feeling… very… hm. accomplished? Focused? Reflective.

I’m thinking reflective most accurately describes me lately.

I have finally hit a place of serenity and I cannot help but to think about how I got here. The good and the bad. A place of indifference to say the least. I can honestly say I am the happiest I have ever been, but at the same time that happiness has come with feelings of being bothered and frustrated.

I am happy that I have finally reached the point in my life to be shamelessly myself. A lot of people that have known me majority of my life often say, ah you’ve always been yourself, this and that. Yeah, well I have, but let’s not pretend we don’t know what I am talking about. I am specifically talking about love. To love who I love and to finally not give a fuck what anyone else thinks. The people that are saying that I have always been myself are the same people who have ignored my sexuality my whole life, until apparently recently.

Typically, I would apologise for using such strong language, but I would offend myself if I tried to use anything other than offensive language. Why? Well yah know coming from a small country southern town from a Southern Baptist family, I’d say I’ve been offended once or twice in my life so I think I am okay on this one. Can I get an amen?!

There’s a lot I could I say, there’s a lot I want to say, but I’m going to leave the rants and negativity for a writing of my own and spare you all the misery. Instead, I wanted to focus on the highlights and learnings from my own experience so that hopefully it can encourage others to be more curious and approach sensitive subjects with an open mind.

I don’t think that there’s anyone that reads these that doesn’t really know me, but in case there is some quick useful background info is that I am currently engaged to a woman in Australia. I grew up in Virginia, USA, moved to New Zealand in 2016 for three years, and have been living in Australia ever since August 2019.

When I left the USA to move to New Zealand, with the exception of my family, I never really directly spoke about my sexuality to anyone, except Brooke and Devan. Brooke is my best friend from uni and she will call anyone out on their bullshit. Devan has known me since third grade and is the only reason I survived high school. That girl went through some shit for me to say the least (forever grateful).

Of course there’s my sister, but I said with the exception of family so of course she knows everything. Although I didn’t even talk to her about it until she called me into her room when I was 17 years old. She was very upset with me because she felt like I should have known I could trust her with anything that I was going through. I certainly could, but unless you have been through it I don’t think anyone can quite understand what it is like to grow up being everything you are being told you shouldn’t be, how you are a living sin, that you are going straight to hell, and basically that I could change.

How could I risk the relationship with people I loved the most by telling them something that I don’t even accept about myself? If I feel wrong about what I am doing then how am I suppose to expect that they would accept me?

So here I am at 22 years old leaving the country I grew up in, never feeling safe enough to openly discuss essentially a large part of who I am. I was certainly surrounded by people who would love me for who I am if I talked to them about it, but I never got there. All my relationships were largely quite, not directly discussed, and occasionally posted about, but with a friendly caption that could always go either way.

When I moved to New Zealand, I moved with my sister and her partner (now husband), and my partner at the time. I kept saying that New Zealand would be my fresh start and that I could finally start living out who I am. I told myself I would introduce myself, tell people how I moved over there with my partner, and make it seem normal so people would never know differently.

Very ambitious.

Not quite how it happened.

Instead, I freaked out, and most of the time didn’t even tell people that I moved over with a partner, would only mention my sister. What an asshole, aye. I went into the mentality of wanting people to judge me for who I am, not who I like. I wanted people to give me a chance, to see my personality, and to form their opinion based on those factors other than a factor external to myself. It took me some time to realise that the people who would make judgements about me based off of who I liked weren’t people that I would want to be hanging out with anyway.

At least I was finally learning! Taking experiences and learning from them.

It didn’t take too long, maybe a year and a bit, before everyone I surrounded myself with knew me, the true me. It was only then, in New Zealand, that I started to have a bit of faith in humanity and that one day maybe, just maybe, I’d be able to live a happy life without the worry of other’s judgement.

August 2019 hit and off I went to Australia. Same game plan in mind as when I moved to New Zealand. Be me. The real me. The full me.

Fuck yeah, if I didn’t do it.

I couldn’t have been more grateful for my time in New Zealand to help me build the confidence in loving myself for who I am and accepting that. Coming to Australia has been the most rewarding experience for myself because I feel like every person that I have met, met ME.

It took me over 25 years to get to this point.

When I posted pictures of my family and I the other day, it felt so freeing. I was so happy and proud. It was so lovely to see the reactions of other people and all of the beautiful comments, I really am so appreciative of the support. On the other hand though it was so frustrating because I feel like people acknowledge the happiness and love that they see in the picture, but they have no idea the amount of work that has gone on, on a personal level to get to this point.

We are so quick to celebrate happiness and talk about things when they are going good, but where were all of these people when I was back home and young? Nobody reached out. Nobody talked about it. If it was talked about, it certainly wasn’t talked about in a positive light. We ignored it. We turned a blind eye. It was seen as ‘acting out’ or ‘rebelling.’

For 22 years people never asked about that part of my life, but now that I am comfortable with it, we celebrate? We don’t need more people to help us celebrate, we need more people to help. We need people to talk, to ask questions, to make people that are different from you feel safe.

You don’t have to agree with what people are doing, it can differ from your own beliefs, but we need to create a safe space for people to talk.

It really does enrage me to think that people look at my pictures and think these thoughts of ‘look how happy she it’, ‘how lucky’, ‘so blessed’, things of that nature because I am all of those things, but I am those things because of the amount of self work I have done to correct the horrendous thinking that I had about myself. I hate to say it, but a lot of the horrendous thoughts I had about myself were because of some of yall that are celebrating me now.

Please take accountability and some time to reflect on how you specifically treat people that are different from yourself or hold values/beliefs different from yourself. Not speaking at all can be worse than speaking and saying the wrong thing as long as it is known you are speaking from a place of curiosity and understanding.

I find it easiest when talking about something sensitive by saying “I don’t know if I am going to say this right’ or ‘I don’t know the right way to ask’ and often the person you are speaking to will lead you the way. Some people may be triggered or sensitive and tell you to think about it more before addressing it or others might say go for it, we will work through it. People care though when you ask. People appreciate having the hard conversation. It makes people that are different than you feel a bit more normal and accepted.

BUT just because you ask, don’t expect to get an answer. It’s taken me nearly 30 years to get this far. People have to feel safe and people have to accept themselves. My advice would be just let people know that you are there for them, acknowledge them, and keep coming back to it if you think you are the best person to do so.

So yeah, that’s my story, thanks for listening to my Ted talk xx

Please continue to celebrate those you love and the happiness you see, but please be even more diligent paying attention to those that are just waiting for someone to reach out. I’ll never forget a friend of mine acknowledging the relationship I was in, asking questions and being genuinely curious to understand, even though her beliefs were different than mine.

We aren’t asking people to change their stance, we are asking people to care, to help.