I’m Not Crying You’re Crying
The first time I had a best friend I was seven. Then our family moved and changed schools. I never saw him again.
It’s taken me nearly 38 years to even consider that I might want another best friend. Or that I would let someone into my life so intimately.
Today I was sharing a story of love and joy with someone equally as important to me. And I was robbed of sharing that story by stupid communication problems. From mother nature of all things!
I broke down. I started crying. And after settling into the sadness, rolling around in the despair, and diving into the self-awareness it takes to be more mature than a five-year-old, I realized I was grieving something that I had been taken from me without my permission. The ability to be joyful about love.
Repressing Begins Early
Queer kids discover they’re different very early. We don masks to keep others comfortable. The masks keep us safe. And they create barriers that remove us from the joy of life. We’re separated from the opportunity of love.
For too long queer men have not been allowed to express their joy. When we do it’s frowned on and chastised. Our parents and friends make us feel as if we should be embarrassed about our actions, our words, and how we sound.
And we repress.
Struggling To Express Love
Queer men struggle to express love. Role models are few and far between. To see ourselves in culturally relevant spaces are more prevalent today than ever.
But are those images positive? Are they accessible to all and empowering? Rather than negative, fear-based, and available? Sometimes it depends on the environment in which we receive those reflections of who we might be.
And we repress.
We Are Traumatized
As we begin to understand love and the joy it can bring, we can’t help but to also be forced to see it as wrong. Our love and the joy it inspires are ripped from us in order to survive the bullies.
Joy and love are tamped down in generations of us so that we can outlive a virus. Love and joy are torn from us so we can walk down the street and make others feel safe in our presence.
And we repress.
Elected Miss This Guy’s Gone
So for a hot minute, I repressed this feeling this morning. Then I said to myself, “Self, you need to feel this.” So I looked up the most dramatic life or death musical I know, Miss Saigon.
And I listened to the moment Kim has to choose between life or death. Her son in her arms, Thuy across from her, and a gun between them. With the outcome uncertain, she kills that which does not serve in her life and emerges with a single option, to survive.
I needed to not push off the emotion. I needed to feel it and I wasn’t ready to address myself yet. Vicarious emotional expression was a way in and a release.
Later, I’ll bring this up with my therapist in a safer environment. My goal was to be mindful of the experience, feel the emotion, and review what happened later (This post is a part of that).
Life or Death Choices
For so many queer kids, this life or death choice is our childhood. But after this moment, we continue to resurrect the life or death choice before we come out. And we go through it, again and again, every time we come out (often daily). Life or death. Life or death. Life or death. Survival is exhausting. And it’s not sustainable.
And after I fell apart this morning, when I couldn’t sustain the charade anymore, when the need to express my life was greater than choosing death, I actually had to acknowledge the depression to do so. That’s ok. And it’s hard. Especially when you believe you’ve been so self-sufficient for so long.
Bringing More Joy Into My Life
So after I chose life, I reached out to my best friend. And he called me in the midst of his own personal crisis to ask me how I was.
Asking for help is a necessity. In retrospect I realize I was asking for help. In the moment I was falling apart.
The words were about my pain. But speaking them is killing that which does not serve. And speaking them is choosing life.
And at that moment we held each other. There was a bittersweet joy. And there was laughter. And there were tears. We have each other.
And we express.