Into The Woods

Lately, I've been riding the emotional seesaw of doubt; I've been doubting the life decisions I've chosen to make, doubting what I stand for (as a person, a woman, and a homosexual), doubting myself as being the kind of writer who could possibly make a difference, AND the thing about all of those dubious thoughts is that I've been consciously striving to create stability in my life, something that had been quite lacking until recently. So when I finally acknowledged and/or became aware of the fact that I was tossing the "inner doubt ball" back and forth, I decided to do something about it.

I took the time off of work and I missed a few (read: more than a few) classes and I headed to the woods for a little inner-me vacation. There is something about spending time amongst the fresh air and the beanstalk-sized trees that makes me feel restoratively small; as if the extraordinary beauty of the forest somehow, perhaps magically, edges itself into your mind and positions everything into perspective, and in that smaller-self you can better grasp what your life is all about.

Here's what I learned in the woods:
Thoughts are thoughts, and they have the freedom to come and go as they please; AND we, as active and aware human beings, have the capability to buy into those thoughts, but that's all that it is, a capability. Our thoughts don't have the power to dictate our behavior and they certainly don't have the power to place barricades along our life paths. I am going to adopt a mentality of letting those thoughts be and then letting those thoughts pass, as they choose, and, all the while, continuing in my journey of who I want to be.

Sex-Help

Portland is home to a lot of great things; the country's greatest doughnut shop, the largest number of microbreweries per capita, the first vegan strip joint, and the world's largest independent bookstore. (Baked goods, beer, boobies, and books...What more could a good homosexual girl ask for?)

Powell's, Portland's famous bookstore, spans an entire city block and boasts to having over 4 million books in their inventory, including a fantastic collection of GLBT publications. I was perusing this particular section of Powell's the other day, in search of a book that would offer a VERY young girl the perspective that it wasn't wrong to welcome same-sex thoughts, when I came to a realization...all the books that offer advice or comfort about the coming out process are about sex, or at least include sex as a prominent part of the sexual identification process. This girl is barely a teenager; she doesn't need to know how to perform cunnilingus, she needs to know that she can be happy passing notes to a girl or holding a girl's hand at the movies.

Recently, I had this discussion with my mother. My mother is dating a man who believes that homosexuality is a choice. In relaying a conversation the two of them had about this topic to me, she very quickly asserted that she "stood up for gay people, without a second thought."

"I told him that you don't get to choose your desires or thoughts. The only thing you get to choose is the action. The action is the only point you get to argue"

"You mean sex?" I replied.

"Well, yeah," she said. "You can choose to be celibate or not."

"So if you're celibate it doesn't count? You're only gay if you're having gay sex?"

It is never my intention to place judgment, on my mom or her boyfriend or anyone for that matter, but I think that it's bananas that, in the dominant thought process, being gay is so directly, almost synonymously, linked with having gay sex. There is a great quote by Boy George that says, "There's this illusion that homosexuals have sex and heterosexuals fall in love. That's completely untrue. Everybody wants to be loved." I love gay sex just as much, if not more, than the next carpet muncher, but gay sex isn't everything. I have certainly gone months upon months without participating in gay sex, and I wasn't less of a homosexual in those months. I came out to my parents before partaking in the joys of lesbian finger banging and I definitely didn't feel the need to re-come out after I had done so. I'll tell you a secret: sex is one of the greatest parts about being gay, but it's not everything...so, why do our bookshelves suggest that it is.

It is beyond fantastic that lesbian literature is about empowering woman with the tools (instructional books), ideas (erotica, real life stories), and comfort (memoirs, lesbian fiction) to know that lesbian sex is just as normal/fulfilling/great as straight sex...but what if you're not ready or want more. What section of the bookstore do you turn to then?

Step-All-Over-Me Stickel

Yep...this quip of a nickname followed me around the playground, the cluster of lockers, and even the dorm rooms of my first college. In case you didn't catch the supposedly witty wordplay, the people in my life were trying to insinuate that I was a pushover...I can't deny that it was true. I used to approach every situation with the "yes dear" attitude that I was certain stemmed from a place of respect and goodwill. And while my pushover approach might of had the semblance of integrity, in retrospect it came from a place of covert cowardice and not-so-fantastic self esteem.

I believe that everything happens for a reason and that everything serves a purpose; that every experience, no matter how unpleasant, can be looked at as an opportunity to better yourself or to become more of who you want to be. I think that as long as you have an intentionality about your life, there is never a reason to regret or minimize what was.

When I was 19, I got the "call" to full-time ministry and a few months later I changed colleges and headed off to seminary. I had this overwhelming and undeniable desire to change how the church functioned and I was committed to doing everything I could to empower myself to be the best person I could be for that job. For me, achieving that goal meant getting an education in a place that fundamentally disagreed with who I was, what I believed in, and what I stood for as a woman, as a Christian, and as an individual. As a very smart and suave man once said, "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere..." and I fully believed that placing myself in such a differing environment was the smartest and most effective mode of action for achieving the kind of results I wanted to see.

The school I choose to go to was conservative, to respectfully say the least, and it was also very small. If you were different, or believed in different ideals, everyone knew it. But I didn't let that stand in my way. I left my "Kerry for 2004" sticker on my car. I took on leadership roles in Campus Ministries and lead Bible Studies that the faculty would have disapproved of, if they had known about. I verbalized that I didn't desire pregnancy. I even served as Student Body President, during my second year of attendance, to a school full of people that believed I was damned to hell. I knew that if I was really going to make a change, or even just survive, that my pushover approach to life wasn't going to fly, and I was going to have to grow some balls. So...I did. And it didn't lead to where I thought it would.

Currently, my interaction with religion is nonexistent and my relationship with God might never be what it used to be, and the majority of all of that assuredly came from the fact that I placed myself in such a conservative environment. My memories and feelings about that time in my life are brutally unhappy, but I don't regret it...because if nothing else, I learned how to stand up for myself and to stand up for the person I want to be. That lesson is invaluable, no matter what classroom I learned it in.


In a little over four months, I am going to leave the safety and comfort of Portland, OR, a city I've lived in for 14+ years, to attend journalism school in Brooklyn, NY. There are very few people in my life that think that this is a good idea ... It's not exactly a great time, economically, to leave a stable and career-building job for a move cross-country and it's not like print media is a thriving industry at the moment. I haven't been saving up for a big move. I know very few people in New York, none of whom are reaching success or financial stability. And I know, with everything that I have in me, that this is my opportunity to be the kind of person, the kind of writer, I want to be; the kind of person who doesn't limit her life merely because some people asked her to. This life decision is just about me STANDING UP for what I want my life to look like.