Driving into work today, the sun shining...birds are flying happily to and fro and hardly a cloud in the sky to accompany me on my way. The radio station is blasting, my window is down and my arm is hanging out doing the superman wave thing, bobbing along with the beat...and then the music changes and I the softest piano starts to play. I get ready to change it but then I recognize the voice as Mackelmore and then the lyrics start in about religion, being gay, freedom and rights...and then the chorus starts in "And I can't change, even if I tried, even if I wanted to." The lyrics hit me like a punch to the chest, especially the part about undergoing treatment to change so that you could be accepted and the part about how gays and lesbians would rather kill themselves then accept who they are. "Some would rather die than be who they are."
The pain in my chest, that punch to my heart...the hitch in my breathing...I had to pull over. Tears started to flow and I couldn't get them to stop. How many times have I felt those very words? How many times have I felt that pain...that very sadness and self-loathing? There are so many thoughts and feelings racing through me right now I can't focus...
Since this morning I have probably listened to that song about 50 times. I know every word, every beat. And I wonder how many people really hear all the different aspects of the song...how many different layers there are that he is trying to address? It's not just a song about gay marriage, freedom, political opinions, or religion. It's goes much deeper than that...
So much deeper.
I can't change. I wish I could. But I can't. I used to pray to be different. To be like the rest of the church, the rest of the accepted ones. The chosen. The straight. Maybe then my life would have meaning, the promises that were granted to me based on my following the ways of right and not wrong. Maybe then, well...it doesn't matter. I am not what I was supposed to be. I did not follow my path as stated by my church and it doesn't matter that I was drawn towards girls since before first grade. It doesn't matter that I feel that I was born this way...
It doesn't matter.
It's like being stuck between two worlds. I can't be straight. Because, I'm not. But I make a horrible gay person because I hate myself for being gay. Why couldn't I have just been born normal? And yet the minute I write that, I offend even myself by dictating that there is such a thing as "normal."
Now I remember why I stopped blogging.
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