Water

I know I've blogged about this before... probably a few times. My brother is having a party downstairs and I know that's kind of a trigger for me, so I was glad when my dad told me to ask a few people to come over too. No one ended up coming or calling or anything, so Bunny and I watched a few movies and ate carrots. Well, she ate her Everlasting Carrot and I had a hamburger.

I really hate this about me. That I'm so sensitive to stuff like that, that it can affect me so much. It is so easy to make me feel sad- hell, even if the characters in the books I read are sad, I become sad. The first time I read the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime I started speaking choppy and very literally. (The second time I read it I took on the British mannerisms of Christopher and his supporting characters.) Sometimes that's fun though.

Anyways, I've been feeling kind of shit lately. I don't know why...I have a solid, realistic plan for school, I have an amazing job, I have great friends, I have my aminals, I'm out, I'm open about my MI's, and because I come home so late from work and my brother was having this party, he actually cleaned the house. I love it when it's vacuumed. I remember one Christmas I would vacuum the entire house at least three times a day...mmm...cleanliness....

I'm totally on my meds. I'm actually about to dole out my week's worth in my little green container, (did you know they make it in pink and purple? Those are my favourite popsicle colours!) so you KNOW I'm staying on them. I even have my green stripy cup to match so I can take them right away.

I want to be doing more with my life. That's completely crazy, considering that I sleep 12 hours a day. (Hey! We're down from 14! Yay!) But I want to sew Big Bunny, since she's only surviving on a lot of safety pins right now. I'd sew her on the bus if she wasn't so...big... I want to be volunteering at RVC, since I've gotten so much from the hospital. I want to be getting posters and pamphlets to start off for Speak.

This hurts so much...I don't know why...I want it to go away so badly but I know beggars can't be choosers. (I've heard that three times at Griffin in the past week.) At least I feel good sometimes, instead of just shit all the time.

G'night y'all.

aHA!

Yesterday, or quite recently, I blogged about how it's weird that I'm getting better but I feel a little out of control. (To be more precise, more self-destructive.)

I got it! I'm FEELING MORE. It's been a long time since I've felt anything but self-hatred, irritation, and extreme depression. After my last episode, I felt almost nothing. Just numb. And NOW, I'm feeling angry/sad/happy and apart from having to learn what to do with those emotions, I'm also learning just to feel them again. Usually when I feel the slightest hint of anything, I'd just go straight to self-destruct to make it go away, but I don't want this to go away.

It's been years since I felt things like this, and it's horrible.

It's not really horrible. I mean, this is what I've wanted, to feel something. To feel happy and sad sometimes.

I think I have to come back to this, it's all so new!

Doing The Gay Thing

Someone asked me, "Why? Why can't you just be..." after I had told an endearing story about a PO Box and The Advocate.

Why can you just be gay? Do you really have to do this Pride/Curve/Ellen thing?

I asked myself this question a lot a little while ago, when I was trying to figure out what everyone, "in the community" was doing and trying to do it too. I thought, "Do I have to do all this gay stuff? Can't I just be gay?" And of course I can! I can do whatever the hell i want!

But I want to be a part of this community. I love that I'm working with the Compass group at the Griffin Centre now, I love that I've got the Speak thing going, I love that this is who I am and I'm living it. At some point, I realized I'm not "doing the gay thing."

Come on. Would you, my probably straight reader, want to read a magazine all about how to pick up the best lesbian? Where all the great gay bars are? NO! That's not interesting to you at all! And reading about how to ask out a guy and impress the other sex doesn't interest me. There is no such thing as the "gay thing," I'm just reading and doing and participating in things that interest me.

I think it took that question to realize that although I tried very hard to figure out things like Xtra and the Index and OurChart and stuff like that, (and learning how to say the 5-19 instead of the five-hundred-nineteen church street community centre) I was just learning about myself, and finding things I'm interested in.

I AM just being gay.

I don't get it....

Right now, I really want to be writing in my diary but that's not going to happen. With the normal stress of June Rush usually comes a wave of anxiety, followed shortly by a shit load of OCDness. One of my compulsions is writing really perfectly, but it`s just not practical. So I`ve been typing my exams and really hesitating to write anything down, since it`s so frustrating and slow. I don`t know what`s with me. I`m so much better now...I`m feeling things that I haven`t felt in years and years. Like anger, I haven`t felt something that sharp and loud in forever so when I felt it again my first thought was actually, `What the fuck am I supposed to do with this feeling?" Then I promptly turned around and swore at the assholes talking behind me.

But even though I'm feeling things like being NORMAL sad and NORMAL happy, not the extremes of either one there are still moments...no, there are more moments when I really want to revert to my old, self-destructive ways. It's so scary to have this now and feel like this, almost terrifying. I'm more scared now than I was when I wanted to kill myself...although then, I was really just happy that I'd found a way out.

Is this is way I normally am? When I first started on the pills I wondered if I'd have any idea who I was without depression or anxiety, and I'm quite sure I don't.

Tonight at dinner I was eating my rice in a square, carefully pushing each grain into my little square of rice and trying to get the last mini grains onto my fork because you CAN'T LEAVE THEM THERE, (I also find it weird that sometimes that matters so much to me, and other times not at all) and my family was all, "You're just fucking around!" because they wanted me to get more soup. There's the anger again, and Dr. G said...I'm going to go bike.

Christ in Me

Literally, because I took Eucharist today for the first time in about a year. Y'all know I go to the United Church now, and today was a Eucharist Mass. (They only have it once a month.) Now, this is my fourth time going to Ebeneezer, and the first mass I hadn't had a panic attack for many, many months. I am glad to say I did NOT start hyperventilating today, but I didn't freak out a little when they came up with the bread and the wine. (Err...the bread and the juice.)

I stopped taking Communion when I started accepting my mood disorders and my queerness, and rejecting the Church`s rejection. I kind of...well, I get this feeling that the Catholic church really controls everything, the secular AND the sacred. So for some reason, I stayed away from Communion. Because they can revoke it, and it didn't seem like something about Jesus, it was more of a thing they could take away.

So today I just stayed in my seat, and then Billie came and tugged me up and I said that I wasn't in a state of grace, and she said we didn't have to be! And that it was okay! That we were all welcome to take Communion! And she taught me how to do it in a United Church, and afterwards I was crying. I have never felt so welcome at a Church in my entire life. People don't judge you, they don't tsk tsk when you turn around...god, I was afraid of turning around to watch people come down the aisle until someone told me it was okay.

But it was amazing. To be welcome to that again? To have people not care that I'm gay or dealing with mental illness. But it was also saddening that this experience had to be had... and that it matters so much. I will always be saddened by that, I think.

On Account of Homophobia

Let me tell you a story.

Today Pauline and I were at Timmy's after stopping by the library, talking about religion and the schisms, and how it was so weird that Henry VIII wanted a divorce so he create a whole 'nother religion... when these pleasant people who were sitting next to us asked us what we thought fundamentalism was. So we stuttered through answering that we just studied it and hmmm...it is...it's...hold on, we'll get it...uhh...anyways, they started talking about how it's great that we've accepted Jesus into our lives, (because we told them we went to Catholic school) and that Jesus doesn't take away all hardship, but rather guides us through it to pleasure and happiness. So eventually they mentioned marrying a guy...and of course, I had to wonder, "What if I don't want to marry a man?" and eventually got to saying that I'm gay, whereupon they told me that Jesus still loves me, but he doesn't love my lifestyle. And that they cannot accept someone being gay, and that I am living a life of sin and I must pray for Jesus to save me and that would pray for me...and I said that I accept who I am and whom I love, but thank you anyways, and I left.


So first I was a little shocked. I've had a few encounters like this before, but I was one guy saying, "God hates people like you" and then ignoring me, and some other people just ignoring me, this was a little bit more painful. Because they BELIEVED it, because they thought that I was sinful for loving, because they really in their hearts were going to pray that I got past "that."

Another thing is that they said, "Jesus still loves you." I didn't think there was any question of it! I know He loves me! Or like when people say, "Oh, it's okay." I didn't think there was a problem, or that it ISNT okay. Maybe I'm just really touchy. For a moment there I thought that I was ASKING it, by coming out to those people, but I realize, I'm not being OVERTLY GAY, I'm just being out. Being myself. Do you ever tell someone they're being OVERTLY STRAIGHT? Exactly. This bothers me.