HPV Vaccine and The Lorspital

I was lucky today, I caught all my buses with just a little waiting. (43.190.133) Which was odd, because I got to the lorspital just in time to duck into the nice washroom and head up the elevator. The weekend of absolute horror is over, so I'm going to go back to not blogging really personal stuff.

Looks like several of the Catholic school boards are going to take a vote on allowing public health to go into the schools and provide Grade 8 girls with the HPV vaccine.

HPV is human papilloma virus. It can lead to cervical cancer.

"At the centre of the debate is the Conference of Catholic Bishops, which said in a statement that since HPV occurs only through sex, which is appropriate only through marriage, in theory the young girls would have no need for the vaccinations, though there is no issue with the vaccine itself." -City News

I see where they are coming from. (Don't I always?) But that's very ideal thinking. Come on, I go to Catholic school, and Catholic doctrine can be a fairly small reason for girls to resist becoming sexually active. So ideally, yes, grade 8 girls in Catholic schools would not be sexually active until they are married. However, we don't live in a perfect world. I think these girls should get the vaccine in school, because let's face it- how many girls will really go to a public clinic to get the vaccine? It's hard talking about sexual health, and I'd imagine that would be a major factor in how many girls will go out and get it themselves.

Edit: I forgot to mention this lady who suddenly started talking to me at Shoppers while I was waiting for my prescription to get filled. She was reading this article about Michael Jackson and started telling me about how Neverland is really a code for a secret place where he sends people he doesn't like so he "never has to see them again." And how he's not really MJ but a representative of another country- she won't say which, but I heard something really offensive about Muslims while I was trying to count stitches in my knitting. And how she figured it out after years of contemplating.

Stupid Questions and Vomit

My mom asked me this morning, “How long are you planning to be ‘sick’?”

Now I understand she’s going under the assumption that I’m still faking sick, but as I’m not that really pisses me off. I don’t PLAN to be sick. If I could, I’d plan to never be sick! Hello!!! I’d plan to never feel icky and especially, I’d plan to never ever be depressed.



On a grosser note, I just threw up. People always say you should feel better after you throw up, and I’m really hoping that’s the case. (Although I’m still feeling icky.) Hopefully I threw up whatever was making me sick. But I did realize yesterday night that what I was feeling after the snifflies and the sneezies went away is exactly the same as all the times I had low blood pressure. So I’m going to either talk to write out a note telling one of my parents that it feels like that, leave out how angry I am that they ignored it, and ask them to get me salty food. My family doctor said to eat salty food when my BP gets really low. Of course, my dad has high BP so we don’t have a lot of salty food just lying around the house. I`ll pay for it, just make this go away!!!

Phase Two: The Yelling

I’m really dizzy, which I love, because if I tell my parents I’m really dizzy they’ll start yelling at me about how I haven’t eaten. Which like the nausea, really helps. I was just about to go downstairs and get something to eat but I got really spinny on the stairs and I sat down, and then I came back here.

My prediction came true!!! Last night before I went to bed I thought, “If I wake up tomorrow and I still feel like shit, they’re going to say that I’m faking, because they’ve been ignoring me for the past five days and don’t know how I’ve been feeling.” Yep. So my mom started yelling about how I’m not sick, and how I’m lazy and I don’t do anything and I’m going to fail school and then she comes back in the room, and starts telling me how I can’t give up and shit in this fake soft voice. Then she started yelling again.

It’s getting really hard to type, I’m getting all sweaty and even more dizzy. I HOPE THEY BURN IN HELL. Or at least, I hope I get hit by a Mac truck tomorrow. My head is constantly aching, I get dizzy just switching windows on the computer, let alone turning around, I’m hot-than-cold-than-hot-than-cold, I’m nauseous, I’m tired, and that’s just the physical stuff. I tried acetaminophen, I tried serc, I forced food down my gullet, (which came back up my gullet and made me more dizzy, AGAIN) I really just want to hurt my parents.

I think them ignoring me was better than them yelling at me, because at least it was quiet. I’m going to try to get down the stairs again.

Heterosexual Justification

I couldn’t sleep. This weekend I’ve blogged more and with a lot more personal stuff than ever before, mostly because I’m finding it so difficult to stay on MSN and nearly impossible to talk out loud. Less painful things are starting to pop back into my head.

This debut thing. I always swore that if I was single on my debut I would have a friend escort me. All the debut’s I went to where the girl was just by herself seemed really...lonely. I know I’ve blogged before about the raging heterosexuality of the whole thing, but it’s pretty huge. I can’t back out, that’s for sure. After this weekend I know even now that I’m going to be like hell on earth. If my parents will ignore me for something small like they did, imagine them planning a gigantic wedding-esque party.

Again, I have already blogged about how horrible a debut would be for a girl with anxiety issues.

I will not have a male escort me at this debut. Would a straight girl let another girl escort her? But what would I do? I know I would ask a friend to escort me if I’m single, that’s a given. I know my friends are wonderful enough to do so. What really, really bugs me is the fact that I will have to justify it. And fight for it. I just...I really wonder, what is the point of introducing me to society if I’m not interested in the gender I’m being introduced to?

Now even after I make it clear I will not be escorted by a male, picture this.

My friends and family precede me into the ballroom. (God, I cannot believe how monstrous that sounds.) Anyways, then the MC pauses and says, “Now I present to society, Katherina Miranda Yerro, and her escort, Random-Female-Name-Here.” The crowd claps awkwardly. My friends cheer and clap with much more enthusiasm. People stare.

Ending A: I say nothing, and then the entire community mutters and spreads rumours about myself and my family, “Did she have to shove it in our faces?” “Don’t they have any tact?” “Fucking lesbo.”

Ending B: I say something, and the entire community mutters, albeit quietly. I bring their attention to the fact that should a straight girl be escorted by a man, no one would be muttering, “Did she have to shove her heterosexuality in our faces?”

As much as I loathe the idea of a debut, or rather the process before it, I do not want to be spending my coming-of-age, my Filipino bat mitzvah explaining, “God Hates Gays- or Maybe Just Angel Rapists and Gentiles” and attempting to put Leviticus and Gomorrah into context. It has potential to be a really nice night, in between the inevitable arguing and anger. Homophobia is not really something I had planned as part of it. Suggestions?

A Breakthrough!

Yes, my dad talked to me today! Actually he said, "get up! get up! you've been sleeping all day!" which is wonderful, because they`re omnipotent and know what I`ve been doing even though they were out until 4:30. And I love getting woken up so I replied, `No! I`m sleeping!` into the mattress. And my dad stormed out and said, `You know, you are getting to be too much.` then yelled down the stairs, `she said NO, again!`

Imagine that. God, I`m horrible.

So after that Bunny and I were talking and she was like, `Grampa finally talks to us and you totally screwed it up.` (Or rather, Gampa, fi`y taws to us an`yoo tohyee scewed it up.)

I should probably be more grateful. Yea. They've done so much for me since I was diagnosed. Like...ignoring the existence of a problem for the first, (hard) year. Oh, and then failing to make an appointment for six months the year after that. (That was before I was okay enough to talk on the phone.)

Yea, and then when I had that really really horrible month last February and they just kept getting angry at me. Oh! And then when I came out and they were okay, but then my mom told me that "I should start considering the rest of the family" and "stop pushing my sexuality on people." And when my brother asked me, "Why can you just be gay, why do you have to do all these gay things?" God, you know they're right. No one ever talks about their opposite-sex partners, or assumes hetrosexuality, so I really shouldn't talk about being gay at all. I should just never talk about this huge part of me, ever, because that's just pushing it on other people.

They were there for me through all the easy stuff. My family raised me and dealt with the terrible twos and me becoming a teenager but when it came to the things that really hurt, I got left to deal with it by myself. I HATE THEM. I HATE THEM. I`m going to go back to bed.

Incriments of Progress (to where?)

I've been getting the silent treatment for three days and it makes me so, so angry. I'm pretty sure I'm angry anyways, because really it just makes me cry.

I know I don't do anything! I know I barely move and I don't help out and I don't talk or do anything but sleep but what else can I do? I can't make my body or my brain do what I want and I'm so sad and so desperate and why can't they see that? I want them to be able to see that...or at least, believe it. I know they don't think it's real or anything but it's real to me! I don't know what else to do.

My Fucking Depressed-ness - written 09/14/07

Someone, please save me from this misery! My body tires after simply sitting up and it seems I cannot do anything but alternate sweating and shaking. I long to rip out this hair for it tortures me- it’s attraction to dirt and it’s unruly mess of strands that refuse to lie straight and bearable. There is nothing for me to do while even the daylight is too bright and watching television only causes my head to ache more- too many lights, too many pictures all moving so fast I’ll vomit if I look much longer.

Even eating, which has been my bane and my trouble is difficult! Just thinking of consuming more than a spoonful of soup is enough to, (again) send the meagre contents of up stomach up again. I can feel the hunger, somewhat detached but there and I long to eat, to venture downstairs and scrounge up a meal but even if my body didn’t revolt at the thought it wouldn’t be able to make the trip.

I want to move faster than a snail, oh, to be able to speak without tiring! Yet every painful move I’ve made is utterly useless in the eyes of my parents, for I do too little and I do it wrong. Don’t they see that even laying on my bed is tiresome and uncomfortable, even though I have never slept so long and so deeply in my life. They continue to yell and act sullenly at me but don’t they realize that I want nothing more than to stop being this way? The way they are acting hurts me as much as I try to deny that. All this slamming and silence is just fodder for this alternative part of myself to feed on.

And still my mind continues to pain me with its complete inability to function. On and on it rambles and sighs about my shortcomings and my faults, never ceasing or faltering. I can feel it, all through my body. My limbs seize and then lay limp and my torso feels as if it will burn through my skin. I have no future! I’ve ruined my past! My present is sheer miserable existence, with nothing to do but move lethargically from one bed to another! I try to resist it but my mind speaks the truth and I know I’ve failed at everything I ever tried to do, I’ve crushed any hope of the future I had dreamed of and now I am a waste of consciousness. (God, even the tiny bit of food I had today is clamouring to come back up.) I am desperate for anything to end this complete horror and I’ll get it! I’ll either be free from this or dead and I’m not sure which is the better for I know I have no life waiting for me but more misery and more vomiting and I hate it I hate it I hate it! WHO CURSED ME WITH THIS LIFE!?

PS: And someone please tell this hideous intruder to STOP ORDERING ME AROUND!!! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!! OUT!!!
PPS: I’m not joking about this! I may have written this in uptight language but I mean it! THIS IS TOO MUCH! THIS IS TOO PAINFUL AND TOO CONSTANT AND TOO HORRIBLE!!! MAKE IT STOP!!!!

My Fucking Depressed-ness

Someone, please save me from this misery! My body tires after simply sitting up and it seems I cannot do anything but alternate sweating and shaking. I long to rip out this hair for it tortures me- it’s attraction to dirt and it’s unruly mess of strands that refuse to lie straight and bearable. There is nothing for me to do while even the daylight is too bright and watching television only causes my head to ache more- too many lights, too many pictures all moving so fast I’ll vomit if I look much longer.

Even eating, which has been my bane and my trouble is difficult! Just thinking of consuming more than a spoonful of soup is enough to, (again) send the meagre contents of up stomach up again. I can feel the hunger, somewhat detached but there and I long to eat, to venture downstairs and scrounge up a meal but even if my body didn’t revolt at the thought it wouldn’t be able to make the trip.

I want to move faster than a snail, oh, to be able to speak without tiring! Yet every painful move I’ve made is utterly useless in the eyes of my parents, for I do too little and I do it wrong. Don’t they see that even laying on my bed is tiresome and uncomfortable, even though I have never slept so long and so deeply in my life. They continue to yell and act sullenly at me but don’t they realize that I want nothing more than to stop being this way? The way they are acting hurts me as much as I try to deny that. All this slamming and silence is just fodder for this alternative part of myself to feed on.

And still my mind continues to pain me with its complete inability to function. On and on it rambles and sighs about my shortcomings and my faults, never ceasing or faltering. I can feel it, all through my body. My limbs seize and then lay limp and my torso feels as if it will burn through my skin. I have no future! I’ve ruined my past! My present is sheer miserable existence, with nothing to do but move lethargically from one bed to another! I try to resist it but my mind speaks the truth and I know I’ve failed at everything I ever tried to do, I’ve crushed any hope of the future I had dreamed of and now I am a waste of consciousness. (God, even the tiny bit of food I had today is clamouring to come back up.) I am desperate for anything to end this complete horror and I’ll get it! I’ll either be free from this or dead and I’m not sure which is the better for I know I have no life waiting for me but more misery and more vomiting and I hate it I hate it I hate it! WHO CURSED ME WITH THIS LIFE!?

PS: And someone please tell this hideous intruder to STOP ORDERING ME AROUND!!! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!! OUT!!!
PPS: I’m not joking about this! I may have written this in uptight language but I mean it! THIS IS TOO MUCH! THIS IS TOO PAINFUL AND TOO CONSTANT AND TOO HORRIBLE!!! MAKE IT STOP!!!!

Pre-Post-Partum

Okay, I blogged last time about postpartum depression, but my biggest fear is actually...

INFERTILITY.

First of all, I'm a lesbian. I recognize that it would be pretty hard for me to get pregnant you know...without intending to. But I know should I get pregnant, I would keep the baby. I would probably consider open adoption, but I know deep in my heart I would never be able to give up this child.

I want to experience a pregnancy.

I want to have a child grow in my and to have my lover feel my rounded tummy and have trouble hugging me in bed and to have a baby.

I am so, so scared.

That Old Feeling

Dread.

I have been learning, (and trying) to stay in the moment. To stop worrying about what's going to happen in a week, month, year...but I really want to get this down.

I'm really, really scared of postpartum depression. And on a shorter time-line, winter. I'm really, really scared of winter.

See, you all know that I have always wanted to have kids. Even when I was in that I-want-to-be-a-nun phase I knew I wanted to have kids. With someone. (At that point, I didn't know what kind of someone I wanted to be with, I just knew it wasn't going to be a guy.) And even when I did know who I wanted to be with I knew we'd have children together, and I would carry the kid.

Then I knew that I would have to fight against the (main)stream, as well as have to find some way to get pregnant once I did, and once I found the love of my life.

And now I'm also scared to have the kid! I know there's a lot of fear in me, and a lot of fear that I've let go of. But I'm afraid to give birth to a child, a child I know I'll love so much that it'll hurt, that I'll want to hold and take care of and breast feed and be with and when that time comes around I'll be too depressed to do anything. What if I can't do it?

Same goes for the winter. It's grade 12 and I have to do well, but what if I go really really deep down again? I don't want to...it's just really really scary.

Hillary Clinton on Ellen

Of course y`all know that I LOOOVE to watch Ellen. Season Five of the Ellen Degeneres Show, (TEDS) opens up in New York, with Hillary Clinton up as the first guest. Watch the first video to see Ellen ask the Big Question on MY mind and hers.

Hillary Clinton on the Ellen Degeneres Show - Part 1
Uploaded by ellenhillaryvid

Queerty gets it right when it tells us that it`s great to see Ellen talking about queer issues. It`s been tough for Ellen after she came out- let`s take a quick tour of the past ten years.
1. Ellen Comes Out
2. Ellen`s sitcom character comes out with her
3. Ellen`s sitcom is stuck with a warning label on several episodes.
4. The sitcom is criticized for being too gay, and taken off the air.
5. Ellen disappears for a bit, re-emerging to pilot The Ellen Show, which never really got off the ground.
6. Ellen disappears again, but rumours that she`s going to do a talk show circulate.
7. The Ellen DeGeneres Show starts and continue to get rave reviews, but the gay community wonders, `Where`s gayEllen?"

So obviously it would be pretty difficult for our best girl to talk about being gay- first she`s too gay, then not gay enough, then too gay, then not gay enough, and finally in Season Four of TEDS her viewers saw more and more gay references.

In the fourth season Ellen talks to T.R. Knight about slurs on the set. Knight definitely respected Ellen as a pioneer for queer visibility, and sought out more guidance then she could offer while on camera.

Now Ellen comes out again, (those of us in the community know what an ongoing process coming out is) to Senator Clinton. Ellen expresses the need for same-sex couples to have the same rights as heterosexual couples. (Watch the saga of Kerry Weaver in ER to see this problem in action.) Watch the video and tell me what you think about it.

Why I love my Aminals.

There's a letter sized sign on my door, right next to the Positive Space one I printed off. It reads, "Welcome to Guyzeeland." We now have a population of 189, 190 including myself in our area. I explain our large family to people simply by telling them that I was a lonely child.

While this was true, I think it warrants a better explanation. Like how my brother stopped at sixty children and I stopped at...well, I haven't stopped yet. You see, we're a good family! We all love each other, and sometimes we argue, and sometimes the wait period for surgery grows and people get antsy, but all in all we're a wonderful family.

We can rely on each other. When I don't feel like talking to anyone I can just talk to them. And I don't even have to speak out loud, because we're all telepathically connected! Even though sometimes they don't get it, someone in the family will. And there's always someone to hug, when I don't want to hug a human.

And now, we'd really, really like to eat.

I am feeling anger.

There is an ugly clothes hamper in my room. I have several library books to return that are all different sizes. The vacuum is broken. I don't have curtains. THERE ARE MANY THINGS AROUND ME THAT ARE NOT PARALLEL.

I am going to try not to throw this ugly clothes hamper at a person. I am going to hold on to my library books until tomorrow morning. I will wait until the vacuum is fixed to make my nice vacuum lines. I will fix this makeshift curtain until I can purchase normal ones. I will keep writing even though I want to SCREAM and THROW and DESTROY everything in my room that is not clean and orderly.

I will try to relax without doing stupid things. I will try to relax...

She was Beautiful.

She took her own life, did you know that? They didn’t want anyone to know, so the answer always was, “a sudden loss.” Sudden. She was dying for years and no one noticed except me. I knew because she told me. Matter-of-a-factly one day she just looked me in the eye and told me that she was dying. At first I thought she had a disease or some kind of pre-teen ‘dying of a broken heart’ thing but it turns out she was serious. I realized that, after a point. I noticed from afar, (we were friends only in front of each other at the time) after she told me, all the pained looks she had on her face in between people. I guess no one else was looking.

“Why are you doing this?” I’d asked her once. School had just started for another year and we felt the breath of autumn on our backs, and she’d called to ask me if I wanted to touch its’ heart. I had no idea what she was saying until she translated that into, ‘want to go to the park?’

She turned to me, straggly pieces of hair stuck up in the wind. “I didn’t ask for this,” she whispered.

“Can’t you make it stop?” although I knew well enough that she couldn’t. I couldn’t either.

“I can’t stop it for either one of us.” She took a skip forward, her pale fingers dancing over the air and faced me, dead on. “I wish I could, you know that right?”

“I know. I’m not all stupid man/boy.”

“More like boy/man!” and she laughed, that laugh that haunts me because I can hear it now. I can tell.

So we kept going on like that. Moments of eloquence followed by a shallow struggle to pull out of the awkward moments we created. Or she did, I was always unnerved by the way she got straight to the point. No ambling.

She called herself, “less than ordinary.”

She prayed for fifteen years then noticed she didn’t think anyone was there.

She forced me to make promises, and I did the same to her.

She stared in the mirror and saw nothing.

I’m telling you the truth. It wasn’t a sudden death. It wasn’t quick, it wasn’t painless. She was my beautiful, my silent and I don’t know exactly when it happened. It must have been years ago. But to everyone else, it was two nights ago, at 2:47 in the morning and they all thought, “what a shame” when they saw her lying there. I’m ashamed.

-written march, 2006.

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.