Susan B Anthony I owe you an apology

Susan B Anthony I owe you an apology. I woke this morning and forgot to thank you for all you did. Because of you, I am able, as a woman, to walk wherever I chose. As a woman I am free to voice my opinion. As a woman I am free to decide whether I want to have children, and rejoice loudly if that child is a female. As a woman, I am open to decision, and because of you, I am free to do so. As a woman, I can choose whether or not I want to marry, and whom I want to marry, and as a woman, I am now free to divorce.

We forgot what you went through so that we may enjoy these few basic luxuries that you never were able to enjoy. We can go to the University, to the movies, we can walk aside or in front of a man, we can talk as loud as we want, dress anyway we wish, we can dance, we can sing, and we can be respected. But you couldn’t. In a day and time when it was “forbidden” for a woman to be anything other than a slave to her man, you broke boundaries and said what we all take for granted now, I am a woman, I am a person, and I belong!

"I know nothing but woman and her disfranchised."

“The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it.”

By fighting for a woman’s right to vote, you gave us the right to exist. By defying all who told you it was wrong, you gave us a voice forever. By refusing to pay the fine, you paved the way for all women to live free in a country that refused to recognize women and people of color as true citizens. You made it alright to be alive, and you made it powerful to be a woman.

And so, before I forget once more, I thank you, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for laying down what little you had to fight the biggest battle of your life. I thank you for everything I am because if you had not achieved what you had, I would still be silent because then I would have only been a woman.

One Fear At A Time

Perhaps it isn't about finding hope in conquering fear all at once, perhaps the true victor is the person who conquers one fear at a time, but conquering it nonetheless. I find myself at a paradox of this question, quest, in my life. I have many fears, I will admit, far too many to list, or maybe I should. If I labeled each one, gave a word to it and inevitably gave it a voice, maybe we could have a dialogue, a meeting of minds, and I could finally resolve the issues. Could it hurt? If I named each one, would it hurt? It isn’t like falling down and scraping a knee, no, it’s more like barrelling down a freeway with a map in your face, dodging oncoming traffic using nothing but sheer hope and white knuckles. Facing a fear, a specific one, staring it down and letting it know exactly how you feel, no, that is pure fear, in its rawest form, in its concentrated state, unstable and ready to rumble.

So, what is my first fear? My main fear? My writing. This is me, in my most concentrated state, unstable… and ready to rumble. What people don’t get about me when they read my writing, they are reading me. I can’t hide in my words, they flow out and tell all my dirty secrets, and then, when it’s all over, I lay breathing heavy, panting, wiping sweat from my brow, and hoping… no one laughs at me for attempting it. Thinking back I can pinpoint the exact moment that fear cemented itself in my noodle. I was 15 and I had just finished the first six pages of the first story I would ever write, Patty’s Girls. Though it has undergone many facelifts since that day, those first six pages… they were my beating heart. I felt… funny how words escape me, me… the writer! I have never felt like that doing anything else. I can see what I am typing. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not talking about visually seeing the words on the screen or on paper, not that kind of see. I mean, I can see everything in my story in my head. I can see the characters, I can sense them, I can feel how they feel. When I write, my heart rate calms, my mind calms, the storm around me calms. I know definitively what I want to do as a career… d-e-f-i-n-i-t-i-v-e-l-y! I know to my core! How many people can say that and truly mean it? Probably over a billion but that’s not the point here. The point, as I am trying to dodge, is the truth as to why writing… no, not the act of writing, but the act of getting published scares the soul out of me. The day I showed those first six pages to someone, I had chosen incorrectly. I showed them to my older sister and my father. I should have known but I was so excited. It was my first time, my first moment as an artist, my artistic virginity given to the muses. I wanted to share this newly discovered “thing” I could do. When I presented the six pages to my older sister and my father they sat quietly until the end… and then they laughed at me. The room, though I am sure did not actually change, turned a grey color, pale reflections of my continued life with them. I sat for only a few minutes, stood, tucked the six pages under my arm, walked back down the hallway, head hung low, and went back to my room.

Two things happened that day; first, I learned I could never share my work with my family, and I never did, to this day. Second, I found refuge in my room, away from people, isolated for my protection, and they never followed. I could stay in my room for weeks on end, and a lot of times I did. I dropped out of school, I hoarded nonperishable food, spent my days writing poetry. I believe them laughing at me was the final straw. It isn’t a secret I was abused, severely, throughout my childhood. That isn’t a surprise. My actions, my depression, anxiety, social phobia, agoraphobia, and eating disorder all stem from that childhood. I stay inside so I can’t get hurt by people. I stay fat so I am unappealing to men. I stay ugly in my own mind in order to stay safe. When they laughed at me for doing something life-changing, they smothered my trust.

I can sit here and name every moment of my childhood my family shredded. How they took everything I felt was important to me and told me I was wrong for wanting it. But that isn’t the point to this. This is me naming my fears. Giving them a face… so later I can smack them in it! Right in their fear faces!

So, here goes:

1. I am afraid to go outside.
2. I am afraid to be thinner.
3. I am afraid of success.
4. I am afraid of failure.
5. I am afraid my family was right to do what they did.
6. I am afraid I will never be more than I am right this minute.
7. I am afraid of losing the one person I truly found love with.
8. I am afraid she will see the cracks in the foundation I try hard to hide.
9. I am afraid tomorrow will be the day she leaves.
10. I am afraid to have children with her because I am afraid I will turn into my mother.
11. I am afraid none of my childhood happened.
12. I am afraid my writing really does suck balls and I am deluding myself into believing I am actually decent.
13. I am afraid I am more messed up than I realize because I can’t see it.
14. I am afraid of the night time, not the dark, I can hide in the dark, but night time, because that is when everything bad happened. Night time is my trigger.
15. I am afraid to fall asleep because of the nightmares.
16. I am afraid to be awake because of the nightmares.
17. I am afraid to be weak.
18. I am afraid of hurting people.

I think that’s a great start. One at a time.

The Curse

I call it the curse, when you are lucid throughout your mental illness. You fully understand you are sick and unable to function, yet, it’s like your mental illness is a separate entity, alive, breathing, kicking and screaming. And it’s stolen a car, thrown you into the passenger seat, threw a seatbelt on you, smiled maniacally, and then you’re off. The police are rushing, chasing after the two of you. You can see all of this going on and yet you are unable to stop it. You see the curve coming, you beg your mental illness to slow down, please slow down! Taking two wheels you take the curve and your mental illness laughs. The police are still in hot pursuit but there is no sign of slowing down. Peaks and valleys, storms and calm, mental illness behind the wheel, you pray to make it out alive.

This is the curse. This is being awake during the entire mental illness trip. Some get better. Some stop the car or leap from it while it’s moving. Some dig their nails into the dashboard and scream. Some quietly sit, eyes closed tight, lips parched and cracked, tears streaming down their face. Some… don’t make it. Sometimes it’s too much. Sometimes it’s too quiet. Sometimes there isn’t enough time in the day to journal all the crap that happened. But do not… I repeat do NOT question our devotion to get better or to function or to just stay alive. You may not see it, but behind our eyes there is a war waging; a full on war.

It aggravates me so much

Amanda Bynes has entered rehab after leaving an L.A. hospital where she was being treated for mental illness. For months leading up to this obvious... painfully obvious diagnosis she was the laughing stock of so many people. What aggravates me is that people jumped on the bandwagon of apathy and ugliness toward this human being who was suffering from something she would not be able to get a handle on on her own. This is the reality of our society, where people who have these mental illnesses are not seen as people suffering but people to mock. Living with mental illness is so difficult and painful, not just for the person suffering from it but loved ones as well. 99% of people who mock or make fun of people with mental illness do not understand that yes, we do see what we are doing. Yes, we understand how crazy we act sometimes. No, no, no we cannot control it. There are people out there who whole heartedly believe that Amanda could control exactly what she was doing. No, she couldn't, obviously! She may have seen what she was doing and wanted so badly to stop how she was behaving, but when you are in the throws of an episode, it isn't so easy to just turn off the actions.

A lot of people with mental illness turn to drugs and alcohol to try and drown out the voices, the behavior, the actions, and thoughts that burn the mind. I was a heavy drinker and drug abuser in my youth because all I wanted was to stop the voices that pounded in my mind 24/7. Instead of looking at Amanda and saying to yourself, "bitch be crazy." Ask yourself, what if that were me? Mental illness does not discriminate. It does not care what your religious preferences are. It doesn't care the plans you made for the future. When it appears, it will try to destroy you. It taps into every reserve you have just to hold it together DAILY. It's exhausting. It is literally physically exhausting to live with mental illness. Anyone can recover from physical exhaustion with enough bed rest. But for those who live with and suffer from mental illness, that exhaustion never leaves because we spend our entire day just trying to hold ourselves in one piece to keep house, to work, to spend time with our loved ones, to be ok. We go to bed and can't sleep because our minds do not stop. And that only exacerbates the symptoms. It's a cycle vicious in nature and rarely are these things ever alleviated.

I remember a movie Diana Ross did so many years ago about mental illness. She played a woman who was pretty much out of control until she found a doctor who could help her and did help her. She got medication and treatment and was able to function again. One day she went to the corner store for a sandwich and a soft drink and on her way in she saw a homeless woman standing outside tending her cart with obvious OCD tendencies and she was talking to herself. While she was checking out the cashier made a comment about the woman standing outside. He was cruel and not at all empathetic. On her way back to her car she stopped by the woman and gave her her sandwich. That small gesture may have seemed small to anyone watching the movie who did not have mental illness, but that kind of kindness is rare for those of us who suffer from it. That is why I have a YouTube channel and a blog, to educate people about mental illness and why it is NOT funny.

I'm not sure when apathy became cool but it's sad and pathetic. We live in a cookie cutter society where one person looks exactly like the next and they say the same things and believe the same things and not one person can think for themselves. How sad is that? If people stopped for a second and took their faces out of the phones and saw the world for the reality it is, their minds would implode. Yes, reality sucks sometimes, but its honest.

Going to the Chapel (or City Hall) and we're Going to Get Married..... Same Sex Marriage

When I was 18, I was part of a group called GPA (Gay People's Alliance) in Normal, IL. Oh the Irony. We would do speaker bureaus to educate students at Illinois State University on homosexuals. We would speak to psychology majors during the part of the semester where they would learn about human sexuality. Our goal was to show people, especially those entering the field where they help people.

One of the things I was so shocked by was the pure anger and hate that came from some people. They hated us because we were gay; no other reason. They expressed in creative ways exactly how much we were destroying the world by our existence and how we were the fault of every bad thing that happened in the world. What they always failed to see, and even to this day, is that gay people, for the most part, about 99.99% of us are extremely docile. We are always the ones on the defensive, staving off verbal and physical attacks against us by people preaching and proclaiming they are acting in the way of god; any god.

Sadly, because of all the negativity I felt from those people, and after doing the bureaus for about two years, I just could not take the anger anymore and I stopped. Shortly after I met my first serious girlfriend, someone I would be with for six years, and though not legal, we did get "married."

During our time together, we watched our kind get killed, lesbians raped to change them, two men I knew died from complications from AIDS, and the gay revolution began. We lived near Champaign, IL. and it was very progressive compared to Bloomington/Normal where I grew up. We still faced hatred. I recall one evening, my then wife and I were walking through the parking lot of the mall, not bothering anyone, not talking to anyone, holding hands, and just enjoying an evening with mild weather and a sky full of stars. We walked by a car loaded with young women who were talking to each other but fell quiet when we walked by. We didn't let go of our hands but walked with heads held high and soon we heard them making gagging sounds and then one of them pretended to shot us.

Fast forward to 1996 when I moved to California. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my entire life. Moving there was like clipping the strings that bound my being and I could finally breath. The whole time I lived there I never faced issues with me being gay. It was incredible. I loved every minute I was there. But it wasn't meant to be and I left January 4th, 2000 and soon after I moved to Pooler, Georgia. It was close to Savannah but the culture shock was very apparent. And being gay was frowned upon. I missed my mother ship known as California but on July 7th, 2000 I met the woman who would become the love of my life.

When I say she is my One, my equal counter part, my love and my life, I am not exaggerating in the least. For everything weird quirk I may have, she offers a balance that keeps me grounded. In this entire world, she is the One. September 9th, 2000 we exchanged vows, making promises we have kept, and in our hearts we were married. Because then it wasn't legal anywhere. Then in 2003 it became legal in Belgium, then in 2005 Canada, in 2007 Germany, 2009 Sweden. But in June, 2004, it became legal in Massachusetts and the wild fire began to burn. Soon, one country after the next was passing same-sex marriage bills, and slowly, every so slowly in the United States, one state after the next started to pass similar bills while others passed bans. But what astonished me was not the states that banned same-sex marriage, but the ones that passed it. In 25 years from doing speaker bureaus to watching television and crying at the thought that I too could get married to someone I loved even though it would not be recognized in any other state made me feel that the revolution had picked up steam and was NOT... WAS NOT going to settle for crumbs while straight couples got the buffet.

Fast forward to September, 2013. The United States, months after declaring that keeping gays from marrying was unconstitutional, declared that gay couples who got married legally within the U.S. could now file joint Federal Taxes. Why is that a big deal? Why should anyone care? Because, a gay couple will pay 38,000 dollars more in taxes every year than a straight who are together for the same length of time. Melissa and I have been together for 13 years. We are still, in the words of our friends, in the honeymoon stage. We are still very much in love, very committed to each other, and very eager to share our lives together. So, on September 9th, 13 years after we had our commitment ceremony, we got our legal marriage license in Niagara Falls, NY. On September 10th we will be legally married. We will finally be recognized as a couple.

I started to cry after we got the license because it took 25 years, 25 long years, for this day to happen. In my life time I am experiencing this first hand and I will know, finally what it feels like to have my government consider me real and equal and protected.

One final note that deserves to be shared. When we went to city hall and filed for our license, we were met with congratulations and kindness. When we went out to dinner and shared why we were in NY, we were met with the same. Attitudes change, everything changes. And even though it may take a while and in some cases a long while, do not lose heart.

Changing My Mind Set Toward Men

I came to the conclusion recently that I am offended by men. I was watching a show recently and there was a woman, who I might add was a hired hit-person and very capable of handling herself, who was threatened in a bar. There were two men there, one who was the asshole threatening her and one “who came to help the damsel in distress.” The woman turned to the “hero” and said, “I don’t need help.” He looked offended. But I saw the act of him rushing in to help her as an act of aggression. But why did I see it that way? It wasn’t that he did anything wrong. He merely stood up and tried to calm the situation. But in the world as a whole, I have seen a great number of straight men act as if any woman they see as something they own, period. Whether they do or not, they have this air about them that seems to scream, “all women are property.” It’s evident in tv shows and movies, in songs, in literature. And if a woman stands up for herself then she is a “dyke” or a “ball-buster.” Some men cannot accept that there are women out there who do not need them. They don’t desire to need them. They do well by themselves or they do well being self sufficient even while in relationships. But because of that mentality of ownership, some men tend to be aggressive in their behavior around women. 

Then my beautiful and wise wife asked me a question that stumped me. “Would you have been offended if it was another woman who stood up to defend her?” I didn’t have an immediate answer. I was only aware of my initial response, offended, but I didn’t stop to think how I would feel if it had been another woman. Now, if it had been a woman who stepped in to interfere with two men about to fight, the men would have been offended, saying, “I don’t need a woman to fight  my battles.” 

There is so much ambiguity in our world regarding the attitudes and attributes about the sexes and we cultivate the stereotypes and drill into our minds through tv and movies that men really ARE that aggressive and they are to be feared. Just in the past few weeks, there was a guy who wrote a book basically on how to sexually assault women. That in itself is frightening. What frightened me the most was how much backing he got.  That is our society, that is our world. 

I want to change my attitude about men, I want my idea of them to not be altered or kept in stasis based on what I went through as a child where I was passed from one man to the next who got off on raping a little girl. I lived through for twelve years until I started to gain weight. My obesity keeps men at bay. I never want to lose weight because I want men to leave me alone. And I know, the moment I do lose weight, I will know the aggression of men again. But that isn’t true either. I have no way of knowing that. I haven’t been thin in 30 years, so how do I know how men will treat me? It’s that mind set I want to change. 

I'm not always best at 3 in the morning

I always feel strong at 3 in the morning when my resolve has been whittled to nothing. I can reason with myself at 3 in the morning that everything wll make sense when the sun comes up because after all isnt that what a new day is for? To develop better resolve? I’m not always at my best at 9 in the morning because then the fears wake up with the sudden burst of energy from the first cup of coffee of the day. But I can reason that into submission until the second cup and then all bets are off. I can look myself in the eye with the glare of disappointment gleaming back from the mirror when I realize after another 3 hours that it’s noon and my resolve is all but history. I turn my video game on and stare blankly as I move my “hero” from one successful mission to the next and feel as if I am indeed saving the galaxy because that seems more likely than saving my own world that peeks shyly from behind tear filled eyes as I realize for the 7 billionth time that I am sick, more sick than I thought at 3 in the morning and now it’s 7 at night and I have to start imagining myself lying in bed to fall asleep. What a joke, the sleep thing. It rears it’s ugly head as soon as I place my head on the pillow and I wonder, from so many years ago what lies waiting behind that closed door. I started closing my bedroom at age 7, locked the door at age 9, and by 14 I slowly became invisible. But those vicious pains of remembering always came back, always came to see that I never really sleep again. I feel ashamed that I am letting... well, not so much letting my illness determine how I live my life but the fact that right now, just at this moment in time I am a bit weaker than I want but that doesn’t mean I am weak forever. And so, at 3 in the morning I try to gain some self respect and try to convince myself again that I can do this... I can live, I can stay alive, and I bear falling asleep because by 9 in the morning my fear will be battling me again over a steaming cup of coffee... it’s our little game, it’s the game we play to remind each other that fuck resolve, who needs it?