Tuesday, 10 January 2012
Monday, 2 January 2012
I thought it was about time I post this, a copy of my "Coming Out" letter I sent to everyone.
A few people know, it's about time everyone did. I'm gay. Judge me, hate me, ignore me, whatever. There comes a point when you have to stop worrying about other people’s judgmental nature and start living your life.
To risk a cliché, life is not always a bed of roses: it frequently brings unusual risks to make itself more challenging. In my life, I have taken an invaluable risk that has eventually revealed a variety of strengths within me that I had no idea where there.
Living in a closed society where people fail to tolerate diversity, I cannot enjoy an uneventful life because of being gay. I am not after universal recognition: what I just need is absolute understanding from the people I love, who mean the world to me. Desperately wanting their approval.
The moment I first told someone- only a few seconds- seemed like forever to me. I was expecting some kind of reaction, but in fact they were left with nothing but confusing thoughts. I had to face that hard time of inconvenience and loneliness for several months and needed to seek solace to relieve that unbearable pain. Amazingly, I found some remarkable personality strengths within myself.
According to Martha Washington, “the greater part of one’s happiness and misery depends on one’s dispositions and not one circumstances” After a lot of soul-searching, I know that I never want to try to be something I am not happy to be. The best I can do is to keep strong within myself, safe in the knowledge that I have done nothing wrong. However, we live in a world of bigotry and through no fault of our own, we gay people, like any minority, are often targets of intolerance and hatred. Life is never fair and that is something we must accept.
To be positive about this, I always tell myself that the trying circumstances of being gay are nothing but a metamorphosis. Moreover, I know that nothing is permanent. This period of discomfort will pass and acceptance will come about. All I need is to give people some time to come to terms with me being gay, because I personally have successfully taken the greatest risk of my life and transformed this obstacle into an opportunity to paint the true portrait of myself.
I can some this up in the following: from my optimistic viewpoint, I see that life favours me because the vicissitudes of being gay have definitely strengthened my personality and one day I will look back and see how much I have gained from this first great and irreversible risk that I am ever proud to have boldly taken.
Wednesday, 28 December 2011
The biggest question in life?
"Why aren't gay people allowed to get married, but Nickelback are allowed to keep making albums?"
“People are listening to you, people are supporting you. And if you could just have faith that things will change, and stick in there, I promise you it will get better. Is it going to be easy? No. Nothing in life is. Is it worth the struggle? It is. There is nothing greater in life than to be able to be who you are.”-Ellen DeGeneres
Hush Hush
My home country has one of the worlds highest suicide rates. There are a plethora of factors which i can't even begin to explain that are both universal, and national; contributing to the sad statistic of five hundred per 365-day period. I will never-the-less ram through some of my theories and principles on the subject beginning first with the old-age idea that if you "hush" away a certain topic it will disappear, not exist, not be encouraged, or glorified. (this also relates to the idea in the 1950's that homosexuality as covered up from existing, meant people who are older than the baby boomer generation still think that gays and lesbians have not been around for a lengthy period of time), but I digress to the issue of self-annihilation next.
It is currently unlawful for any publication in New Zealand to publish an article specifying that a suicide has taken place in regards to the individual involved. This law was passed many years ago under the then accepted idea that broadcasting the decision a person makes to kamikaze themselves, would only fuel a kind of "copy cat" mentality and exacerbate the problem. That theory and the reasoning behind it to me is irrevocably false and disordered. The only way to heal is to communicate. Silence is the enemy of progress and integration, and the compete antithesis to what society should expect on a topic which kills more citizens per week than any other cause (to my young knowledge, but seriously five people per week committing suicide is insane!!). In each instance, the suicide of a person is mourned by those closely involved, silenced by the broader laws and deafened to the immediate populous, then easily swept under the rug once the mourning process has ended for the family involved.
To print that a death happened "under no suspicious circumstances" has appeared to be the most recognizable way for a newspaper or media agency to extend the idea that an individual has exited the world by their own will, not the will of another person (murder, manslaughter, euthanasia), or the will of a medical affliction (heart attack, cancer, etcetera). It is an odious way to supersede the law and standards while barely acknowledging the problem, it is not nearly alarming enough to people with no knowledge of the person involved.
There is going to be no community discussion over the fact a human being felt so isolated and locked in their own hell that they had to pull a trigger, swing from a rope, or gas a four walled vehicle. The lack of such outpouring emotion from the community and frank discussion over the disgusting anguish suicide causes only fuels the ideas among people who have mental health issues or extreme life pains that they are in fact the only ones whom have had a problem and therefore there is a lack of hope, help, understanding and recourse to their feelings of self-loathing. Out of sight, out of mind.
People can't heal on their own. No-one can. It's impossible.
A brother, sister, mother, father, uncle, aunty, grandparent, friend or partner will seemingly go quiet, or missing, and then one day not exist anymore. Our world, and my country in general has a deplorable "she'll be right" attitude that not only causes apathy involving child abuse and self-inflicted death but also an antipathy for real life issues that are minimized to insults calling people "emo's," which makes for a very toxic cocktail of bottled up negative energy and a bloodbath of lost lives and feelings that were out of repair for what could have only been a transitory stage. Humans are obsessed and wrapped up in the "complexities" of their own lives and moreso their work; so as that noticeable differences in another persons demeanor or words go unnoticed.
This world is meant to be inhibited by creatures whom communicate eighty percent through non-verbal communication. Without eclipsing my previous statement into an internet issue, I turn to those of us who still do not bother to notice anything out of the ordinary with the people around us in day to day life (although while ironically pointing out superficially "wrong" aspects of peoples personalities, looks, goals and opinions). I am not to say that I blame people whom are busy and wrapped in life otherwise we'd all be guilty of not perceiving a threat to a life or whatever; I merely point out that as products in a world where the "normal" thing is to value time and money over personal relationships we should stop,.. take a look at the landscape permeating our existence and then try to change it for the better.
The first thing in my opinion is a legal overhaul of the archaic and harmful suicide legislation that is primitive and destructive in its efforts to deny people the knowledge that a problem envelopes society. The second thing in my opinion is a complete change in how people deal with "the other," for one, to stop using the word "normal" in such a broad context with a negative connotation stapled to it when thrown at someone a person happens to disagree with. I sit here in wonder at my own writings, consistently reminding myself as conditioned by our society that my views are outlandish and how can it be possible to expect people to just stop using one word? What difference would one word make?
I can't answer that. All I can do is offer my thoughts hither to the dynamics of our world that are clearly causing the wrong things to happen. Unfortunately things remain the same by and large, and therefore the idea "everything happens for a reason" exists only if in fact it existing causes more heartache and despair for everybody involved.
It is currently unlawful for any publication in New Zealand to publish an article specifying that a suicide has taken place in regards to the individual involved. This law was passed many years ago under the then accepted idea that broadcasting the decision a person makes to kamikaze themselves, would only fuel a kind of "copy cat" mentality and exacerbate the problem. That theory and the reasoning behind it to me is irrevocably false and disordered. The only way to heal is to communicate. Silence is the enemy of progress and integration, and the compete antithesis to what society should expect on a topic which kills more citizens per week than any other cause (to my young knowledge, but seriously five people per week committing suicide is insane!!). In each instance, the suicide of a person is mourned by those closely involved, silenced by the broader laws and deafened to the immediate populous, then easily swept under the rug once the mourning process has ended for the family involved.
To print that a death happened "under no suspicious circumstances" has appeared to be the most recognizable way for a newspaper or media agency to extend the idea that an individual has exited the world by their own will, not the will of another person (murder, manslaughter, euthanasia), or the will of a medical affliction (heart attack, cancer, etcetera). It is an odious way to supersede the law and standards while barely acknowledging the problem, it is not nearly alarming enough to people with no knowledge of the person involved.
There is going to be no community discussion over the fact a human being felt so isolated and locked in their own hell that they had to pull a trigger, swing from a rope, or gas a four walled vehicle. The lack of such outpouring emotion from the community and frank discussion over the disgusting anguish suicide causes only fuels the ideas among people who have mental health issues or extreme life pains that they are in fact the only ones whom have had a problem and therefore there is a lack of hope, help, understanding and recourse to their feelings of self-loathing. Out of sight, out of mind.
People can't heal on their own. No-one can. It's impossible.
A brother, sister, mother, father, uncle, aunty, grandparent, friend or partner will seemingly go quiet, or missing, and then one day not exist anymore. Our world, and my country in general has a deplorable "she'll be right" attitude that not only causes apathy involving child abuse and self-inflicted death but also an antipathy for real life issues that are minimized to insults calling people "emo's," which makes for a very toxic cocktail of bottled up negative energy and a bloodbath of lost lives and feelings that were out of repair for what could have only been a transitory stage. Humans are obsessed and wrapped up in the "complexities" of their own lives and moreso their work; so as that noticeable differences in another persons demeanor or words go unnoticed.
This world is meant to be inhibited by creatures whom communicate eighty percent through non-verbal communication. Without eclipsing my previous statement into an internet issue, I turn to those of us who still do not bother to notice anything out of the ordinary with the people around us in day to day life (although while ironically pointing out superficially "wrong" aspects of peoples personalities, looks, goals and opinions). I am not to say that I blame people whom are busy and wrapped in life otherwise we'd all be guilty of not perceiving a threat to a life or whatever; I merely point out that as products in a world where the "normal" thing is to value time and money over personal relationships we should stop,.. take a look at the landscape permeating our existence and then try to change it for the better.
The first thing in my opinion is a legal overhaul of the archaic and harmful suicide legislation that is primitive and destructive in its efforts to deny people the knowledge that a problem envelopes society. The second thing in my opinion is a complete change in how people deal with "the other," for one, to stop using the word "normal" in such a broad context with a negative connotation stapled to it when thrown at someone a person happens to disagree with. I sit here in wonder at my own writings, consistently reminding myself as conditioned by our society that my views are outlandish and how can it be possible to expect people to just stop using one word? What difference would one word make?
I can't answer that. All I can do is offer my thoughts hither to the dynamics of our world that are clearly causing the wrong things to happen. Unfortunately things remain the same by and large, and therefore the idea "everything happens for a reason" exists only if in fact it existing causes more heartache and despair for everybody involved.
Sexuality 101
I don't know exactly when I realized I wasn't like the "other boys" in school but I certainly had feminine traits tracing back to my first memory in 1999. I was born in 1994. The first time I realized I "liked" boys as well as girls would have been at about age seven. I was watching television one day and I remember becoming aroused over a naked male shower gel ad. The next morning I asked my grandmother, why this had occurred to which I frankly remember her telling me "no it didn't", as if in somehow re-writing history I would not turn out abnormal. Whoops.
I remember being attracted to Jin and Kazuya in Tekken 2 when I was about ten years old. I'm sure I had fantasies about them even though they were just animated 3D fighting game characters. Then came the television show Hercules whom I thought was pretty hot. Of course, being eleven years old I kept these odd feelings to myself, thinking that perhaps it was "just a phase" or something. I guess back then I didn't acknowledge it, it wasn't until I was twelve and in my final year of primary (elementary school) that I really analyzed the world and my place in it and figured out that whether I liked it or not, I was always to be different.
It's strange to think that I spent seven years of my youth lying to every single person in my life. Not a peep from me about any of my homosexual feelings until I had finally left school at age eighteen. I think I revelled in it somewhat. The mystery, the intrigue, hiding out in plain sight. It was captivating while also incredibly frustrating and lonely. If you grow up in a world where every other person is heterosexual and where you feel like admitting you are any different from that will ruin and ostracize your chances of having friends and the life the people around you give you based on the assumption that everybody is straight unless they say they are not. This is why I can't understand religious people, whom think that being gay or bisexual is some kind of choice that just happens to people on a random basis.
For me, being not heterosexual was a painfully anticipated process, disrupted and deferred almost all of the time based on my own fear of being different and my longing to fit in to the status quo and maintain the image of my life as a teenager that I was used to. Sometimes in life, you really need to delve deep into yourself and forget everything other people expect out of you as a member of society, and develop yourself as a human being free of social constraints. Rich, white, straight men I guess never really have to think twice about inequality or difference because everything is a given to those types of people in life. You know, role models, expectations, rite-of-passage, the prom, getting married, children, work, old age, death. It's mapped out in a way that gives normal people like that a sense of comfort and permanence in their abilities to exact what will happen in the future.
I guess a part of the whole gay-rights movement does scare them in a sense that the world they know themselves doesn't as a matter of fact exist in reality. Most straight people would prefer to keep any type of "other" hidden, or at least to a lower form of status. It pains me that they can't see why homosexual people want the same kind of mapped out expectation as them? People don't want the government and society at large (as well as religious leaders) constantly demeaning their entire existence. You know, religious leaders assume gays and lesbians are sexual deviants but never actually stop to ask why that stereotype whether true or not exists. I would vouch for the plain idea that having grown up in a world that does not support stable gay relationships as something people should respect; sends a subtle message to gay and lesbian people that there is no real point in... monogamy... celibacy... and chastity.
Is that what religious people want? Homosexual people covered up throughout time, only able to slut it up in private, away from any kind of actual relationship, family or legal rights? If so I think that's quite sad. I feel pity for people whom can't see the obvious in the world and instead rely on the unreal and outlandish reasons for denying people the simple human favor of equal treatment.
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