I recently shared a meme on my Instagram stories by the hilarious Elora Dodd (@online1roomschoolhouse). Here is it right here:
Simply, I shared it because it's funny.
Not so simply, I shared it because, even as someone who has been out as queer for almost a decade, I still sometimes go into horrible shame spirals because I am, indeed, sexually/romantically/spiritually attracted to women. A little cognitive habit I developed as a wee one who grew up in a fundamentalist Christian faith (also in a wildly heteronormative society, but this is a personal blog and I don't want to think too hard about social structures while I procrastinate from studying said social structures).
In therapy, I've been working on feeling my emotions. An emotion that is quite new for me is anger. I mean, it's not new; but it is new for me to acknowledge that it's there and learn how to healthily express it. For those who can't access therapy, our emotions are completely human reactions to the environment we're in. Plainly speaking, our emotions are there to keep us alive. Emotions are functional: sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes pleasant, and always useful. If you think of how stoked you are to eat when you've been hungry for a good few hours - that's an emotion that's keeping you alive because "thank fuck you're eating - what took you so long?"
Depending on how we grew up, some emotions are more acceptable than others. Similarly, different brains experience emotions differently and not everyone can access their feelings in ways that are useful to them (because expressing emotions is a need, and because humans are diverse, we're all gonna have different ways of actualising that need [ps - hi neuro-spicy buds]). If you're lucky, all of the emotions are welcomed like a delicious fruit salad (including the browned banana [vom]) and you are given the space to figure out how to express them in ways that work for you. If you're even luckier, your emotions are acknowledged, respected, and cared for so they can be metabolised into your overall experience of the world.
The kind of therapy I've been in for the past several years has been done to develop my emotional vocabulary, increase my tolerance for the physical experiences of these emotions, and respect them with care and appropriate action. Appropriate actions are obviously contextually specific. BUT, you get the idea that emotions are useful, different things make us feel different ways, and when we respect the feelings we can act so the emotions can it come and go (happy days).
This spiel on emotions is relevant, I swear.
Anger and queerness were not favourable in the world little Meg grew up in. So, anytime I was made to feel shitty about myself for being queer, instead of the appropriate anger towards those who said the shitty things, I converted what could have been a healthy and self-protective emotion into shame. Shame is the feeling that I am bad. The shame was compounded by other life experiences I had had, plus the messaging of Christianity that we are all born sinners and unworthy of Christ's love. That shame kept me alive back then, because if I'd expressed either of those two things about myself I might have experienced more harm. I don't buy into those beliefs now, but, physically, my body has been programmed to feel that shame because, if I don't, I will be abandoned and left for dead. Logically, especially as a 28yo, it doesn't make sense. Viscerally, it's a matter of survival. So, now I'm in the process of converting that shame back to it's original format. And it is HARD. But you know what makes hard things bearable? Humour (of which I am very good at, obviously... Just don't ask my sister). Specifically, impeccable jokes that throw shade at religious communities by amalgamating the very thing they fear as ungodly with the omnipotence they believe their God to have. Also, it's fun to see yourself as a bad bitch when in reality you like colouring in and are, objectively speaking, pretty PG.
And that brings me to my final point of this blog post (which was actually what I started to write about but then I got distracted and it's round-about-edly come full circle. Nice.) When I shared the meme, I began to wonder if people would assume that I am strictly gay. So long and farewell, fellas. Boy, bye. Bon voyage, I'm off to Lesbos. And while there is a possibility that I may never date a man ever again (which, honestly, is tempting given my experiences with men), I felt fear and that all too familiar shame from childhood. Would those who don't understand queer lingo jump to conclusions about who I am? I must be bad if I'm gay. "Oh no, I'm going to be left alone to die."
True to my fact-checking form, I then googled "can bisexual people call themselves gay?" And was met with a wide range of different opinions. I felt kind of validated, and a little bit of shame turned to anger towards those who made me feel less than human. "Good, good," I thought. "I can't wait to tell Julie." (Julie is my psychologist). And THEN, I felt shitty about using the word "gay" instead of "bi". I know all too well how horrible it is to experience bi-erasure. Let me tell you, it's one thing to have your identity damned to hell, and it's another thing to have your identity washed from the face of the earth. (Both very painful. One more confusing than the other.) Damnation is clear cut. Erasure is honestly like the smudged pencil on an exam paper. There is nothing there, but you know there's something because it's smudged but it's so hard to tell people that it's pencil because they'll just say "no, no, there's no pencil there".
The world tells me I'm not here, which is so confusing because, to me, I can see that I am.
I don't want people to ever believe that bisexuality isn't real. I don't want to contribute to that narrative. It's a gaslighty social rhetoric that just makes finding love even more difficult than it already is.
I'm bisexual. That's how I describe myself to whoever I am dating, it's the answer I give to people whenever they ask: "are you gay, or straight?" When I go for sexual health checks, that's the box I tick. It's the community I love the most because we exist in a state of flux with no regard for binaries or false dichotomies, and cancelled subscription from the belief that love and intimacy and human connection is gender bound (no matter how terrified of relationships you are... *ahem*, hello *waves*).
Having said all of this, I think there is importance in claiming the word "gay". Not because that's the box I fit into; but because just like the part of me that wants to ravage a particularly good looking man, gay is also a part that floats around inside of the wholeness that is Meg. God made all of the parts of me. And all of those parts deserve to be embraced and protected by an anger that used to look like shame. To quote the Bras n Things advertisement, "I am many things." And so long as those things are honest to myself and respectful towards others, I don't see any good reason for them to hide. After all, to be as completely loved as I want to be, I need to be brave and let whoever I choose to have in my life see all the things that there are to love. I am silly, I study psychology and counselling, I'm not very good at exercise but I try, I am a bit of a bitch, I am a good friend, and I am gay and I am straight and right now I am hungry for lunch.
Anyway, that's why I shared the post. Because, simply, it was funny. And, not so simply, because of everything I just wrote about.