As some of you may know, I spent the first part of this month traveling outside the US. I’ve been struggling with a vague metaphysical malaise for the past several months, nothing I could put a finger on, nothing debilitating – just a low-level angst and anxiety that I couldn’t seem to shake - a sense of not belonging - anywhere. What was my f*cking problem?
WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything and everything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here.
Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
I'd hoped that breaking the routine for awhile, being in a different country and away from everyday life would allow me to breathe, and also illuminate the source of the ennui.
And so it came to pass that my FP crystalized with utmost clarity on the very day of my 39th birthday, thousands of miles from home, and at one of the most sacred places in the world to me.
I'm exhausted. I'm trying to live as a whole, healthy person in a social milieu that places perhaps the two most integral and vital aspects of my very being in diametric opposition to one another. Many people on each 'side' deeply fear or mistrust the other, and yet I cannot live peaceably without both alive within me.
Talk about a f*cking problem.
It's a 'coming out' FP of Sisyphean proportions - I'm queer (NOT a FP!). I'm Catholic (NOT a FP!). Having tried to live as one or the other, even rapid-cycling over the course of a day, I've learned that it's an arduous process for me to try to live as either one or the other. It's the perceived or requested need to do so from either the gay camp (heh) or the Catholic one that drives me absolutely batshit crazy.
Over the past couple of years I've been increasingly public about my dual-identity status. As a result, I'm hearing from closeted LGBT people who live in fear that their identity will be made known within the parishes in which they've lived their entire lives. I'm also hearing from closeted Catholics who are quite out about being gay or lesbian, but who certainly don't tell their friends about their faith. I never imagined that I'd meet and correspond with someone who sneaks out on occasion to attend Mass when she thinks nobody else will ever find out.
I'm the last grrrl on earth to have any possible grounds upon which to judge people. I trust that we all do what we need to do to maintain our personal integrity and our sanity, and that where those lines are drawn will differ person by person - or even circumstance by circumstance. I'm coming to terms, even, with the need to exist in that discomfort zone known as "batshit crazyland" on occasion, even if just out of love and respect for those who need to have brighter, more rigid lines in their own lives than I find tolerable in my own.
But damn, it makes me twitchy. It's exhausting. But - it's life.
Beloved Fellow Kossacks, we all have experiences living within institutions that fear us, don't value our lives, and really don't want us around. I just get to have dual citizenship between two of 'em - or even more! Does "George Bush's America" ring any bells? What other compromises do you find yourselves making in your own lives? Any curious contradictions that stare you down each day?
And hey - on this lovely summer Saturday, What's your f*cking problem?