Buried Alive

 

I floated through existence wrapped in the womb of my thoughts and emotions. The days rolled in adventures, introducing new angles of the dramatic existence we waken and sleep of. It wasn’t long until I found myself being buried alive by society, my family, god, and worse, myself. Completely aware of my homosexuality by 8th grade, judging by my hormones and the fact that all my close friends were girls, I froze, afraid and unsure. Do I look gay? Can everyone tell I’m different? I’m different?

            I realized then how shallow I acted, and how deep I reach. I mistakenly toasted to loneliness, grew tired of loud girls, and moved on to quiet girls who drank and smoked pot regularly. That was attractive, and so was sadness. Rebellion with drugs, alcohol and cigarettes preoccupied my time while I continuously denied my “crime.”

            The possibility that one of my siblings or I would mature gay may have been ignorantly blind sighted by my parents. Homosexuality was never mentioned in our home, and I suspect it was the combination of my parent’s dedication to our church and the struggle therein of accepting the lifestyle society largely misrepresents. I was supposed to just speak up? How? Who would care to understand? The idea of possibly “coming out” laughed in my face, so I strangled my identity and pushed away my family and friends. My heart and brain folded in on each other, arguing into a stalemate. For weeks on end my worn, numbed body, mind, and spirit mumbled their way through the days. I silenced myself, and pierced with the will to forget beyond what drugs were helping escape my reality, my mind eventually and repeatedly attempted suicide.

The few times my heart sank lower than my mind, my feelings weighed me down with the hopeless thoughts of being unknown, and ultimately alone. I wouldn’t allow my face to resemble my drowning heart and construed thoughts, so my episodes were completely misunderstood and unpredictable. I felt I was waking into a lie each day, while each night surmounted to choking cries on my bed. My mind lost in a fog, I routinely battered myself into obscurity. Soon came screaming into my pillow for god to change me, getting high in the middle of the night, insomnia, suicidal poetry, sharp edges, blood, pills, and psych wards. God never showed up or spoke up.

I told myself the fight was over. Reality of life calls, as do family, friends, and a fulfilling future. My predicament tightly fastened to subjective feelings, as the victim, I laid trampled by the occurrences in life meant to take me along for the ride atop an evolved understanding.

Eventually, I digested god, and explored myself. My hormones couldn’t lie and I didn’t want to die, so I began understanding my identity. I asked myself, am I gay? Yes. What does that mean to me? Nothing is perfect, but everything is just how it’s supposed to be right now. Each step beyond this recognition, I’ve scooped heaps of dirt back into my burial site, living exposed and falling in and out of love with reality.

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