I'll Be My Own Therapist

I had a conversation with my boss yesterday that crystallized a few things for me. A big reason I find it so hard to express myself is that I don't know myself -- I may think I do, but I'm not sure I really sat down and told myself my own story if that makes sense. She has this way of asking questions that force you to think about the heart of a thing. When I surrendered to that process, I discovered a focus for my passion I hadn't had before. It would mean a lot to me to serve queer people of color in some capacity.

This directly comes from my experience AS a queer person of color, of course. Growing up where I did, I did not have any place within my community to feel safe being me. This sounds...untrue, but it's the memory I have: when I was six years old, someone spray-painted "Man and David" on the sidewalk outside of my house. The intent, my sister told me, was to call me gay. I remember feeling...confused about it. Why was my association with men a bad thing? Some men were nice! And the dictionary defined being gay as being "happy". (Yes, I was one of those kids.) What was wrong with that?

I also remember feeling threatened by it because the person we suspected of doing the deed was one of my neighborhood bullies. I knew that my bewilderment wasn't the effect he was going for. It was embarrassment and intimidation, and I definitely felt those too -- even if I didn't understand why.

Looking back it's a little funny to me. Even as a kid my lack of self-awareness was obvious to my peers, right? They clocked me before I would understand why I got obsessed with furry, kind Teddy Ruxpin or barrel-chested, righteous Mighty Mouse years later. >.> 

But I also learned how to be as invisible as possible at an early age. I was taught, by my classmates and neighbors, by my parents, by my congregation, that the things I loved are weird and sinful, and if anyone ever found out about them they would disapprove and be right to do so. That's why my instinct is to hide what I do, because it was the only way I could survive without being harassed by other kids or authority figures.

Over time I've gotten better at "hiding" myself. I've learned how to deflect conversations to other topics of interest, or how to present an agreeable face that's easy to overlook. But when I want or need to express myself, or even if I need to choose my preference, my brain freezes and it can take enormous effort to get it going again. And my secretive nature has made it hard to trust and be trusted; the distance that kept me safe as a child is keeping me lonely as an adult.

I wonder if other queer people of color struggle with the same type of identity issues, where they've been so habituated to hiding themselves from disapproval that they don't even know how to express who they truly are. While it's liberating to be exposed to the wider world in college, I was also exposed to how prevalent racism is in every aspect of broader society. As a Black gay man, I was fetishized -- or politely frozen out of spaces. Gay culture is more accepting of secretive people, because hiding is a pretty common experience to folks in my generation. But it also has no idea what to do with the background-specific baggage and reference points you bring with you. Unless my culture is being mined for pop consumption, there's no interest either.

I know that my experience makes me unique and gives me a perspective maybe no one else has. I'm happy with that! But I can't actually make use of that perspective if I can't understand it and translate it to folks using whatever shared language we have.

Soooooo...what I'd like to do here is spend some time writing about my past and what I've taken from it. Maybe telling myself my own story will allow me to understand HOW to change, and what parts of the past I'm holding on to but no longer serve me.

I'll try to go in chronological order, but I have a tendency to jump around so chances are it's going to be a jumbled mess anyway. But here goes.