Well as you all know I've been struggling with my sexual orientation-- the whole thing can be read about in my previous thread(s?) and I've made zero progress in like, eight or nine years. One of my friends said to me: "Dude, everybody knows you're gay except for you." I was sitting with another friend and he brought it up and I tried to change the direction of the conversation and he said something like "Look, if you're attracted to men then you're attracted to men, man it's okay." And I just flipped shit, I knocked a cup off of the end table and it slammed the wall as I yelled "NO, IT IS NOT OKAY!" Thankfully he's really laid back and he just reacted by raising his eyebrows curiously. I tell all my friends who attempt to bring it up that I have "a devil on my back." Not in a religious sense, but more in the sense of like being addicted to heroin or crack-- that's how it feels. If I can somehow find a therapist I'm going to have to explain all this and when the therapist says something like "So, you want to accept yourself as a homosexual?" I'm going to say "No, I want to make that part of me die, and that's what you're here to help me do." But I know it won't work. There's no escape. I've been running and I'm going to be running for a very, very long time. It's not fair. I don't want to be gay. I don't want any part of it. But it's like a gaping chasm that's beckoning me, the jaws of Cerberus pulling me in. I'm doing everything in my power right now to block it out-- I've changed my appearance completely to distance myself from the image I associate with my 'gay persona' and I'm keeping my distance from any triggers that might set off the gay persona. There's so many triggers it gets hard to block them all out. It's like the walls are closing in.
See, you're 13-- and something inside me makes me extremely sad that you have to deal with all of this, already. You identify as 'queer,' which I'll admit is a good term and one I like over 'gay' or 'bi' or whatever, but the fact that you're literally half my age and you're dealing with something that no 13 year old should have to deal with makes me so sad. It's like it seems that in recent years people have been 'coming out' younger and younger, long before they're even physically or mentally mature-- the brain doesn't stop physically maturing until the age of 24 and I believe that 24 should be the legal age of adulthood-- I don't think anyone should be allowed to smoke, drink or drive until they're 24. I digress. I don't like being gay for a variety of reasons I've already explained in depth. It's like I'm lowering myself to the level of someone who bullied me relentlessly earlier in life-- my rare openly gay bully from high school. I'm bitter, and I hate myself every time I have a gay fantasy or use a gay chat room-- something you should stay away from.
Different people realise at different times. I realised very recently and I'm still going through it all in my head, it confuses me but my age does not invalidate me or my capability to deal with it. This however is a thread about you. Being gay does not lower you to level of being a bully. Being human does not lower you to the level of terrorists. Sharing a single attribute with someone does not automatically mean you share every attribute. I'm sorry if I haven't read any of your other threads so your going to have to clarify everything for me. Why do you hate yourself when you have a gay fantasy? It is the same as a straight fantasy except with someone of the same gender which we know is not bad, obviously.
See, sometimes I feel like the reason you and other people in this era your age realized (I'm American, my word correction will give me crap if I try to spell it the right way.) it so early is because of how widespread and 'out' it is, now. I'm not saying that that's a bad thing, I just can't appreciate the fact that people so young have to start dealing with this torture so early. It just doesn't seem right. And it's not that I'd become a bully, it's that I'd be on a similar frequency to a person I've otherwise expunged from my thought process and that every time I'd engage in homosexual behavior, his face would enter my mind and he'll laugh and he'll mock me in my head and I'll never be able to enjoy any sort of sexual activity again. I'm already having issues with it, and I'm not sure if trying to get with a guy will make it stop or make it worse. I know for a fact that when I hooked up with a girl all it did was make it worse-- as in, more confusing and just a heavier sense of malaise.
OK, I'm also curious as to what is is that find being gay so distasteful. What specifically about being attracted to the same sex makes you feel "...it's like a gaping chasm that's beckoning me, the jaws of Cerberus pulling me in." ? Why a gaping chasm? This implies you're scared of something, probably several things, but what? I came out at age 16 or so, and this was in the 1980s to my friends in rural northern Michigan. Granted, my parents and my friends were a very liberal bunch, and it wasn't easy, but I've found a great deal of pleasure, fun and even meaning in being gay, and doing so in my own way, not like the TV stereotypes. I think for me, having grown up as an atheist, never having gone to church, and also a fan of punk/hc with a mohawk. That kind of rebel attitude made it easier. I've never cared about breaking most social norms, so why should I care about sexual ones? That was more or less how I felt/still feel. Given you seem to be a Burroughs fan, I'm especially curious as to why you see being gay/queer so darkly...there are probably some very good reasons, as it's not always easy, but I made it, and had a great time along the way, even if at points I've been variously moody, broke and have had other various tumults. Edit: Just read the above post. Where do you think this sense of being 'mocked' and laughed at comes from? I mean, what do you think causes those images?
Well, I think of it as like, I'd be devolving into a simplistic creature operating purely on animalistic instincts for the sole purpose of pleasure while sacrificing all of my intellectuality in favor of physical pleasure. There's lots of things to be scared of, I have really anxiety issues and I don't trust people. Why a gaping chasm? Because it's something I've been running from for so long-- and it just gets bigger everyday. It started out as a crack in the wall, if you like, but it kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I'm pretty far (physically) from the TV stereotypes, as I've mentioned I'm what they call a "bear" or "cub" or whatever in the gay community. As for the 1980s... geez, that must have been hard because from what I understand, anyone who went to school in the 80s was told that if they so much as touched someone else they'd get AIDS. Personally, I believe AIDS was created by the Reagan administration to eliminate everyone he thought was "morally unclean" and the experiment went out of control-- I digress. I'm not particularly spiritual, myself. My Mom's a lapsed Catholic and my Dad is part of one of those progressive churches that accepts openly gay people with arms wide open. Nothing spiritual is part of my self-loathing of difficulty and a lot of people have a hard time understanding that. I'm a huge Burroughs fan, yeah. Though he was definitely gay and even tried to build a sort of 'gay defense force,' (some people know what I'm talking about, others need to watch a few documentaries) he was just so... I don't know, he just didn't seem gay. I wouldn't be being mocked by others, but my mind eye's image of the bully I once knew. It would be like letting him win, I'd be giving in and losing a battle I've been fighting. I don't want to lose a war that wasn't started by me.
I find your attitude fascinating, but the above quote even more so. To begin...we are animals, but endowed with a spirit found in no other creature on earth. Hence, we are a duality of animal spirits and the higher human levels. The animal in us will never disappear, it would be the same were you to be a confirmed heterosexual. You would still have physical needs no matter what your orientation... How does one devolve into a simplistic creature merely by engaging in sex? This is an activity that can be merely animalistic, but it can also be the highest expression of love between two people. Our unique human spirit I alluded to above is, first and foremost, a "meaning maker". It is in fact the task of our higher selves to elevate, to sublimate if you will, the baser instincts of sex into something more alluring, more exciting and more meaningful. No intellectual sacrifice there! Indeed quite the opposite! When sex is sublimated to the higher registers, you are bringing imagination, play, rules, lingerie and leather into the mix that is the wonderful world of sex. Buddhism teaches "freedom from opposites"; the freedom from the binary of one thing or the other, with nothing in between. You may find in the "in between" some redemption for your "impossible" orientation.
To me, sex means a loss of control-- it's nothing more than a momentary lapse of reason. It's an increasingly obsolete part of our brains are taking over and making it impossible to do anything else. You lose common sense, you fall out of control, you begin to say stupid things and eventually engage in the oddest, most idiotic looking acts for a few moments of physical pleasure. The imagination bit, the lingerie and leather-- to me that just registers as a sort of mental illness fetishism which I find pretty disgusting. I don't think sex is natural anymore, it feels machine produced. We live in an age of test tubes and needles and wires and yet we're still going about it the hard way. For me, I'd much rather have the dopamine created by an orgasm be released by a scheduled implant pump in my brain which would eliminate the need for my genitalia to be used as anything other than a waste disposal unit. I don't want to lose control.
Do you believe that control is more than an illusion? Why do you think that ideas like "obsolete" even apply or make sense in terms of our biology? You glorify reason to an unreasonable degree...
Control is not an illusion unless the Judeo-Christianity religious sects are absolutely correct in the most literal senses in which the people of Texas take them to be-- which I don't believe they are. However, I do not put any faith in science, either-- I see it simply as another control system. I go in for an evaluation as a child, I get prescribed Ritalin, I'm on Ritalin for twenty years, they take away my Ritalin when it makes me so anxious I almost commit suicide out of irrational fear-- that's control, just like the way the Judeo-Christian texts say I'll burn in Hell or Sheoul if I engage in abominable acts with a man as one would with a woman. Control is very real and if you can use it, you can become very powerful. I'm trying to harness that power. If I let go, I'll lose whatever control I have over this issue. I already have too many things outside my control, I need to keep this one thing in check if I'm going to win.
So, I went back and read your first half dozen posts or so from back in August and between those and what you've written here, a notion popped into my head about your situation. It's possible someone else has already suggested this, in which case my apologies in advance. But here goes... When I was reading your posts, the thing that I was suddenly reminded of was the issue of molestation and abuse. My dad sexually molested two of my sisters, and for that reason and various others molestation, rape, and spousal abuse were fairly common topics of discussion in my childhood, and there were a fair number of books on the topic floating around. While I certainly am NOT an expert on this, one thing I seem to recall from being around these types of discussions is that for the victim of these kinds of acts, there can be all kinds of emotional and psychological damage, extending well beyond the issue of sex and getting into issues of trust, relationships (sexual, romantic, and otherwise) and various other things. Which leads me to this notion: What if everyone is missing the forest for the trees here? Focusing on the issue of your sexuality (natural enough given the nature of EC, and because being LGBT is seen as such a big deal by society in general), when the real core issue is what went on between you and the bully that you mention so often? Please note that I am NOT suggesting that he sexually assaulted you in some fashion (although, to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if he did or if his torment of you included some sexual overtones) nor am I asking you to say one way or the other. But whatever he did do, it obviously caused you a LOT of pain, so much so that you still mention it prominently here in multiple posts, the better part of a decade later. Whatever it was, he did one hell of a number on you, quite possibly causing damage of a level and kind similar to that experienced by victims of assault or molestation. Which leads to a suggestion: I would suggest that you do indeed find a therapist to help you through this. But rather than focusing on accepting your sexuality, the two of you should focus on helping you get over whatever trauma that bully put you through. Because it sounds to me like that particular experience is a major stone in the foundation your issues are built upon. If there are other things in there as well, you can work to deal with them too. Once that is done, once those particular demons have been exorcised from your life - I'm thinking/hoping you might find the issue of your sexuality much easier to deal with. I hope this helps, and I hope things get better for you(*hug*) Todd
The crux of the matter! I have a quote for you: What is it that you control exactly? I mean truly control without any outside interference or obstacle? Where do you feel most in control, and where do you feel less in control? I agree wholeheartedly with AKTodd, there are deep issues here that you need to explore with professional help. Are you willing to do the work you need to do to find out?
Ha, no, he didn't sexually assault me. Heck, even if he did, no one would believe me-- he was a year younger than me and about a hundred and six pounds of pure fem (no offense to anybody) whereas I was a lot heavier and built up than him. No, it wasn't anything physical-- it was purely the psychological hell he put me through. I do not want to talk about him any further, here. Even now, I fear he is still listening, lying in wait. I would, if I could afford the proper therapy.
I still don't see why you specifically dislike being gay, as opposed to being sexual in general. What about being gay makes it worse than being straight?
As I've said, it's like the way some transgendered (transsexual?) people feel about being in 'the wrong body.' It's a bit more complicated here, maybe because I can't exactly undergo a surgical procedure to alter my brain chemistry-- at least not that I'm aware of. :/
Excuse this poorly written statment; I'm on my phone and only on for a few minutes. But, what I'm picking up from this is that you're not comfortable being gay, correct? And you don't understand why. Maybe; the problem is that society has poisoned people's views and ideas of being gay and what it's like, and because of that you don't feel comfortable being gay is because the idea of it seems.."scary" or it doesn't seem right, like it's not who you are. And while it may take a while to fully admit it, and you may never admit it; we can't help who we fall in love with, you don't choose to be straight-gay-bi or trans, you just are. And even if you hate it, it's best to try and embraced it, 'cause the first step to this is coming out to yourself.
This thread is so...horrible? Sad? Call me emotional but I'm close to tears. But, I digress. Sex is a fundamental part of procreation - some of us are barren and without the capacity to give birth, some of us are blank, some of us don't want children, and some of us are homosexual. These act as limitations to overpopulation, allowing us to thrive in this world without destroying us all. In a purely biological standpoint, homosexuality is expected, and even, and to a degree, desirable. Sexual inclinations are our biology - we enjoy it, want it, and at times seek it. You are not weak nor lacking of control by allowing yourself something that is written within you. It isn't a demon, and that's the part that's so...hard...for me. The idea that you would not only deprive yourself of something you can't help, but also rip yourself apart and attempt to smother something you can't help. Personal for a moment, but I had to go to a therapist because I was killing myself over something I couldn't change - literally. And transgender people are in the wrong body - the procedures they undergo take great emotional tolls, and I can't see nor understand wanting a procedure to alter your brain chemistry because you find men appealing. I'm going to refer to you as 'queer' because you said you didn't mind it as much. Being queer isn't a bad thing - and it hurts so much to see you think it is. I think accepting your thoughts, fantasies and who you are is more important than trying to change something you never chose. I'm so sorry.
Your words are kind, but I'm a point in my life where I've dealt with this... torment, for lack of a better word (I haven't had my coffee, yet.) that I'd gladly give up both of my legs and live as a paraplegic if it meant altering and eliminating my sexuality.
