I wasn't planning on writing these posts. My plan for pride month was to finally put my full authentic self out into the world by going to the pride parades and posting pictures. Then the pandemic hit and everything was rightfully canceled, so instead, I decided to share my authentic self with others the best way I know, through words. I wanted the first of the pride series on my blog to be about my struggles with religion and my lgbtq+ identity as religion was one of the biggest forms of my struggle with understanding and accepting my true self. I left each post on its own while putting it in an order to hopefully create a narrative. This is very much my first draft and what feels like my first layers of expressing my internal turmoil that I have come to understand more. These posts were originally Instagram posts, during June which is Pride month, where I tried to process and share my journey. I collected them in a series to share on my blog in four parts. I would love to hear feedback and dialogue on these. There is both darkness and light as life is always comprised of both. I hope this can help someone feel ok in their own skin, and create dialogue for people outside of the lgbtq+ community.
Religion and I struggled before I figured out I was gay. I lost most of my belief back in fourth grade and it just kept dwindling over the years. In 10th grade I was living in a girl's dorm in a religious girl's high school it was a very religious environment. I couldn't label and understand forget to embrace the emotions. So I turned to texts and friends and spent my time learning whatever with whomever. When close friends asked me what was wrong and I couldn't put my fingers on it the response understandably to cut out the few guy friends I had. It didn't solve anything, how could it solve an issue I couldn't even figure out. I gave up trying to "pray-rather learn the gay away" without even fully understanding I was trying to do that. I did this again in seminary trying to somehow learn something that would explain away my feelings. I kept searching for something to explain away my feelings. I kept searching for something in religion, that I was taught was all-knowing, and the truth for something to explain what I didn't have words to explain to myself. Once I was given the external vocabulary and the internal unlocking a lot of my favorite internal anger against religion and God dissipated. I haven't fully figured out my relationship with God and religion but is my honest and true self has made it possible to come back to sit at the table with God in my own way. This is a long term struggle that I have not fully figured out in any way but I am in conversation with God, it looks different every day but bringing my authentic self to the table has been empowering and given a chance for an authentic relationship with God and the universe.
Weddings - weddings are a big part of Judaism especially for women and girls it is one of the biggest milestones you are conditioned to want and to have as your goal. I remember when I was 8 I dressed up as a bride for Purim. A family member sewed me a dress and I had fake flowers and a veil. Luckily in the community, it's super normal so no-one asked me about a groom but I remember seeing other girls my age also dressing up as brides and thinking I want that. Of course, I thought that I was just thinking about their dress or veil not realizing the deeper thoughts till thinking about it now. After graduating from high school in my religious school with a grade of 150 girls, weddings naturally were the next milestone. I had gone to a decent amount of weddings during high school of family friends and older friends and there always was this internal feeling of uncomfortable and struggling to just be happy at the weddings, I always felt I didn't belong and I wasn't very outwardly religious and didn't believe in their version of God so I thought it was just from religious conflicts. I remember always looking down the aisle waiting for my friend to come down, and I could imagine myself walking down the aisle, but there was never a clear picture of the “man of my dreams” waiting at the end of the aisle, it was always blurry and blank. Then with the help of a few statements from my good friend, enough of my internal feelings, emotions, and thoughts came together and I came out of the closet to myself. I remember going to the first wedding after I came out, and having a very powerful moment waiting for the couple to walk down the aisle, and looking at the canopy and being able to envision my own wedding and being under that canopy with the woman of my dreams. The joy and emotions I was able to express with my friends absolutely came from that internal level of peace and now I love going to weddings, I can feel part and connected even if I want something different than what is shown, I have found that internal compass, and it feels amazing. Finding my authentic self made sharing in others joy so much more authentic.
Internal safe space part #1- (TW: suicidal thoughts) NOT SAFE- Building an internal safe space has been one of the hardest things about coming out and looking back over the very long process it took has been quite intense and remembering how much I already knew but didn't even have a space inside myself to hear the voices in my head has been painful and healing at the same time. 10th grade was one of the best and worst years of my life. The best I was finally out of Ramat Bet Shemesh living in a dorm of international religious girls, on a school campus I actually wanted to go to. I had made friends both in my class and the dorms but, it was also one of the hardest years of my life. I remember it being one of the first times I was in a safe enough space to feel those internal confusing thoughts yet I didn't understand what the crushes and attraction meant. I remember trying to talk to a close friend but not even having the right words all I had was so much confusion and pain, a good Jewish girl like her thought it was boy trouble since I was friends with a barn hand from where I used to ride and we were in touch. So I used the tool I had been using all year, religion, and clinging closer to some version of God that would get rid of my internal strife if I stopped talking to boys. Unfortunately, that didn't solve any problems it just made me feel more isolated and confused, to the point where one night I was leaning out the window and looking down at the ground, analyzing that I wouldn’t die from the jump but maybe it would still get rid of the internal confusion and self-hatred from that confusion. I would look out into the night through those big windows often but that was one of my most intense times I felt the only way to fix whatever was broken inside, was to break my outside. Luckily (yes now I can look back and say luckily) a friend came into the room and asked if I wanted to learn some Torah thought and since that was the only tool I had I used it and kept hoping it would fix what I couldn’t inside. I didn't find my internal safe space to even find the words to portray my feelings of homosexuality or even really know it existed for years, but this is just part one of not having an internal safe space to even learn and think about the letters LGBTQ+.
Internal safe spaces NOT SAFE part 2. In the summer between 10th and 11th grade I found the now-defunct women's wheelchair basketball team, it was an important addition to my physical therapy but also brought to light how I was not in an emotionally safe space to talk about being lesbian. My mother has always been quite into matchmaking so on the way back from picking me up from the train station when I came back from practice in tel Aviv, one afternoon she asked about the captain of the team Moran, and if she was single. I was so naive and didn't think I needed to filter my response (also I've only in the past four years learned to filter better) so I just responded "um, she's not single her wife even comes to practice. You might have even met her " Luckily I had enough of a filter to not tell her, that her wife was one of the organizers. The slice of silence that returned is still burned in my mind I can tell you exactly where the thirty-second interaction happened. The interaction between us ended then and I naively once again thought that would be the end of the conversation. Instead at my next therapy session my religious therapist (which I then dropped two months later) asked me how I knew what gay was and if I was fine with people who were gay, and in the same breath if I was gay. Feeling cornered without missing a beat I responded "I'm fine with gay people but don't worry I'm not gay" I remember her asking how I knew what gay was and to be honest I don't know if I actually knew I just saw them together and knew they were together, but I really don't think I really had enough information to understand. I just mostly remember how cornered and how quickly that therapist's office turned from being a safe space to a surrogate parent interrogation space. I still feel that pain of being cornered and having no safe space, and recounting these events makes me super impressed with myself to still be alive and actually understand, accept, love and share my authentic self with the world as there were many years of suicidal thoughts and wanting to be out of this unsafe confusing world, especially when the people supposed to make it safe, made it unsafe.
No comments:
Post a Comment