The other night I left a concert because I needed space. I was sitting there in the audience, the first song was playing, and I felt so sad. I walked outside to get some air and I sat on the pavement next to the parking lot and I watched the sky get a little darker. I hugged my knees to my chest and I searched for what was wrong and I cried a little. I needed to leave.

I left.

I was walking across a darkened campus, shivering and feeling awful, when a thought emerged: I am so lonely. In that moment I felt so alone. Walking away from a concert filled with people, walking away carrying a hurt that seemed to defy sense but hurt nonetheless. It felt like I could never be understood, a sort of loneliness at its essence. I felt burdensome and loathsome and pariah-esque, and in that moment I considered walking to my car and smoking the rest of a pack of cigarettes I had earlier bought and fumingly smoked. I thought about getting in the car and driving away.

I felt like an embarrassment, some sort of twisted puzzle without a solution, a freakish girl who seems to refuse happiness, who subjects those she loves to the ridiculousness of her willful neuroses. I wanted to put myself in a long time out, and then I wanted to be chased after, to be reassured. I wanted to be told that my hurts were seen, that I was loved even with my hurts and my bruises and my sillinesses. I felt scared and prone to false dichotomy as images of angelic Boy and harpy Girl drifted by, carrying with them a particularly sharp suggestion that I didn't deserve the angel Boy with all my horridness. I should find a rock and disappear. If I kept quiet maybe I would slowly turn into sludge and enjoy the blissful ineptitude of thought enjoyed by slime the world over.

I hated these thoughts. They're the worst bits of myself, compounded and minced into a black chasm of grossness. I banished the worst of the thoughts, tried to put the rest of the terrible things on hold for a moment and headed to the room. Still, the thought of how lonely I felt hovered, almost luminous but for its weight. I could barely understand myself and I knew it was asking for a boon of a miracle, but I needed to be understood. I needed the me I was struggling with to be seen. I felt alone because I was hurting and I felt like I had to be convincing that the reason I was hurting was a valid reason, and if I couldn’t explain it well enough it would never be seen- I’d just be some crazy girl who makes everything harder than it has to be. Who cries over stupid little comments. Who so desperately wants to be peaceful and fun-loving and is terrified that all my little wounds will never be done wreaking havoc.

I had to be understood. I’m a skilled enough writer. . . why couldn’t I just sit down and explain it? The biggest and scariest question whittled itself down to “why is this such a big deal?” and I thought that if I could just explain it. . . If I could only show what I meant. . .

I can’t help that I hurt. I just do. I’m doing my best to take care of that hurt- to be open about it and learn more about what’s going on and not get lost in a sea of pain or hopelessness. I am already drafting contingency plans and small and large courses of action to change what about my life is making me unhappy. I’m trying to take care of my hurt, but I can’t control the fact that I hurt. I can’t control which circumstances set off this hurt, be they silly or socially valid. But I hurt.

When I got to the room I was firmly resolved to sit down and write the long sordid history of emily’s sexual orientation. I thought I’d just tell the story- how long it took to discover who I am, how many back and forths there have been, how many times I’ve been told that I was being ridiculous, how many times I’ve had to come out, how often being accepted by others has been contingent on so many things, how I subsisted for years on a sparse diet of external acceptance, how my orientation affected and affects that acceptance. . . It’s never been clear for me. It’s been a big struggle. A formative struggle.

I sat at my computer and wrote a few lame sentences. And by lame I really mean without the ability to move. I deleted them and began again, and the immensity of such a project overwhelmed me. The importance and the literal hugeness was too much in that moment.

I noticed my friend, K, online and I started chatting with her. Like me, K is a Queer lady in a straight relationship, but hers is a few years old. She’s out and a feminist and she was so empathetic. She struggles with the same thing that I’ve been bothered by, which though I haven’t been explicit yet, centers on making sense of myself as a non-straight woman in a monogamous heterosexual relationship.

One might ask why it’s such a big deal, to which I have no quick answer. Being out and Queer has been such a part of my life for the last 5 years, not to mention the prior closeted 3. Only one year ago I was fresh out of the first successful relationship I ever had, and it was with a woman. I moved across the country, leaving my beloved Bay Area for the decidedly less-Queer New York. I was sure that I had learned the biggest pieces of my orientation identity in the previous few months. I was sure (yet again) that I knew what I liked and would always like: women. I theoretically proposed that I might find some very rare male-bodied person who I would not dismiss if otherwise appealing, but I tended to say that with a strong sense of skepticism.

Then I was in Michigan, falling for a male, and the world turned around. But I was still Queer. A Dyke is allowed to fall for a man once in a while, especially if she still prefers women.

Then I was in New York, over-worked, typically under-slept, ill, detached, alone. I was too busy to find a new queer community. Too tired to do all the work involved, which is not to say that I made no effort, as I absolutely went on dates and tried to meet new people, but rather that it is terribly difficult work to nurture a new community. It takes consistency and attention and energy, which were running low after my summer and fall. Then came the winter and the whispers of spring.

Then I met the Boy.

Somehow I’ve settled into a magical arrangement: I love him, he loves me, and we laugh a lot. Simple, no?

What happens to your identity as a queer woman when you begin to contemplate a life-long heterosexual relationship? How do you define yourself? When you meet other queer people and you are standing next to your partner, how do you introduce yourself without bluntly inserting somewhere into the introduction, “Hello, I’m m and though I’m deeply in love with my boyfriend I’m not straight,”? What do you do when you suddenly discover that it’s Pride Sunday and you don’t even have a clue what kinds of festivities are going on in New York, nor do you have anyone to ask??? Or when yet again a lovely gay man assumes that you’re just another straight chick?

What happens, if you are me, is that you become filled with an overwhelming sadness. You begin to grieve for the part of you that you’ve lost, that you’ve let go missing. A part you fear may have disappeared forever. You begin to wonder what you can do to gain back those pieces, and ultimately, you realize that it’s very difficult to explain to non-Queers why it means so much to be Queer.

Being Queer is not like having been raised Catholic. It’s not like having been a Girl Scout. It’s neither a random bit of my history nor is it a part of my detached cultural background. Coming out as Queer- or rather, as Bisexual, then Lesbian, then Queer, was one of the first big ways that I gained self-acceptance. Furthermore, when I joined the Queer community, like it or not, I joined a dynamic that very much felt like Us vs. Them. You’re either family or you’re not. There are aspects of coming out as GLBTQ, of growing up, of discovering and searching, that cannot be explained the way they can be empathized. When I meet someone and I find out ze is Queer, I immediately feel a little closer to hir, even if we’re as different as can be in almost every other way. It’s a bond.

I know that I haven’t caught my thoughts about this yet. They’re still amorphous and drifting, and maybe they will never settle. Maybe that’s ok. I’m left with a directive from within to go out and forge a new community. I must discover again where I fit and how to go about in the world as a person with an irregular orientation identity.

"Judy"

Walking quiet streets was a pastime for Judy in the purest sense of the word- it was a way to pass the time. The ache in her abdomen refused to give way, crowding her senses and refusing her favorite form of personal abandonment. She had tried to go walking three times already, but she couldn’t catch her breath enough to conquer her stairs, let alone the hill she lived on. She settled for a puff of guilt-ridden cancer and sat on the stoop while its acrid taste seeped into her cheeks and fingertips.

She wondered if the ache in her belly was something more than bad food. The recurring fear of a tiny parasite leeching the walls of her uterus drained her mind of its store of calm and left every signal her body sent tinged with dread. She couldn’t be pregnant. She just couldn’t be.

Why hadn’t she insisted that he be safe? What was it about her that allowed those sudden bursts of passivity in the worst possible moments? She was a pillar of strength and intention except in those terribly hopeless moments when an older man pressed himself against her or an unknown stallion pierced into her. She couldn’t understand herself and she had all but given up hope of forgiving herself for such weaknesses. They were to be born, and that was all.

Judy climbed into her bed and swaddled herself with blankets. She was always cold, her extremities tingling even in the full weight of the sunshine. She pulled the neck of her sweater up over her head to trap in every escaping molecule. She stopped moving to survey the results and found that she was trapped. The warmth would come soon, but the knocking in her head and chest would not leave. She wished for a sign, a desire, a passion, even hatred. Her apathy was paralyzing.

If her blood returned in a week would her numbness disappear? She listlessly hoped it were so and curled her hands into a twisted ball, cradled under her chin. How she longed to sob into the night, but there was nothing for which to sob. There was nothing wrong with her life even if there was nothing right. She wished for sleep.

The elusiveness of such dreamless sleep was ironic for a woman who often battled competing waves of depression and narcolepsy. At any point she could sleep for a dozen hours without stirring, that is, any point but when she desperately needed to escape. She could not banish the thousand empty thoughts running loops in her head. For a woman without conflict she carried too many fears.

And anger, though she was reluctant to admit it, was creating its own course through her body. She couldn’t believe that she had allowed her ex to seduce her. She had been weak, she had been clouded, she had been lonely, and though she knew she could have done things no differently, she was still disappointed with herself. She should have known the future, her gut pushed. She should have seen the falseness and the trap. She could never forgive her own humanity.

How she expected herself to resist That Woman’s smile and shoulders is a mystery, but Judy was still crucifying herself for it, and laughing at the reality of the conversation the day after when That Woman had spoken of being cautious and building friendships with respect. Somehow she seemed to miss the glaring inconsistency in her own philosophy, having pounced on her confused friend and former lover only the night before. Judy felt stupid for having believed any of the words that came out of That Woman’s mouth. After all, she had prior offenses and a history of laxity when it came to being genuine with her truth.

But this was past, as all her transgressions were. Lying in bed and considering all the ways that life had gone awry was Judy’s least favorite pastime and the one that recurred most painfully and insidiously. It was frustrating, but it was her only reality. What was life without these occasional forays into the pitiful and pathetic? She couldn’t be happy, not really. Perhaps she didn’t believe that such happiness or comfort was acceptable. Perhaps she was happiest in her soul when she was huddled alone and crying. That was a sobering thought. These journeys into her sad, illusionary world were becoming less frequent and, Judy thought with a hint of a smile, maybe she was growing past the sadness. Maybe she was beginning to live.

That life made these moments all the harder to bear. When she had fallen asleep every night cradled in her own arms, it had been comforting to know that her self-pity would always be there. Now its presence brought a stale, mildewy stench with it and memories of that life, many lives ago, when she had believed that she truly was alone. It was jarring to find herself lifted from the joy of life to this self-induced trauma. She hoped it would pass soon. If only she had the energy to walk right now she might walk until she flew away. Instead she tucked her head in and pressed shut her eyes, praying for sleep and a little bit of clarity.

October 7th, 2007

I didn’t set out to become some sort of sexual deviant, not that that’s what I’ve become. In all reality I set out to be a nun. I wanted to be pristine, close to god, and the first in line to go to heaven. When I’d given that dream up by the wise age of eight, I converted the same desires into a plan for a solid Catholic marriage. My grandmother still presses this dream into my hands every time I see her, somehow hoping that my short hair and tolerant words might be fluke signs; I might still become her saint. The advantage of my adjusted plan, a good, strong husband of god and all the children that our modest sex afforded us, was that I wouldn’t find myself stuck in a convent for the entirety of my life. Seclusion didn’t fit into my life plans- how could I be president if I were a nun? In holy Catholic matrimony I would find both religion and some semblance of actualization. That was my hope.

My dreams began to revolve around egalitarian white picket fences and average family afternoons. I believed that my life could have one real path: school, college, graduate school, marriage, kids, career. The lines were distinct and everything had its place. Almost, that is. I wasn’t prepared to interpret my thoughts about women.

I knew lesbians and gay men. They were friends, neighbors, people I respected, but they were other. They existed, but they were separate from my personal paradigm, token friends and characters in my own staged show. Sure, I thought about women when I masturbated, but didn’t everybody? So I thought about them pressing me against a wall, that was a normal teenage thought to have. Or maybe it wasn’t, but it just meant that I was open and accepting of people. It didn’t make me gay.

My first sexual experiences were with men. Later on, I would quote those experiences of horrid, passionless single nights as proof that I was simply not a heterosexual. Despite the tiniest nag that those experiences might not have been exactly a fair sampling, I wanted so badly to define myself, to fit in, to belong. I wanted an identity. So when a beautiful woman offered me her hands and her body, I slid happily into my modern box.

All the desires of a life, moving in and out of age and location, the absoluteness of every discovered want, how is it that life can feel so real at every second? To be nine, to know that life has more in store, but to have no plane of reference, no concept of what more might entail. To be twenty and to still hold fast the belief that what one wants then is what one will always want- perhaps this is the soul of naïveté. How disillusioning to find yourself, a proclaimed lesbian with a broken heart, looking at men with a twinkle in your eye? Yet it was even more confusing to go home with one and watch, almost disembodied as he pressed his advantage without ever stopping to ask what I wanted. We fucked on his huge, empty bed, and I wished that it would just be over- that I wouldn’t hate myself too much in the morning. Another one night stand, another series of unfulfilled wishes.

Why am I still attracted to men? It can hardly be explained, and other than my perverse need to explain everything, I really have no desire to pick it apart. I like whom I like. I meet whomever I meet. I follow the guideposts of feelings. Most times this is enough.

I find myself craving the solidity of my ex. The knowing that each night she would tell me she loved me. The comfort of good sex. Even after all the self-prescribed growth inversion, all the weaknesses indulged because I knew she would carry them, because it felt good to have someone who would carry them, after it all, I still miss the assumed right to cuddle, to kiss, to love.

I’m scared of this process of taking each day as it comes. It’s terrifying, at times, to rise to a moment’s unexpectedness. Finding new feelings and realizing that old ones have passed is unsettling for a woman who has tirelessly sought an anchor to believe in, to trust in, to depend upon.

There is a certain honesty in the act of sleeping alone. The reality is that each night I go to bed alone. I have slept alone every night of my life, even when I shared my bed. The loneliness felt bitterer, more hidden, whilst waking next to a cherished body, the pain more acute when my partner was an unknown quantity. Sharing the warmth of a comfortable sleep with another leaves the illusion of solidarity without the removal of reality. The truth is, thus far, that I am the only being with whom I am. I join the paths of others, I listen, I love, I journey, but I do those things in tandem at best and in solitude the rest of the time. This isn’t to say that I prefer sleeping single, as that couldn’t be further from the truth, but my reality remains.

I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of becoming emotionally close to someone who I couldn’t at least imagine being with forever, yet I’ve had three one-night stands. Are these two realities unrelated? Inter-related? Here I am, a woman out of the closet twice, a seeker and a lover, involved in a Polyamorous situation. Relationship? I am not in love with multiple people, though I could be. The object of my affections is most definitely involved with others. How in the world did I find myself here? I would have thought that by now I would have decided exactly what and where I was to be. I thought I had those questions worked out.

Here I am, each day a pleasant surprise of new feelings. This good little Catholic girl, this refugee of a broken lesbian relationship, is creating something with a man who has a girlfriend. Why does confusion follow me? I feel fear tonight- the unknown pain, the possible aches and division, the mystery of my heart, all unquantifiable. No promises can be made, no absolutes. I don’t want finite answers and I don’t want promises. I know that I have nothing to be ashamed of and that there is nothing to fear but my thoughts. I have faith in the process, faith in God, but that doesn’t take away the years of habit, worrying about how things might end before they’ve even begun.

What do I want? I want to be happy. But that question begs another, more poignant question- what do I not want? I don’t want to be surrounded by chaos. I don’t want to hurt friends. It seems not to matter that I remind myself that the current problems are not something I could have prevented, I still feel responsible. Not solely responsible, but culpable nonetheless.

I acknowledge that these are not my issues, that I have control over my own actions alone. And though everything might resolve neatly, I am more inclined to believe that it won’t be simple. If I were my own friend I would probably use patronizing expressions while reading this. Shouldn’t I have known that this would be difficult? Shouldn’t I have avoided it? But who can avoid their own journey? Even avoidance of a path is an affrmation, however negative, of that path.

I need to sleep before fatigue overwhelms me. So for tonight, goodnight.