*This is an elaboration on a poem on my AP*

 

I’m Not Gay (Spoken Word Poem)

Italics say slow and more smoothly

Bold say tough and in a more staccato way. (or emphasized)

CAPS LOCK is yelling

… is a pause

 

Picture a little girl, barely 7 years old, walking the street with her mum.
She’s this beautiful, happy, healthy little child. Well loved. Taken care of.

Raised by both mum and grandmother; taught to be fierce. Strong.

To have a faith in God that the lost would be jealous of.

 

This little girl, holding her mother's hand, walking down this street sees a beautiful woman.

“Mum, she's so beautiful, one day I’d like to marry someone beautiful... like that.”

My mother, progressive in her views, unlike my grandmother, tells me “You will baby”

Raised mostly by my grandmother, with her very English and very Catholic views,

I am suddenly...

afraid.

 

See until I was 14 I was fierce in my beliefs.

I was strong in my views of being an independent young woman.

I knew women had the same strengths, and power that men have, NO MATTER their efforts to bring us down, to put us in their place, to control and overpower us.

Then I realized I liked girls, as equally as I liked boys.  

My world shook.

I was scared.

 

I didn’t realize there could be something I was afraid to tell my grandmother,

who basically raised me in place of a teen mother

I didn’t realize there could be something I was afraid to bring before my God,

who basically carried me through my life.

 

A life, at times, full of pain, anguish, loss and trauma.

A god that loved me, for me

So why couldn’t he love this one little thing about me?

I was broken.

BUT STILL... I loved God.

 

I found myself at 14 telling my mom

“Mum, I’m a lesbian.”

My Mother, understanding of my fear, my worries, the stigmas, tells me

“You are not as simple as being just one thing.  You don’t need to be just gay.

There is more out there baby doll.”

 

My mother.  

Wise despite her young age, progressive in the age of the millennial, was right.  

But I didn’t understand that at just 14.

My best friend was a gay teenager.

HE TOLD ME... Bi was not real, it was fake, a way for girls to get attention.  

For people to claim they are a part of HIS community and still marry a man at the end of the day.

 

My heart broke a tiny bit that day, I didn’t understand

My heart said:

I’m not gay, I’m not straight.

My brain asked, “Then who am I?”

 

It was another 3 years till I could come to terms with being Bi-Sexual.

3 girlfriends and 1 boyfriend later.

Then I fell for a Trans Male.  But that didn’t fall under the Bi-Sexual label.  

I again found myself confused and lost

WHO AM I?

 

I was 17, society says I need a label, something for them to categorize me.

A way for them to box me up and toss me into a pile of other gays they don’t want to acknowledge.

Lesbian

Gay

Bisexual

Trans

These labels seemed to me to be so constricting.

I don’t want to be lumped into your heteronormative groups.

I don’t want some heteronormative conclusion on my life.

 

I was 19 and finally, I decided I am done conforming, feeling restricted by the labels that are thrust upon me, making me feel less like me.  

I don't need a label to help the world to understand who I take to bed at night, that’s not their DAMN BUSINESS ANYWAY.

 

I found myself in a label

but this one I WOULD CHOOSE.

This one didn’t feel perverse and invasive...forcing me to out myself

tell the story of my damn life and my personal choices,  every time someone asked. What's your label?

I AM NOT GAY

I AM QUEER... AND PROUD!

 

*My faith and my fight about that will be touched on in another posting another day*