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Why I'm a Mess Over Being Gay
6 years ago
Glimpse The Thoughts of Jack the Beaver
I decided a week later to make a follow up journal since I got a lot of people telling me there is no reason to be ashamed over my sexuality and I should embrace it and blah blah blah. I've heard the platitudes and the advice, I want people to understand just where my messed up perspective is coming from so you can see how I ended up in this place.
So where do I start? Well with most of my neurosis, let's start with my mental illness of choice. I suffer from what's known as Generalized Anxiety Disorder, or GAD. What that means is I don't stop worrying. And since I know I have a tendency to exaggerate, let me make it very clear to everyone so you can understand, I never NEVER stop worrying. Right now I am worrying as I write this about what people will think and how long it's taking me to post and my weight and blah blah blah more blah.
If you wonder why my journals seem to ramble it's usually because I'm worrying so much I can't think straight.
Anyway, I live in North Carolina, where hearts are big and minds are small. NC has no protection for LGBT people, if you're fired for being gay, well it sucks to be you. Also, in my hometown I know of at least one teacher losing her job at a public school for being a lesbian, because the parents worried she might corrupt the children with the gay. Stuff like this is one reason why I say living in the South is a surreal experience. You've got one of the banking centers of the US in the same state where the KKK still holds rallies. This happened earlier today in sister state Tennessee, to emphasize how difficult living here can be: https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/warr.....en-rights.html
So I can't exactly tell anyone at work. And while I know it's irrational to assume I'd lose my job due to my sexuality, but I've actually seen it happen. Add in my anxiety and you have a toxic cocktail which makes moving forward difficult. On the plus side, I can be open at home. Sure I can right?
Yeah let's discuss that for a moment. My parents are Southern Baptists. And a thousand different Southerners shivered in fear. My dad once told me that he believes that gay people will go to Hell because Jesus said so (I must have missed that verse, maybe it's in 3rd John). When my uncle came out as gay (not related by blood but my family had known him for thirty years) my parents cut all ties with him literally over night. My dad greets progress for gay people the same way one would a tidal wave.
But that's just my dad, what about my mom! Well she's even worse. I'm going to repeat an actual conversation I once had with her. "If you came out as...I mean if you...if you were...that....I'd find...I mean I would...or I'd try...I'd....I'd....I'd....thank God you're straight". The word she was looking for was "Love" as in she'd still love me.
Her inability to say she would I think says it all.
But hey, at least the furry fandom is open minded and accepting right? Yeah, within twenty-four hours of coming out, I lost five watchers. I've since lost five more, at least one person sending me a note specifically calling out me being "Part of the homo-propoganda." I also got a second note, this one from a gay furry...who told me I should feel ashamed for lying to people about my sexuality for years.
A writer once told me I was one of the best they'd seen at writing anxiety, obsession and mental illness for characters. Yeah their is a reason for that.
After last week a lot of people told me to embrace the positives of being gay. To which I respond, what positives? What has being gay ever done for me that's good? I could lose my job, would lose my family and my attempts to come out have been met with good friends but also with headaches from the supposedly open minded furry fandom. If I could change my sexuality I'd do so and not think twice about it.
Because frankly, it's made my life difficult and I don't need the headache.
So where do I start? Well with most of my neurosis, let's start with my mental illness of choice. I suffer from what's known as Generalized Anxiety Disorder, or GAD. What that means is I don't stop worrying. And since I know I have a tendency to exaggerate, let me make it very clear to everyone so you can understand, I never NEVER stop worrying. Right now I am worrying as I write this about what people will think and how long it's taking me to post and my weight and blah blah blah more blah.
If you wonder why my journals seem to ramble it's usually because I'm worrying so much I can't think straight.
Anyway, I live in North Carolina, where hearts are big and minds are small. NC has no protection for LGBT people, if you're fired for being gay, well it sucks to be you. Also, in my hometown I know of at least one teacher losing her job at a public school for being a lesbian, because the parents worried she might corrupt the children with the gay. Stuff like this is one reason why I say living in the South is a surreal experience. You've got one of the banking centers of the US in the same state where the KKK still holds rallies. This happened earlier today in sister state Tennessee, to emphasize how difficult living here can be: https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/warr.....en-rights.html
So I can't exactly tell anyone at work. And while I know it's irrational to assume I'd lose my job due to my sexuality, but I've actually seen it happen. Add in my anxiety and you have a toxic cocktail which makes moving forward difficult. On the plus side, I can be open at home. Sure I can right?
Yeah let's discuss that for a moment. My parents are Southern Baptists. And a thousand different Southerners shivered in fear. My dad once told me that he believes that gay people will go to Hell because Jesus said so (I must have missed that verse, maybe it's in 3rd John). When my uncle came out as gay (not related by blood but my family had known him for thirty years) my parents cut all ties with him literally over night. My dad greets progress for gay people the same way one would a tidal wave.
But that's just my dad, what about my mom! Well she's even worse. I'm going to repeat an actual conversation I once had with her. "If you came out as...I mean if you...if you were...that....I'd find...I mean I would...or I'd try...I'd....I'd....I'd....thank God you're straight". The word she was looking for was "Love" as in she'd still love me.
Her inability to say she would I think says it all.
But hey, at least the furry fandom is open minded and accepting right? Yeah, within twenty-four hours of coming out, I lost five watchers. I've since lost five more, at least one person sending me a note specifically calling out me being "Part of the homo-propoganda." I also got a second note, this one from a gay furry...who told me I should feel ashamed for lying to people about my sexuality for years.
A writer once told me I was one of the best they'd seen at writing anxiety, obsession and mental illness for characters. Yeah their is a reason for that.
After last week a lot of people told me to embrace the positives of being gay. To which I respond, what positives? What has being gay ever done for me that's good? I could lose my job, would lose my family and my attempts to come out have been met with good friends but also with headaches from the supposedly open minded furry fandom. If I could change my sexuality I'd do so and not think twice about it.
Because frankly, it's made my life difficult and I don't need the headache.
Those of us who have come to you, come to legit help you because we do love you and care. I've expressed this plenty enough to you as is. If you have a hard time believing it ever, then I swear to you that I'm not bullshitting you on anything. I do love you as my own family and still care for you as a good friend would and should. I know this isn't an easy mess to deal with, but you do have people trying to reach out when you're asking for help. To those who are fleeing or getting petty in being pissy, need to get the fuck over themselves and be more like adults instead of children. I don't give any fucks about shitty people like that. Let them come at me, I dare them to. It'll only prove my point more.
Dominus tecum
If your concern for him is that he'll do something he'll regret, that he will "choose poorly", then you must not have understood what his motivations are. He wants to wear an engagement ring, like I do, and have pictures of the joy in his life, like you might, without fear of losing his job or his family. He wants to not feel like a prisoner by the people who, besides me, he does love, and wants to make into better, more understanding people, without also having to deal with people who won't do the same.
Jack is your friend, and the least that he is asking for is some sympathy. If you cannot give him that, at least don't say so on his own journal in public.
I don't know what the right thing for him to do in his situation is and so yeah, I want him to make the right choices, but he's gotta figure those out. I honestly don't understand how people could react negatively to him in the way that he describes, that's not how I'm wired. I want him to get through all of his agonies and find peace in his life! He's gotta figure out how to get there and for all of us we stumble doing so. My point about the choices is that he does have the power there, no matter what the rest of the world does about it. We all have to try no matter anything else.
Dominus tecum
Does it really amaze you that people can be so spitefully petty? Is it really so hard to comprehend that people will hate someone without cause for some trait or the other?
As for power and choices:
1) Come out as gay and
a) possibly be fired for it because the law in North Carolina allows that
b) almost certainly be disinherited by his family
2) Not come out as gay and
a) live in constant fear someone will find out and he will suffer consequences as outlined in 1
b) constantly have to hide who he really is and the love he has for his boyfriend
So, unless you can provide other options, I think it's fairly obvious that the "choice" is Scylla or Charybdis. There's no power in that sort of choice, just what one considers an acceptable loss.
All of his choices have consequences, many of which are not pleasant. But at some point you have to make one. I have made many choices as well throughout my life where no matter what I did it was going to cost me something. And that's all I was saying, I understand but this is how it is. I've been there. I've been bloodied by it. I'm still being bloodied by it. I sympathize with what you are going through. But you can make those choices and endure. THAT is sympathy, and that is what I was trying to say.
Sometimes, there is no other choice but the acceptable loss. Sometimes the only power we do have is over the choice between unpleasant alternatives. I don't know if that's his position here, but if it is, I will still be his friend and care for him and try to do what little I can five hundred miles away.
Dominus tecum
The most important thing that Jack needs now is the support of all his friends s blatantly obvious as possible. It's why I gave the example I did above, so you can see exactly the type of thing he needs to hear.
I'm further from him than you are, but physical distance is no barrier to love.
Matthias may be right: Sometimes the only choice we have is the least worst option. All I can say is that having a job and experience will always provide more possibilities than not having either.
But anyways - I would take a pragmatical road. Like when you look for a partner to share you should do that. If not - sexuality has not a real impact of the daily activities beyond searching for relationship and so on. However this is always routed in personality.