It’s Not Over Yet, Thankfully

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Halloween with its ghoulish cheer and haunted happiness is a close second, but nothing comes close to the warmth and love I touch on Thanksgiving. And not all of that is because I’m always filled with stuffing.

The first time I celebrated the holiday without my family I was in Texas, living on a farm in the middle of nowhere. I knew relatively little about the women I was living with. I didn’t care to know them. Not because they were bad people – I simply didn’t have the energy to emotionally invest myself into forming new friends. And yet, come Thanksgiving, we all gathered, cooked, baked, and slaved over a four course buffet fit for royalty. It was the first time I had ever tasted green bean casserole. I baked an apple pie that was devoured within the first ten minutes. To this day, I can feel the contentment and calm that followed our feast.

The second time, I was in a small town nestled in the mountains of Idaho surrounded by chaos. There was no turkey, no love, no calm, and too many tears. This was the first month post-trauma: I was a whirling dervish of destruction.

This year might become the third Thanksgiving where I am not with family. But unlike times prior, it will be because of my choice alone. I have learned how to cook all of our favorite foods, right down to the perfect turkey, and can successfully do so in my tiny one-person kitchen. Food is no longer a strong enough draw to lure me from my home. Neither is company, for I live with and among friends in my apartment complex and the tense bickering of family can hardly compare with comfortable laughter. The pull away this time is due to a furry new arrival.

About a month ago, I adopted a cat from one of the many shelters around the city. Peregrin Took, or Perri, has quickly become a core influence on not only my constant thoughts but my unconscious behavior. Soft as a chinchilla with lengthy talons to match, she shines a light on personal barriers I thought I had hidden long ago. She hates being picked up or held but loves to be comforted, as do I. She despises the vacuum, as do I. She is a cautious yet curious problem-solver, as am I. She loves cautiously, as do I. However, those whom she deems worthy gain her eternal affection. Even now as I type she is sleeping next to me. Her constant presence has calmed much of the anxiety, washed away much of the sadness, that has built because of this tumultuous year.

Her nightly purring has allowed my mind to settle at night so I can sleep decently, something I had long ago resigned to never happening again. This is even confirmed by my Fitbit, which has shown that I get about 45 more minutes of sleep than I did prior to her adoption. It may not seem like anything worth celebrating, but when I routinely got less than five hours of sleep, those peaceful extra minutes have been welcomed without question. I could not be more grateful to or for her.

Like most animals, I have a feeling she knows what I have seen, felt, heard, touched. The places that have seen me. The people. The things that I have brushed against and in turn been touched by. And yet she does not care.

In this season of gratitude, I am particularly thankful for Perri.

 

The Re-Education of Their America

I vividly remember the first time someone found out I wasn’t straight.

Some LBGTQ people choose to have coming out parties, celebrating their strength among close friends. Others make announcements, either in person or on social media. Still yet others only tell individual people in the dark of night for fear of retribution from their family, city, country. I did none of those. My banishment from the proverbial closet was forceful, yet accidental.

And yet, during that night three years ago, only one-third of me came out.

There are three parts of my identity, three pieces of the puzzle that fit together yet remain individual. Gender, sexuality, and romantic identity are commonly correlated, but they are not synonyms. For those that do not understand the separation of the three, I forward The Genderbread Person and a highly recommended article about the difference between sexual and romantic attraction.

I am agender, meaning I do not feel to be either male or female. I am neutral, neither. I am asexual, meaning I have no internal drive to have sex. I am not actively against it – I feel the same way about sex as I do about tables. I am biromantic, meaning I am romantically attracted to both men and women. When I was 22, I first discovered the term “asexuality” after a therapist suggested I research it. I had known since I was 16 that I was attracted to men and sometimes women, and for an equal amount of time I dismissed my gender identity due to growing up a tomboy.

During my accidental coming-out at 23, a small group of friends and I were watching TV when we decided to watch Netflix instead. My computer was the only one that was able to be connected to the monitor, so we pulled out the cords, opened up a window, and hooked up my laptop. Prominently displayed on the TV were then my most frequently visited pages: Facebook, my university’s homepage, Google, Twitter, Netflix, and AVEN. AVEN, with its emboldened purple, grey, black, and white triangle and large lettering proclaiming it to be the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network, instantly and accidentally kicked 1/3 of me out of the closet. My friends were curious at first, but on the whole I was roundly supported. After years of hiding my identity, one part was no longer a secret.

I do not have good reason for hiding the other two. Despite their many flaws, my family is largely supportive of all LBGTQ people and even offered to support me financially when I went to Toronto for a Pride conference. My friends are lovely, many of them flying the rainbow flag themselves. I proudly live in a city that is one of the world’s safest places for LBGTQ people. Jews are well known for welcoming minorities as are Vincentian Catholics. Other than my own mild fear of rejection and much larger apathy, there is little reason to hide.

But now, maybe there is.

As the world learned Wednesday morning, Donald Trump is the president-elect of the US. Gov. Mike Pence, his pick for Vice President, has roundly championed a list of anti-LBGT laws during his terms as both Representative and Governor of Indiana. Notable ones include his support of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, belief that being gay is a choice and indicates the societal collapse of marriage, support for religious discrimination in the workplace, and measures to severely reduce funding to organizations that assist LBGTQ people, like homeless shelters and mental health funding. Most importantly, he believes that conversion therapy is a legitimate and effective treatment for being gay.

While I now live in a state that has banned conversion therapy, at one point I lived in both Texas and Idaho, states that have no such protections. Minors can, and are, exposed to forcible starvation, physical restraints, and electroshock therapy at the discretion of their parents for not being straight. And at what cost? Those who go through the process are six times more likely to have major depression, three times more likely to use drugs, and eight times more likely to attempt suicide or succeed.

Mike Pence has made his record on LBGT rights clear. So let me do the same.

Though not under the guise of converting my sexual identity, I have been forcibly starved, physically restrained, and denied medical service in the name of “therapy”. Over a period of six weeks, I lost 40 lbs., got an infection in my arm, and began hallucinating. Although my addiction to pills did not truly bloom until nearly a year later, I began trying to manipulate the psychiatrist into giving me more prescriptions with the hopes that I could either blur my time awake or simply sleep the day away. My already present depression skyrocketed to a point where I tried to end my life by eating copious amounts of toothpaste, the most lethal substance to which I was allowed constant access in a heavily-restricted location. One of the other patients in the facility molested and sexually harassed every single female-bodied person present. Unfortunately, we were some level of bisexual or biromantic and so staff all turned a blind eye.

What I went through was torture.

I will not permit anyone else to experience the same.

To me, Vice President-elect Mike Pence is more than a champion of anti-LBGT policy. He is a decimation to the community in which I call home, a force of utter destruction to the people I call my friends. He routinely advocates the torture of youth for being precisely who they are, and expects me, as an educator, to allow him to do so.

I will not let him use my classroom to amplify his voice.

So Mike Pence, I would like to let you know that I will not shy away from complete and total LBGT inclusion. I will promote textbooks and stories that honor the struggle my brothers and sisters have gone through at the hands of others like you. I will make sure all my students understand that under no circumstance will I tolerate any exclusion of LBGT students, no matter how mild. No matter what policies you throw in my way, my classroom and I will always remain a safe haven.

I will not be silenced to continue the mis-education of your America.