Gay Pride and Bad Times: The Two are Unrelated

First, a message from our sponsor: Gay.

It is Pride month, and I would like to use my platform to make it abundantly clear that I am straight. I am straighter than a ruler. As a straight man who enjoys heterosexual sex with female women, I decided that I wanted to write something in support of gay rights. I support gay rights. Ok, I have to go now. There’s thirty women in my bed with me, and I am attracted to all of them. Go Pride, even though I am straight. To be clear, I am straight.

Ok, that paragraph was an old joke. Every straight guy who talks about pride always prefaces it with, “While I may not feel this way…” You can support being gay without emphasizing repeatedly that you’re not gay. Half of them look as ridiculous as the paragraph I wrote above. 

Personally, I’d love to be gay. It seems dope. Now, I do see that there are some disadvantages such as bigotry, homophobia, United States laws, but I am firmly in the camp of who gives a shit. Literally, I don’t care about any of it. I think who a person is banging might be the least interesting thing about them. If some guy prefers the romantic company of other gay men, who am I to judge? Knock yourself out. And if you care, then you’re just an asshole and that’s really it.

I do have two points though because I think what I described is an idea that is becoming a bit of a norm, at least in New England college circles. 

I think that it is a happy accident that I never put any stock into gay stereotypes. For whatever reason, I just wasn’t aware of them, and I genuinely thought anyone could be gay(which is, of course, true). I wasn’t this amazing, enlightened person; I think I just didn’t watch the same television other people did. Eventually, you get to the point where everyone thinks the guy with a high voice who hangs out with girls and cares about fashion and likes Twilight is gay. And, yeah, a lot of times that person is gay, but their identity should not be so reductive.

In the show Brooklyn 99, Andre Braugher plays Captain Raymond Holt. Captain Holt is a fucking man, there’s no denying. He’s got a deep voice, he’s a leader, he shoots a gun, and he’s as tough as they come. And by the way, he’s gay. I thought that was an amazing thing. Because his sexuality is only a part of who he is. First and foremost, Captain Holt is a police captain, he’s the leader of the squad, and he’s strict. But, he happens to go home to a husband and not a wife. And if it weren’t for him telling people that he was gay no one would ever guess it.

It is a disservice to look at someone and only see them as gay or bisexual. Maybe a guy lives up to every gay stereotype in the book and he walks around with a fucking rainbow painted on his chest; that man is still a distinct person who made a choice to embrace who he is outwardly. There are others in the community who make different choices, and we need to respect those too. 

Finally, I want to talk about the closet because it impresses me immensely. I think it’s a beautiful thing to witness a coming out, and it is a wholly unique experience. For better or worse, we assume everyone is straight until proven otherwise which makes sense because most people are straight. I can only speak on this as a friend who has had his friend come out of the closet. For someone to be able to effectively hide a part of them for so long, then to be able to release it, and to have it be understood is so powerful.

I mean, what do I do here in this blog? I try to make the person who reads it understand a piece of who I am, and it takes me a million fucking words. Coming out of the closet allows you to be truly seen and vulnerable in only a few words. It takes bravery and courage, but the rewards seem wonderful. I’ve tried to come out of the closet as straight to people, but it doesn’t seem to have the same effect. 

In conclusion, I am an admirer of the LGBTQ community, and I wish them a happy month. Also, I’m straight. 

Part 2:

I have struggled the past week to find structure, in my writing. Writer’s block is generally imagined as being unable to find words, but, in my case, words are rarely hard to come by. It is proper structure that eludes me. Structure is the lifeblood of any good piece of writing. Without it, we can’t understand what we’re reading. Imagine watching a football game without announcers or graphics. There would be plenty of football, but I couldn’t tell you what the hell is going on.

So, I look for structure in my thoughts and my thoughts are dark. Some of the things running through my head lately have been real bleak. I posted a Snapchat story at 3 PM and captioned it, “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” While technically true, it’s a bummer. So, why am I struggling so much?

The truth is I am mentally ill. I spend a lot of time in complete denial of that fact. I don’t think I’ll every actually accept it. It’s not the worst thing in the word, and it is obviously wonderful that I have no physical illnesses to speak of. But, I feel a little sad because this is my fate, and there are concerns that come with it. 

The truth is I really don’t know if I will ever be able to forge a healthy relationship. I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle a professional career. I don’t know if I’ll find peace and happiness in my life. I really don’t know. 

See, on paper I’m a far more productive human being than I feel. I have accomplished a lot by any standard. In high school, I think I exceeded reasonable expectations, and it has set me up nicely for college. I have a fine scholarship and a fine GPA and a fine on campus job. If LinkedIn were a dating app, I would be a catch! But none of it was easy.

Ok, deep breath. So far, this whole thing seems like I’m whining. No one has an easy time! I’m certainly not alone in that. So, let’s get into specifics.

I have so many memories. I remember so many of my thoughts and my feelings. The problem is that they so often get twisted in my head. Imagine Google was really really fucked up. Like every time you google something you just get images of dead puppies. Or, if you google something innocuous like the Eiffel Tower, the first result is like about how you’d die if you fall off of it, or that the whole thing could collapse at any moment. You’d probably want to switch to Bing, but Bing sucks.

The point of that little metaphor is that, Evil Google is what my brain feels like all the time. It’s just a constant stream of bad memories and bad thoughts and bad fears. The Eiffel Tower thing actually happened to me.  I was walking the stairs of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France and I was laughing and joking like always. Then, a switch in my head flipped, and I was suddenly convinced that I was going to fall and die. I practically crawled down the tower in terror.

I’d like to talk about the switch in my brain because it happened to me recently. I don’t have a clue what it is, exactly. A week ago, I was having a great time with friends. I stepped aside for just a second to go to the bathroom, and something in my head changed. It was just a rush of bad to my skull. I literally had to sit down and just grapple with my horrible thoughts and, just like that, I’ve been struggling with them since. 

Right now, I’m cutting out friends and family because I don’t feel like talking. I’m sulking and dwelling on a catalog of my worst memories and feelings. I’m spending time with a girl who hates me who I also think is the worst, just because she gives me attention. It’s all a mess.

If you remember the first post I ever did, I described my illness, at its worst, as being in a tunnel. I am definitely in the tunnel right now.

And now, I’m finally at a loss of words. I don’t know what to write to make myself feel better. I feel like I’m poison. I feel like I will never be happy or successful and that I’ll never be loved by other people. The worst part is that I feel like I don’t know how to be a good person or to love others. I feel like poison. I am afraid that this feeling is never going to go away until the day I end up checked into a mental hospital.

Welp. That was a real downer. Um, enjoy your week everyone! No, ok. I shall inject a bit of hope. The buck stops here. I’ve been worse than this. I will turn it back around starting now. It’s not going to be right away, and it’s not going to be linear, but I’ve been down this road and I know what to do. I’ll talk about it. I’m doing that here, and I will seek out trusted individuals with whom to talk with. I will talk to my therapist. I will get back to running and eating. I will attempt to sleep. I will throw myself back into my friends no matter how nervous or irrationally angry I may be. If I must, I will delete social media and take myself offline. I will write, and I will watch the shows that comfort me. 

It feels natural to make all the wrong decisions. I feel like I should just lay in bed for hours and talk to no one. It is time to fight that instinct. 

I need to understand that this is who I am. I am not always in control of my thoughts and sometimes things feel really bad for no good reason. I will be carrying this illness with me for a long time yet to come. But, I always have the ability to fight back. Time to get locked and loaded. I have a lot more living to do, and I want to enjoy it as much as I can for as long as I can.