Opening Night

It's said that the first sentence or opening paragraph of a book must grab the reader, or all is lost. Following that logic, this post really ought to be an astoundingly insightful and moving piece, but I don't feel particularly insightful or moving right now. I could wait until inspiration strikes, but as Jack London said, you can't wait for that. You have to go after it with a club.

I'm actually a bit too tired to try to be incredibly insightful. My back hurts from moving and rearranging the bookcases, I need a refill on my coffee, and I really want to do a bit more work on reorganizing the living room before a friend shows up for a few days. The living room looked just fine before, but we'd been entertaining the potential of someone else being a roommate, which would be a financial asset, but that fell through. As it is, the living room is now in a half-between state for the new rearranging it was undergoing.

I wonder if I should make a 'Cast of Characters' sort of post and assign names to people, so I can avoid making alphabet soup and vaguely confusing 'this friend' and 'that friend' references.

Of course, there's always the chance nobody's going to give a flying flip one way or another.

I have blogs elsewhere on the web, but those are names known to people. I'm known to people. I kind of like this relative obscurity. I can say what I want to the public eye, without certain parties peeking in and delighting in misfortunes and cursing windfalls knowing full well who it is.

Maybe instead of insightful, I should just for a who/what/where sort of thing. I'm a Thirtysomething woman. Just an ordinary American of German descent (how German? One of my grandparents has the surname of Schindler, just for an example), raised Catholic, escaped from the brainwashing of the Pentecostal movement, married and divorced, and in love with a dream to someday marry - except the one I love happens to be the same gender as I.

I have an invisible handicap. I probably will refrain from going into detail as to what the handicap is, since that much information might be a bit too revealing. And it's really not that important anyway.

I didn't choose this life. I didn't choose who I fell in love with. I didn't choose my sexuality. Or inversely, I did. For many years, I chose to conform. I chose to be what mainstream America seems to think is the only way to be. White. Christian. Straight. Married and being a good little doting wife. Supporter of Focus on the Family and Trinity Broadcasting Network. Conservative. Republican. Pro-Life.

I wasn't those because they were a reflection of who I was, what I am. I was those because that is how I was raised, that is how the mainstream society presents its expectations of me. And I conformed.

Up to the point of not wanting children. Up to the point of divorcing. Up to the point of looking at the empty hollow my life had become, and saying 'no more, I'm finding my own road'.

It wasn't that easy. It took years to indoctrinate these expectations, and it took years to break free. It took years - it is taking years - to clear the dominionist cobwebs from my beliefs. It took years to come to terms with my metaphysical nature, with my alternative sexuality.

I'm still in the closet in many regards. In the closet as a witch. In the closet as a lesbian. And mainstream society has me afraid to step out in the sunlight with everyone else.

I am who I am. I spent years trying to be a good little Conservative Pro-Life Christian Straight Woman. I'm not. I never was, and the effort almost destroyed my sanity and robbed my life. But despite these changes, I'm still me. I still laugh at many of the same movies, love many of the same songs, and re-read many of the same books. I still worry about bills, I still love my pets, I still like sweet potatoes with marshmallows at Thanksgiving and white lights with silver and gold decorations at Christmas. I still like the Grinch, I still think Rudolph is awesome, I still wish Charlie Brown could kick that football just once, and I still read trashy romance novels when I want some cotton candy for the brain.

I'm a lesbian. My life is no different than the conservative Christian straight married woman's next door... except that she has the legal acknowledgment that the love of her life is her family, and that is denied to me. Yet we live the same lives, sans the children part.

We both serve multiple roles to our households. We are the chauffeur, we are the chef, we are the doctor, we are the seamstress, we are the maid, we are the homemaker, we are the ones who make certain everything runs smoothly behind the scenes. The only difference between her and I is the gender of the person we curl up to at night.

I'm just an ordinary girl, in an ordinary life. Just like you, but to listen to the mainstream, you wouldn't think so. I'm deviant, they say. I'm evil. I'm a blight to society, I'm twisted and sick and different.

There is my sin.

I am different.

Yet I am also just the same.