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athenaltenaThis year at Suffolk is probably going to be defined by two things: First, having very little money and getting a crash course in budgeting and personal finance, and second, sticking my neck out and being more daring.
The second one is mostly coming about consciously, and the current project is trying to be less closeted. I know people are thinking, "You're CLOSETED? What're you talking about?! You say it on your LJ profile and The Facebook!*" but my online persona and offline are different in that respect. The online version what I'd like to be, but the fact is that in real life I'm not out to my dad's family, my roommates or a good percent of the college community (though truth be told if most of those haven't at least suspected it by now then they seriously need glasses and/or a clue). It was actually a bit of a *headwall* moment when I was thinking earlier and came to the conclusion that yes, at college I am for all intents and purposes closeted, and it is a big frickin problem.
I don't exactly flaunt it, but when it does come up in conversation I'm inclined to be vague and not really go into specifics. A perfect example happened a few days ago when Steven, a kid who lives on my floor (who incidentally is a College Republican -- but that's not the important part) was more or less flirting with me and asked if I had a boyfriend, saying I was a "very busy lady" or something vaguely creepy to that regard. What I should have done is say "No, I don't have a boyfriend, and in fact I'm sort-of-involved with a girl right now [and back off]" but instead all I did is say "No, I don't have a boyfriend." And the thing is that it drives me nuts that by doing that I'm hurting myself, since I'm not only going along with heteronormity (whoo big sociology word of the day) but not being completely truthful and short-changing myself and the people in my relationships, so it needs to change.
To boot myself out of it, I'm doing a project in my philosophy class that's about habituating yourself to a virtue, and I chose to try and habituate myself to truthfulness and courage when it comes to my sexuality. My professor allowed me to do it, saying that she could tell that it was "a very important item in [my] personal development" and I think it is. And let's face it, being closeted sucks. It takes a lot of effort, you're always worried about someone finding out, and it's incredibly draining. In high school I didn't really have to think about it since everyone knew anyway, what with pretty much everyone knowing after the rather infamous blow up in 8th grade when I first came out, but whenever I go to a new place I reflexively slam the closet door shut again, and I can't keep doing it if I want to go forward with my life or want to seriously do any sort of activism (legal or otherwise) with the LGBT community.
It took me a while to realize why, but it's because I'm afraid. Doing a whole project on hate crimes doesn't help, but even before that I realized that I'm afraid of being rejected by people because of that, even though I know logically that if they honestly dislike me just because of that they're not worth associating with. But beyond that, even if someone were to say "I like you, just not that part of you" that's still rejection. Maybe my relationship standards are too high, but I can't deal with people who say that, since for me it's an all or nothing deal. You can't separate me from my sexuality any more than you can separate me from my genes, and if you reject one part of me as far as I'm concerned you've rejected all of me. I probably need to work on that, but that's not the issue at hand.
And in a larger sense, it's indicative that I'm still not completely comfortable with myself, and that's been an uphill battle for practically my entire life. It's gotten much better, but I still run into pitfalls like this on occasion.
So that's more or less my goal this year. *deep breath* I can do it.
* My philosophy professor, who is awesome, actually teaches a course on Facebook, refers to it as "The Facebook" and now I'm copying her because I thought it was hilarious.
The second one is mostly coming about consciously, and the current project is trying to be less closeted. I know people are thinking, "You're CLOSETED? What're you talking about?! You say it on your LJ profile and The Facebook!*" but my online persona and offline are different in that respect. The online version what I'd like to be, but the fact is that in real life I'm not out to my dad's family, my roommates or a good percent of the college community (though truth be told if most of those haven't at least suspected it by now then they seriously need glasses and/or a clue). It was actually a bit of a *headwall* moment when I was thinking earlier and came to the conclusion that yes, at college I am for all intents and purposes closeted, and it is a big frickin problem.
I don't exactly flaunt it, but when it does come up in conversation I'm inclined to be vague and not really go into specifics. A perfect example happened a few days ago when Steven, a kid who lives on my floor (who incidentally is a College Republican -- but that's not the important part) was more or less flirting with me and asked if I had a boyfriend, saying I was a "very busy lady" or something vaguely creepy to that regard. What I should have done is say "No, I don't have a boyfriend, and in fact I'm sort-of-involved with a girl right now [and back off]" but instead all I did is say "No, I don't have a boyfriend." And the thing is that it drives me nuts that by doing that I'm hurting myself, since I'm not only going along with heteronormity (whoo big sociology word of the day) but not being completely truthful and short-changing myself and the people in my relationships, so it needs to change.
To boot myself out of it, I'm doing a project in my philosophy class that's about habituating yourself to a virtue, and I chose to try and habituate myself to truthfulness and courage when it comes to my sexuality. My professor allowed me to do it, saying that she could tell that it was "a very important item in [my] personal development" and I think it is. And let's face it, being closeted sucks. It takes a lot of effort, you're always worried about someone finding out, and it's incredibly draining. In high school I didn't really have to think about it since everyone knew anyway, what with pretty much everyone knowing after the rather infamous blow up in 8th grade when I first came out, but whenever I go to a new place I reflexively slam the closet door shut again, and I can't keep doing it if I want to go forward with my life or want to seriously do any sort of activism (legal or otherwise) with the LGBT community.
It took me a while to realize why, but it's because I'm afraid. Doing a whole project on hate crimes doesn't help, but even before that I realized that I'm afraid of being rejected by people because of that, even though I know logically that if they honestly dislike me just because of that they're not worth associating with. But beyond that, even if someone were to say "I like you, just not that part of you" that's still rejection. Maybe my relationship standards are too high, but I can't deal with people who say that, since for me it's an all or nothing deal. You can't separate me from my sexuality any more than you can separate me from my genes, and if you reject one part of me as far as I'm concerned you've rejected all of me. I probably need to work on that, but that's not the issue at hand.
And in a larger sense, it's indicative that I'm still not completely comfortable with myself, and that's been an uphill battle for practically my entire life. It's gotten much better, but I still run into pitfalls like this on occasion.
So that's more or less my goal this year. *deep breath* I can do it.
* My philosophy professor, who is awesome, actually teaches a course on Facebook, refers to it as "The Facebook" and now I'm copying her because I thought it was hilarious.
