born "this" way

Miss Gaga was only partially right, at least personally speaking. i'm not sure if it was as much being born "this" way as it was a complete discovery and full evolution of self, a homecoming of sorts, to the person and woman God intended me to be. but i'll tell you how i was NOT born. i was not born wrongly, or in error. you see, i was born in the God i was so strongly raised to believe in's image. so if he can do no wrong, then he did not make me in error either. from early on i had always chosen to be many things in life: the first female NBA player, an artist, perhaps even a surgeon. one day i thought maybe i'd even finally strip away all my shyness and find my inner stage diva. but i do know that i did not choose to be gay.

as a little girl, and still today, my mommy was my world. i saw the moon, the stars, and everything in between through her eyes. and it wasn't until college that we'd go through my coming out, and coming of age, story together. at the same time i was moving away to school for the first time, leaving my mother at home alone, missing her, yet spreading my big girl wings, i was realizing that what i felt for women felt exactly the way i'd always heard people describe love. instead of just drawing hearts around all the cute boys faces in our year book like my friends would force me to do, and going out on movie dates with them to prove to myself i was normal, i finally felt like i could maybe some day fall in love too. maybe some day someone would love me and i could love them back and mean it.

but the more crystal clear it became to me that i was a homosexual woman, and the more at home to myself i seemed to feel, the louder i also seemed to hear the outcries of hell, fire, and damnation preached around me. and for four years straight i have never known such pain caused by trying to live peacefully among that fire. and when that pain became too great inside that i could not hold it in one second longer, i also didn't choose to transfer that pain to my mother, or to the rest of my family. i dropped a bomb on them, i know, one that came completely out of left field and needed preparation and answers to some of their own deep-rooted questions that they were not lucky enough to get at the time. but i did not choose to splinter the love and bonds that had been created up until that point, i just chose to cry out loud for once. i needed help making sense of it too and though i didn't go about it the easiest way possible i was just simply yearning for someone...anyone...to tell me i was not as filthy and disgusting as i felt.

every day on the drive down I-40 from class to home, i would imagine how easily i could just turn the wheel ever so slightly to the left and careen myself into the cement median wall going 70 miles an hour. i even found myself sitting in front of a CVS pharmacy one afternoon, car running, trying to build up enough courage to walk in and buy enough aspirin to either stop my heart or aspirate from my own vomit and die. that would fix this, i'd tell myself. all to make the pain go away and to put my famliy out of the hardship of trying to find a way to love the real me. i obviously did not really want to die, i just wanted to be me and that be ok. to reconcile who i knew i was with what i'd always been taught.

the closer to myself i felt, the further away from God i became. i could count on one hand the number of times i'd felt comfortable in a Church, afraid that "they"...the Christians i'd grown up knowing first-hand...would be able to see right through to my gay little heart, and worse, that they'd immediately march me up to the altar and excorcise it from my soul like a demon. i was wrong to them, i was an error. i threatened anything their Bible had ever said about love and exemplified what it said about sin and disgrace. and yet the one place i'd always feared losing the love the most was there unfailingly every single moment, even through her own pain...my mother. over time, both our questions were answered more and more and we were able to begin finding some peace in those answers. peace in the fact that God was still present in those answers, that one did not have to be mutually exclusive from the other. and i think somewhere along the way we also found eachother again, this time in a more real way than ever before.

i did not choose to be gay, and my mother did not choose to have a gay daughter...but as long as i live, i will choose love over fear and disgrace every single moment of every single day. i will choose to be the me i was intended to be, to grow in His favor, and will live my life in love. hopelessly and endlessly in love with my friends and family, always striving to some day be able to pay them all back for choosing to love me without fail. no Amendment or twisted verses can ever make that pure, simple thing an error to me ever again. and i may or may not ever want to get married some day, but that in fact is my choice to make...not yours. the way i see it, the only choice you have to make at all in this issue is whether to open your eyes to the love you profess so loudly to be in God's name, or to stay blind to all the other shades and hues of it that are out there when they may not look identical to your own. so, i ask, who's the one with the choice now?

and so we pause

i'll never understand death. i know we can't expect to live forever, and maybe we wouldn't want to as our bodies become less able to keep up with the things we put it through, but to me death has always seemed like this unjust event which can never equate to the collection of humbling, awe-inspiring (for good and bad) moments you experienced throughout your time on this planet. i absolutely do fear death, despite believing in God and being "right" spiritually. and the reason i fear it, the reason it seems so unfair, is that in the exact miraculous moment a life expires his/her final burst of air and leaves this earthly place the world doesn't stop for even a tiny second. and i feel as though it should. why can't there just be a brief pause, a moment or two to nod recognition in that person's favor a "well done" of sorts. we'll give a moment of silence at a sporting event like it comes with the ticket price but never, not once, is there any silence in this world the exact moment someone leaves it. instead, as the breath leaves the body one last time activities continue all around; groceries are shopped for, clothes are shuffled through on department store racks, parking spaces hunted. time stands still for no one except the loved ones that hover in agony next to the deceased person's diminished frame and that will never be good enough for me. in life all we're trying to do is be seen, be a voice that's heard, and to make even the tiniest of impacts. so what's wrong with wanting to know that in the end our life meant something to someone other than us? that it wasn't all for nought afterall.

godspeed, margie. for as long as you could muster the strength to you lived each day with such beauty, grace, and love. your footprints will be missed...and so we pause.