Anonymous Posts(12.21.09–12.27.09)

Every week, we collect anonymous entries sent in using the link on our sidebar and post them all on Monday. We post anything as long as it doesn't contain personal attacks or hate speech. Feel free to submit your thoughts and questions :)

Hey all! Hopefully everyone's having an awesome break. I've been spending mine counting down to New Year's Eve with Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper.

We didn't get any anonymous posts two weeks ago (12.14-12.20), mostly because the Dukies were busy catching up on a semester's worth of sleep. But y'all have definitely stepped it up this week! The comments on the last three posts (not to mention the posts themselves) have been equally intriguing and touching. The discourse, empathy and support among friends and strangers alike on this blog is really pretty amazing. Personally, it is consistently reassuring after seeing all of the hate in the news that this Community not only exists, but is strong, and is there for each other.

But anyhow! Here are the posts from this week. As always, these require our responses, so let's get to it :)

#1

Hi so I saw where you posted something about Uganda, so I figured international LGBT issues are just as welcome as American ones. I'm doing my thesis on a group of people in South Asia called the hijras - they can be best thought of as male-to-female transgenders. The NC Consortium for South Asian Studies (the Duke/UNC/NC State organization for South Asian studies) liked my thesis website enough to link it to their blog, so I thought I'd share it with you guys as well.

Happy holidays!

link: http://lisa.cs.duke.edu/~john/finalproject/index.html

-John

[Ed. Note: Thanks, John!]

#2

Hi Everyone,

Recently, I've been asked by JournElism.org/United Press International to write a 5 articles series on an important issue I hold dear to me. I've chosen LGBTQ equality as one and women's issues as a close second. Anyway, I need to identify 5 key players in the realm of LGBTQ issues (it can be anyone) and have to submit an outline/interview questions.

I would really appreciate any feedback/ideas you all have. So far, I've identified Brian Bond, the White House Deputy Director of Public Affairs, Joe Solmonese (President of HRC), Tammy Baldwin, Wanda Sykes, Ellen Degeneres, Bishop Gene Robinson, etc. Clearly women of color are missing, so any suggestions on that would be a plus. Any out LGBTQ persons or allies in policy-making positions would be especially helpful. Also, any questions you might have for such persons would be great!

In the end, I envision the article series to go beyond the popular gay marriage debate and into some concrete issues that not everyone is familiar with. Things like ENDA, housing discrimination, health issues, even LGBTQ youth (how at risk they are), the Bullying Act, etc.

Any help (small or big) would be fully appreciated!!!

Happy Holidays,

Michelle

[Ed. Note: Hopefully we can help! Readers, I know you've got this one.]

#3

I don't really know what it is I want to write. Or what the point of this post is. But, I've been writing this post in my head for a few weeks now and I feel like I should take the leap and type it out and send it in. For years now, I've been "questioning." It wasn't something I thought about every day, but certain situations made me internally confront my sexuality before immediately supressing my thoughts and moving on with my life. I played this game with myself for a while (honestly, I don't really remember when it started...which is saying something). I met with a new psychiatrist recently to address some other issues when I finally broke my silence. That first appointment I avoided my shrink's questions, but for the next few weeks all I could think about was rehearsing what I'd say next time. Despite how easy it all came in my head and how long I've secretly yearned to have someone to talk to about this, during the next session I found myself hyperventilating, sweating, lightheaded and unable to make eye contact; my heart beat was pounding and I had a serious knot in my stomach. I felt sick for the rest of the day. A HUGE ally with a tolerant, liberal family (and friends), I don't know why this is such a struggle for me. And while I used to not think about it often, recently it's the only thing on my mind. Any quiet downtime I have, I'm running through things in my head. Still, I'm more confused than ever by my sexuality. And you'd never know it.

[Ed. Note: I will leave advice and the like to our comments section, but know that you are not the only person that's dealt with this. Far from it. In fact, this reminds me of post #1 from three weeks ago. Just as I told her, I'll say that I think you'll find that a lot of the Readers have gone through a similar process.]

#4

I have always hated being home for breaks, but the past two weeks have been the absolute worst. This semester, I started my first romantic relationship with another woman (though I've known I was queer for much longer) and being back with my family reminds me how close-minded they are. Well, "close-minded" may not be the right word, but "conservative" definitely is.

It's not even the LGBT stuff that gets to me. My sister is looking at colleges and my dad considers racial diversity a negative aspect of a school and she's not allowed to go to a university that is not religiously affiliated. Ever since I've realized that race and gender equality issues are of paramount importance to me, I've felt a growing distance from my family; they see me as formerly perfect, traditional daughter who got brainwashed by her "radical" group of friends at school (I know, Duke is "radical" to them *eyeroll*) and sort of tune me out whenever I try to explain my views.

So this sexuality thing is like the icing on the cake. We almost NEVER bring up sexuality, not even in a general or theoretical way, so telling them that I'm friends with a lot of gay people and that I consider myself queer is not on the radar. And telling them about my girlfriend (whom they've met on many occasions) is simply out of the question.

For a while, I was really depressed about the fact that I couldn't be open with my parents, but now I just feel feel like they don't deserve to know. When they make me feel like my opinions and emotions are valid, I will be honest with them. But for now, I'll walk the awkward line I'm always tip-toeing on at home: maintaining the prized-daughter status I had in high school while trying to get them to accept and understand what is important to me now. I just need to survive until January 12, when I'm surrounded by everyone and everything I love once again.

[Ed. Note: Going home for the break seems to be rough on a lot of the Readers in this respect. Thanks for sharing your story :)]

Looking back, looking forward.

I need to start being honest about something. This last year’s been pretty rough. As long as I’ve been the me I remember, I’ve told myself that I could make it through anything, alone if need be—that no matter what happened, I could always remain stable and centered, grounded by logic and rationalism. I didn’t need help because I had to be there for people for when they struggled. On most fronts, I succeeded. But I lost a few things along the way.

For example, the ability to ably express emotion to others (caffeine-fueled excitement doesn’t count). Gone. I’m sure an event or two has slipped my mind, but since the middle of May or so, the most I could do in the presence of others was look mildly distraught and deep in thought. Whatever the cause, it resulted in me just kind of having an excess of sadness I needed to deal with whenever others weren’t around, which was unfortunate and, in a word, inconvenient. But that’s just kind of how emotions are.

My ex and I broke up in January—he was my first—and since then I’ve been even more self-indulgent with my introspection than usual. I’ve experimented a lot with the various friendships in my life—admittedly, and shamefully, sometimes to the detriment of kindness, friendship, and my better judgment. I wanted to foster true connections and conversations and, well, love. But I’ve been so focused on the process I’ve forgotten the purpose.

The questions were many: do I work better alone or with someone else? What role do I want my friends to play in my life? What makes a friendship successful? Do friendships necessarily obey certain constraints of such things as time spent together, shared interests, and shared experiences? Or, rather, is it something intangible that draws us together? Romance, too, as well as intimacy, raised their own series of questions.

All in all, it’s been a pretty eventful, if somewhat unusual, year. It has seen the majority of my coming out process, brief flurries of romance (probably ill-advised, though I don’t do regrets), lots of ambiguity and mixed signals. If I had to pick one word to classify the year, I think it would be lonely. Much of the time, I felt like some sort of social scientist, observing and classifying behaviors and patterns without truly being a part of the systems I study. It’s been a year of sadness and disappointment. Hopefully next year I’ll do better.

What I came here to write, though, was about all the time I’ve been spending with my family and what I’ve seen. In a word, love. I think I’ve fallen completely in love with my nephews, just as will surely happen with their yet-unborn siblings. The love and care I’ve seen from their parents—my siblings in particular—has created some sort of empathic response. I feel joy and anguish with them, and just tonight I was finally able to cast myself into my brother’s place and feel the intense love and responsibility of fatherhood. There’s a certain powerlessness to it too. Or at least, that’s what I felt in my brother’s place. It was entirely magical and I could simply feel how life-changing a birth is. At the same time, a felt a certain separation, as though these were emotions I wasn’t exactly intended for.

I’m expressing myself quite poorly, and I’m sorry for that. I’ll give it one more go:

I have decided, for good, that I think I am here on this planet to learn how to love (it should be obvious I am not talking about romance nor, necessarily, intimacy). Sometimes I forget that, sometimes for as long as a year at a time. I understand that questions need not have answers and that stories need not have endings, and time will continue to make me more comfortable with this. Despite a rocky year, seeing the familial love in our household this winter break has reinvigorated my hope for myself and for the world. If only for a moment, I feel like I’m back again, hopeful and whole, ready for the coming year, wherever it leads me. Like I said, I don’t do regrets.