The G Word

If kindergarten was when I first learned about the concept, then fifth grade was when I first heard the actual word. 

The G word. 

Gay. 

It was as if overnight the word didn't exist and then suddenly everyone and everything was "gay". Or at least it was according to my classmates. 

I knew the traditional meaning of the word from holiday songs and from the Little House on the Prairie books. Gay was happy, light, and cheerful... So it made no sense to me that my classmates were using it as a bad word. 

I didn't know exactly what "gay" meant to my classmates, but I certainly knew it wasn't something I wanted to be. "Gay" was definitely something disgusting, gross, shameful, demeaning, and stupid. 

Every time I was called gay I felt worthless. Every time I was called gay I wondered what it was about me that made them use that awful word to describe me. 

That word hurt me to the core at age 10. 

When I found out what it meant, two people of the same sex loving one another.... I swore to never be that. 

I couldn't bear the thought of that word describing me for real. 

I couldn't bear the thought of the G word becoming my daily reality. 

The Spark

It was kindergarten that I first heard about it. Being gay, that is. 

Not in those words though; "gay" was still a foreign sound... But age five was when I first knew I had the option to not be straight.

It was on they playground at recess one day, and a friend and I were standing up on the top of the playscape, watching and listening to all of the girls chase the boys in the class around and around and around. 

"I'm not going to marry a boy." My friend said seriously, "I'll marry a girl instead."

"You can do that?" I asked incredulously. I had never heard of anything other than a relationship between a man in a woman. 

"Yes." 

And though I forgot that conversation for a while, I now know that I will never forget it. Because the journey, this long long journey of finding myself began with that. 

And as we all know, it only takes a tiny spark to flare into a raging inferno...destroying everything in its path. 

Here I Am

In February a friend of mine died suddenly and unexpectadly in a freak medical accident. 

Just like me, he was 18. Just like me, he planned on studying music in college. We played together in a community youth wind ensemble and we were in the same social group there. 

And then he was gone. 

I remember the funeral vividly. The huge cathedral, the Latin chantings, the overpowering smell of incense, the pews jam-packed with people and even more people standing around the edges because there were far too few seats. And the processional. Always the processional. 

As the family walked in behind the casket, we sang, or rather, whispered and choked out through tears was a favorite hymn of mine called Here I Am, Lord. 

Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go, Lord, if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart. 

It's a gorgeous hymn, but ever since that frigid Friday at the end of February, I have desperately avoided it. And except for it running through my head and making me cry while I'm trying to fall asleep, I have succeeded. 

Until yesterday. 

Yesterday was the two-month anniversary of his death. And at choir rehearsal, we ended up running through that song. 

And I thought my heart was breaking. 

I feel as if I will never be able to sing or hear this song without remembering. Without shedding a tear. 

I, the Lord of sea and sky, I have heard my people cry. All who dwell in dark and sin, my hand will save. I who made the stars of night, I will make their darkness bright. Who will bear my light to them? Whom shall I send?

Recalled To Life

When I was little I loved to be read bible stories. 

We had several versions of the bible in our house, and I recall two in particular that had great pictures that helped bring the stories to life. 

And ever since I was little I always loved the stories from Holy Week. 

Unfortunately, when I asked my mom to read them too me, she often said no because they were "too sad". It's not always natural for a little kid to want to hear stories of betrayal, trial, crucifixion, and death. But I wasn't concentrating on the literal details, no, I was focusing on the feelings of Jesus during that time. Because somewhere in the back of my little brain, I knew that life wasn't always going to be easy, and that I would need to learn how to deal with betrayal, loneliness, grief, and pain, and the stories of Good Friday taught me just that. 

That, and they taught me hope. 

Because after every Good Friday...comes Easter Sunday. 

And after death...comes life. 

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Holy, holy, holy, hallelujahs. 

Agnus Dei

I have a strange obsession with requiems. 

There's an odd infatuation that I have with these haunting melodies that speak of death. 

Brahms. Rutter. Fauré. Mozart. And more. 

Requiems comfort me. They speak to me. 

My all time favorite movement from any requiem though is the Agnus Dei from the John Rutter Requiem. Agnus Dei translates into lamb of god, who taketh away the sins of the world. It's gorgeous. 

It's also incredibly depressing. For in the middle of the piece, Rutter has the basses and tenors repeat the phrase in the midst of life, we are in death over and over and over again. 

There's not much you can do to make that more depressing.  

But at the end of the movement, (and this is the part that I truly love to pieces), Rutter's mood changes. 

It changes...into lyrics that are perfect as as I sit here on this Holy Saturday, Good Friday fresh in my mind, but knowing that Easter Sunday will come with the next rising of the sun. 

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord:
he that believeth in me, though he were dead,
...yet shall he live:
and whosoever liveth and believeth in me
...shall never die.

The Yellow Journal

On my first day at the hospital, they gave me a journal and told me to write.
"Write down your feelings." They said, "It will help."

The journal was yellow. I hate yellow. In fact I highly despise yellow.

The journal is mostly empty. In my five-week hospital stint I only wrote in it once, maybe twice. The thing was, I was scared. I was scared of the thoughts running through my head. Writing them down made them real, and I did not want them to be real.

One page in the notebook is filled with my terrifying thoughts. They are scrawling, jumbled, and almost completely incoherent. The writing becomes larger and larger and more illegible as the page moves downward.

The last words are "let me die."

I am scared of that notebook. It only has one entry, but that one page of writing scares the living daylights out of me. That was where my mind was only six months ago.

But I'm not afraid of my thoughts anymore. At least not most of them. And because I'm not afraid anymore, I'm writing again. I'm going to write everything.


Just not in a yellow journal.