This post comes as a response of sorts to the most recent episode of the glee project, although to be honest it’s not really about the show but more about the theme. Just for those (i imagine the majority) who don’t know what I’m talking about, the show is like Americas next top model, but instead of competing to be a model its competing for a role in Glee. This week’s theme is what I really wanted to talk about. Vulnerability.
They asked the people in the show to advertise their vulnerability because that’s a big theme for glee and a good way to get to understand a person. Why does he feel vulnerable? The answer can show you a great huge part of what makes a person. I think it seemed like a healthy thing to do as well, to acknowledge what is it that makes you feel the worst, or the most broken about yourself. So then i thought, what would I have said?
It took me the whole episode, and then a bit longer, too really fall on the answer that I think is true, but I’m not sure if it could have been put into the one word they were looking for. It’s not that I’m gay. I don’t feel like that makes me vulnerable, i don’t feel like i have any personal or dark issues surrounding it like some people do. I’m not frightened of being gay; I got over that feeling a long time ago, if I ever felt it at all. For a while I felt maybe I shared Damien’s feeling of being numb, but I don’t think I really do feel any less than other people (and Damien shows later that he doesn’t either)
So here is how I came to the truth of it. I just feel like a don’t fit in with people. I hate meeting new people, I can’t talk to people who i don’t feel like I know very well, and i guess this just comes from a strong feeling that I am a strange person. I worry about being judged, and that people will think I’m just too weird and want me to go away. There are so many things I could list that make me abnormal and in my mind they are things that are so big and important that they make me incapable of even being in the company of normal people. I think I just hate myself. I couldn’t even explain what it is that i hate, that makes me think I have no business even getting involved in other people’s lives.
Once, when I was trying to egg myself on into coming out to my family, I had this msn conversation with a friend who I had already come out too. I said that it felt like all my life I felt different, I didnt know why, but I knew I had to protect myself from it. So a built a wall, a defence system around it. I just wanted to fit in, as everybody does. Then I realise what it was that I had built the wall for. It didn’t occur to me overnight, but after a long time I had to accept it. I was gay. But the walls stayed up. Now they weren’t for keeping that part of me away, for I had accepted that it wasn’t possible for me to do that. Now it was keeping me safe. It had always been keeping me safe from prejudice, I just didn’t know it before now. I said that I knew that to break down the wall, to come out, was not dangerous. I knew it, my family are accepting, my friends were accepting, and I’m in no danger to stop hiding.
This revelation helped me to bite the bullet. But I think the defensive structure is still there. I feel like I tell myself that I should avoid social situations, because I’m still afraid of being shunned. Not so much because I am gay, but just because I have always felt like I’m different in such a way that might cause people to hate me. Now I know that I’m not (as far as the people I care about goes) but I still can’t shake that feeling. That I am bound to outcasted. That I am unlovable. I feel like i will live a friendless life and i will die alone, and i don’t know what i can do about it because I’m so much more frightened being rejected.
I’ve always been lazy, and the easy option is to turn myself away from people, because it will take much less effort. I never allowed myself to learn how to be around new people, how to make friendships. Learning how to do that is a huge hurdle that I will need to face. But the real reason is that it seems like the safer option. Don’t give people a chance to turn you away, and save yourself from the humiliation and the hurt.
Perhaps I have fallen a bit of topic. I’ve been typing out my thoughts as I thought them so sorry if it’s a bit of a mess to read. The point is though the thing that makes me vulnerable, the thing I would have put on my sign, is that I am ... do you know what? I’m still not even sure how to put it in a word. I am afraid of rejection, I am insecure for no tangible reason, and I feel like no one could ever love me. It’s not that I don’t know that I am lovable. I know that I am good, funny and no stranger than any other person in the world. I know it, but I just can’t feel it. That is what makes me feel vulnerable.
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