Entry Date: 5/17/17
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What Lies at the Other End of the Rainbow? :
The LGBTQ+ Community Under Assault - Coming Out, Speaking Up, & Learning to Love
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Living life in a prism; I lived the first Twenty-Four or so years of my life in the dark. The most liberating thing to ever happen to me was learning how to love. REALLY love. Not the familial love, or even the love of a dear close-knit group of friends. REAL love.
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I came out in January as of this year as Pansexual when I met someone I never thought I could love. Feelings stirred I never thought could stir. It was a revelation; a rise from the ashes. Most of my young adult life under the guise of my perceived heterosexuality I had never had an issue with the LGBTQ+ Community. They lived their lives and were happy, and I took no offense; they can live and let love I thought; all the while I thought so could I, but I was subconsciously deeply hurting.
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When I met her my heart sang and it hasn't stopped singing. I've always kept an open eye and mind. The writing on the wall for the LGBTQ+ Community is that it has always been under assault. I knew this as I perceived I "was" and that knowledge is even more heightened in my mind now that I have realized my Pansexuality. It's immensely difficult to look around and try and be objective and not see the writing on that wall. Rights are given; taken away; fought for and earned; only to be wiped away again.
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I've never understood the fight for LGBTQ+ Rights. A naive mind I may have, I always thought: "Why must they [and now, we!] fight for Rights they should already have?" Why must anyone have to fight for Rights? They are RIGHTS?!
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Then, I hear the atrocities in Chechnya; the archaic and twisted methodology of U.S. Gay Conversion Therapy; the stones thrown in the Middle East, and the HB2 and HB142 legislation passed in North Carolina. More and more I'm coming to the conclusion its not purely homophobia or misinterpreted Religious Scripture spun relentlessly to apply to current day phenomena... My conclusion is we, the LGBTQ+ Community, are not seen as "real".
How can anyone justify withholding rights? Civil Rights are for everyone. If we don't "exist" to them; if our Sexuality is our "choice" and not our unavoidable reality, then we do not exist to those that are withholding our rights.
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This has been echoed in Chechnya where local government officials pertaining "matters of human rights" have denied the existence of gay men. A Human Rights official, per the NYT was quoted as saying in an interview "I see flies, I see mosquitoes, but I have never seen a gay man". The LGBTQ+ Genocides in Chechnya are well-documented, yet little is done to intervene by the rest of the Free World. Is the Human Rights "advocate" in Chechnya truly under the impression Homosexuality does not exist? Or is it something deeper? Is it a cognitive dissonance?
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In the United States of America, the land of the free; we are not so brave. The LGBTQ+ Community are denied Rights under predominantly Religious [Christian] pretense. In Chechnya, stringent archaic forms of Islamic rule leave the LGBTQ+ Community to cower. How much better are we, in our Democracy as it stands, different from that of Chechnya? Sending our children to "Pray-The-Gay-Away" Camps and imposing "Bathroom" Legislation that mocks the existence of the Trans Community and the "Religious Freedom" proposals allowing businesses to willingly discriminate and refuse service to anyone (namely the LGBT Community) if the owners see our "lifestyle" as an affront to their religious beliefs? Give me my slice of pizza and kindly screw off. Let the girl I love go the bathroom wherever she may please.
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Quit the charade. Our 1st Amendment Rights are under an assault in the name of the baseless claim that "their" 1st Amendment Right to pray to whomever they wish is under assault by merely having us in their presence. The United States of America is NOT a Christian Country and it was never designed or intended to be as such. That's why we have an Amendment ensuring Religious Freedom from persecution. An LGBTQ+ "PDA" is not persecuting you. Nowhere in the creed of Christianity is there an implicit denouncing of Homosexuality. They will pull passages from the Old Testament while ignoring others that don't further their agenda; but they forget the base of Christianity; as I myself am a Christian knows, is in the New Testament; The life of Christ.
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Jesus befriended the poor, the sick, and the gays too. Jesus was the outcast of outcasts. The Champion of the downtrodden and their redeemer. I cannot sit back and watch my brothers and sisters be vilified for who they are and who they love. We were all born in love and we will all die in that same love; all of us, within and outside the LGBTQ+ Community. If you are not LGBTQ+ then you are an Ally, and if you are neither, than you will one day meet the maker of which you claim to hold in such high esteem; and he will judge you and you will pay dearly for your sins and your blasphemy.
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Blessed be the meek, for we shall inherit the Kingdom of God. We shall overcome, we will persevere in furthering the journey to true liberation; the realization of our dreams. We will not go away; nor will our brothers and sisters at Stonewall so long ago have died in vain. Just love; that's all we can do. There is no pot of gold at the Rainbow. There's something more; there's redemption; there is peace... Love is Love.
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John
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Entry Date: 5/13/17
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Living with Manic-Depression:
An Author's Public Confessional
&
A Reader's Companion for
"The Lion's Den"
(see: Volume Two)
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Finger-tapping, dancing feet. Words flying, laughter near hysteria; don't you dare knock me off my cloud. Or far-gone; getting a response is like prying teeth, shaky hands, over-thinking, rapidly blinking, heart and mind racing; a nervousness. A critical self-awareness. The deepest fears of a paranoid psychosis; like the irrational phobia of being fully aware during a major surgical procedure although you're under anesthesia. This is reality and it's too real. You cannot utter a word. Trapped in a shell, screaming internally. Your private Hell, no vacancy; full of hurt, devoid of all else...
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This is Mania. One side of my coin.
Listless, helpless, hard to catch my breath, breathing is labored. All things considered I am physically in decent enough health but I feel like I'm deprived. A fall from grace, hands buried in my face. It can be melancholic, and it can be truly crippling. The self-awareness hasn't wavered; it is the fuel to the transition. I know where I had been earlier in Mania; helpless in my ability to foresee it, prevent it, and then, to control it. I spiral; some are more dizzying than others. Sometimes it's just misery from self-aware realization. Sometimes as you wallow, you become swallowed by your fears. New fears and old fears. Same fears. The past is not a place of solace. It's a place where regret spreads like a wildfire; a rapidly growing cancer. New memories. New bits of old. They eat at you. They bite and they claw. You are in a hostile territory. You're in their Den, and you are not welcome here. No memory is ever really "good"; even the good times cannot be relished in recalling memory while in this spell; good times are a fuel for regret; mocking your present and making you doubt the future. No topic is off limit. No memory. No trauma is safe. Minor, major, pivotal, newly realized as pivotal; hindsight is the Bastard son of Mankind. Perfection is the god Mankind holds and reveres; unattainable, idealized, and tonight, impossible. Remorse, regret, and a yearn for a return to a feign idealized normalcy which never was. A stern one-to-one with no one; the mind reels and the heart shatters again. Hiding from the Sun, basking in the Moonlight and yearning for a match to burn it all from having ever been...
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This is Depression. Your call?
What holds the fractured soul from breaking? Hope; false may it be, sublime may it be too. You take your chances. You hope idealizing the future; staying in a positive frame and avoiding placing blame can right all wrongs. The past is gone you say; the future is now and while idealizing the past fuels your descent you pray to whomever, whatever, and however, that the lightning of the dark in your mind doesn't strike twice. You hope for the future and you meander in the now. What more can you really do? You get some assistance. You love and don't stop loving; love never loses, never. It may be kicked and bruised. Used and misinterpreted. You know what's what. Your self-awareness is not all your mind can do. Your heart sings when it can. You tame the Lion's the best you know how. You come to learn they never really were there to hurt you anyway. They're here to help you. Blessed be the meek. Religion aside, you have faith. Faith in yourself. Faith in what you know. Faith in who you love and the smile's and the laughter. You can be happy without being Manic. You can be sad at times without being Depressive. It's an even keel; a balance. You have Angel's by your side. You have someone you can count on. Multiple someones. They aren't just there to support you either. We're all in this together.
That's how you cope; that's how you win. It's just a f--king quarter...
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John
Entry Date: 9/26/16
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An Excerpt from an Informal-Style College Composition
on a past "Memory"*
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*The following recollected memory was recorded in a narrative-style essay on
November 30th, 2011 for a undergraduate 200-level English course titled
'Advanced Expository Writing'. The referenced events therein occurred just a year prior to the writing of the essay. The since unaltered excerpt below concluded the essay.
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from: 'Just like Clockwork':
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"...I turned over again and hopped up out of bed and looked up at the wall clock to see it was 6:00 AM. I threw on my suit and dress pants and sat at the kitchen table, and even though it was early and the funeral proceedings weren’t until 9:00 AM I couldn’t help but sit and reflect. I’m now 19 years old and it’s the day before Thanksgiving and today I am burying my grandmother. She had just passed 4 days prior, a little over seven years and month since we buried her husband, my grandfather. It’s been a rough couple of days, and an even rougher couple of years. But I can’t complain too much, I’m a college freshmen, I live in a house now that my parents rent and I’m living day by day. It’s brutally cold out but the sun is still shining bright this morning. I walk up to the mirror in the bathroom in my suit and dress jacket and I think to myself, my God, how far I’ve come and I stare down at my dress watch and I see it ticking. I remember the feeling of appreciation; the feeling that I later wrote into a poem I entitled “Tomorrow will be Beautiful**”. I wrote it in my grandmother’s memory, but really when I think about it and re-read it I understand it was written as a mechanism to say to myself: “It’s all right, because tomorrow will be beautiful and time goes on…” Time sure will go on; it has long before me and will surely go on long after I’m gone. Just like clockwork indeed. Just like clockwork…"
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**Available in "Essentially, Me: Volume One"
(In both Editions, however, 1e is indefinitely out of Print)
John
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