As part of my efforts in supporting my fellow bloggers,
please welcome Bama’s first (hopefully
not last) blog entry here on TGK. While I am a self-professed blogger, I
thought it would be a good idea to bring on a guest blogger to get a new
perspective. So, without further delay, here is Bama’s first blog
post. If he touches you, please let him know with your comments.
I've often deemed myself an outcast among a
group of outcasts when it comes to my fit within the LGBT community, more
specifically, the black LGBT community. As I've grown from the person I was at
the age of 19 to the person that I am now at the age of 24, I still can't help
but think of myself as different from my peers. Maybe I have some type of
separatism complex where I subconsciously want to exclude myself from the pack,
but if that is the case, why do I have sporadic bursts of a need to belong? I
can only wonder if I've fully accepted myself for who I am.
Oxymoronic it is to think of one's self as possessing a
complex simplicity of demeanor and thought, or maybe it's better to label it as
insecurity. Whatever the flavor, I feel that the path to true acceptance can be
exhausting. I will say that after years of pretending to be fine, when I really
was emotionally unstable, made me all the more side-tracked from embracing my
identity. I can't help but think that there are a lot of us that are still trying
to find our identity. We are born, raised in different ways, and once on our
own, we may not feel as well-adjusted as we think we should be.
It took me a long time to realize that I shouldn't play up or
downplay my sexuality in order to find some happy medium that would make me
more appealing to those around me, whether straight or gay; it only made me
uncomfortable. I continued to rearrange my emotions to fit an untrue meaning in
order to mask my true feelings. After a while, I lost myself. So, the only way
out, I figured, was to end my life. The thought was simple: ending my life
would end any confusion I had as to who I was. I knew I wasn't straight, and I
grew tired of fabricating false feelings to deflect what attention I did gain
from females. I also knew that I wasn't the poster child for what it meant to
be a young gay black male looking for fun because of the thrilling taboo
nature of my same sex desires.
Of course, I didn't go through with my suicide attempt,
but I was frighteningly close…paring knife to wrist close. In a way, I think I
did die that night or at least the person I did not want to continue to be,
died. Since then, I've been resurrecting myself, and I think I get it now. For
those who have attempted to end their life, but did not succeed, do you truly
recover from almost causing your own death? I'm glad I've stuck around, and it
has gotten better for me bit by bit; however, I feel like it's been a long
process of raising myself from the dead. I'm here, mind, body, and soul, yet I
still don't feel present. Maybe I'm in some sort of limbo, or it could be that
in an attempt to erase myself from the world, I also wiped away what little
identity I did have of myself, therefore starting all over as a blank slate…a
gay tabula rasa.
If that's the case, I should feel freer than I've ever felt
before, and in most moments, I have, but I haven't taken advantage of it full
on, and maybe I should. I may continue to feel like an outcast from time to
time (maybe I should've elaborated on that more . . . my bad), but I don't
think the need to be accepted will help me in establishing my identity. Let's
just keep it basic: I'm an all around average guy that likes guys. That should
work just fine, and I'll just feel in the details as I go. ;-)
My writing may be fragmented, I'm not sure, but
it's been a while since I've written anything in completion, so I'm just happy
to get it out there.
Much love to you,
Bama B.
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