It Gets Better

 I'd heard the phrase, 'it gets better,' and I'd heard it specifically in regards to being gay and coming out.

It didn't mean a lot. It was a vague projection with little comfort.

It gets better, eh? That's nice, because it's really really awful right now. It hurts. All the time. And I'm scared.

And that can be said for many things besides being in the closet.

Its hard to imagine a better.

It's impossible to see a future without the fear. When you still believe you are abhorrent and sinful, you can't envision a future where you don't believe that. That in itself is terrifying. Because it means you lost the way, accepted your sin, and began to embrace evil. You can't envision a future in that that isn't even worse than where you are now.

I recently talked about my coming out in an interview for a friend's YouTube. And I kind of forgot a detail.

The first person I came out to was accepting. She's one of my dearest friends. But coming out to her made me actually face the reality. 

Until then, I had swathed myself in a cocoon of denial. The truth still stabbed through and cut me every now and then, but I did my best to hide from it. Telling my friend had ripped the cocoon away entirely. I couldn't hide from myself anymore. The secret had been spoken aloud and it took on a solid form: I was a homosexual. I was attracted to men. And this disgusted me. Terrified me. I had grown up steeped in casual and blatant homophobia. I went to a church that said it was sinful. It's a heavy thing to grapple with: being the monster you've always heard about in hushed tones of derision.

My friend tried to tell me I was ok. And I wasn't ready to hear it. I didn't believe her. And I struggled, unwilling to really listen to her or discuss my internal battles with her--because she didn't believe like I did--she might lead me to lose the battle if I listened to her and believed it was ok to be gay. I thought I needed to tell someone who would help me fight this.*

So, months later, I talked to one of the ministers at the church I went to. I confessed my darkest secret to a man who had recently, over the pulpit, expressed his horror at being accidentally trapped in a pride parade in Spokane.

He asked if I wanted my "unnatural" desires to go away, and to have "natural" ones restored. I said yes. It's what I had been praying for for so long. Without result. So, he prayed with me. For God's healing. 

But as he prayed, I realized that I didn't want that.

It suddenly didn't make sense. Why would I trade one kind of lust for another?

It felt really weird to pray for lust. To "restore" normal desires. I had never really wanted to be attracted to women. I had never felt that. I didn't know what it was. I certainly never wanted to be like the men who, amongst themselves, made crass remarks about women and sex. I just didn't want the feelings of attraction I experienced for shirtless men in films or magazines, or the deep admiration for some of the real men in my life.**

What was the difference between struggling with a desire for men and struggling with a desire for women? Aren't both lust? And aren't both bad?

I realized during that prayer that it was a silly thing to ask for. I realized that God wasn't going to change me. Why would he now, after all this time, just because a preacher was praying with me? I had wanted it for so long, but now...it didn't seem like it mattered.

But I was still so far from accepting myself. So far from it gets better. But it was another step in the right direction. As painful as that experience was, it was an important step forward. I left that prayer feeling let down. And I still didn't want to let myself be gay. It took another year to let go of that. All the times I thought I needed to "let go and let God,"--as they say--I thought I needed to let go of my dreams of writing and costuming, but really, I needed to let go of my fear of being me.

These things were agonizing. Facing myself. Facing God. It felt like things would never be better.

How can you see that agony is part of the healing when you're in it?

You can't. But it does get better. As trite as that sounds.

You just have to let go. There's a Bible verse about trials burning away the dross and leaving the gold pure. I guess that's actually true. But the fire fucking hurts. And it's not always coming from the furnace you think it is. But I guess God works in mysterious ways.

* I was in a weird place where I couldn't condemn other gay people anymore. But I condemned myself for it. Which is still shitty at large, let me be clear. Saying 'I don't condemn you, but I have to be better' is still more or less a condemnation. "We're all sinners, but I have Jesus" still means you're better. You have something they don't. Even though Christianity says that you don't earn your salvation, the fact that you have to accept Jesus--humble yourself--etc. implies that you did something that others didn't--you were humble, when they weren't. You let him in and they didn't. They need to subdue their pride, which you have already done. By the grace of God alone you are saved. But why won't these other people give up their wickedness and accept that gift? There is great pride in such humility.

** This footnote got too long and will have to be a separate post about arousal and attraction. For the purposes of this footnote: ask yourself how arousal plays into attraction? Are they always hand in hand? Or does arousal follow attraction at a distance, waiting for an invitation?  Men frequently joke about having to hide boners...this wasn't an issue for me. I could go to a beach full of shirtless men, and even if I liked what I saw, I didn't have to worry about my shorts. Was it my sexual repression? Am I odd? Or do straight men exaggerate their own horniness to soothe some insecurity in their own sexuality? 

Regarding Writing

 

I've had conversations with a friend who doesn't write anymore. At least not for now. And we kind of agreed that we both wrote laregly for escapism. Various traumas kept us from wanting to really be present for our lives. We went somewhere else for validation and safety.

She said something about living. Being fully present for our lives. Living and being invested in ourselves, rather than the escapist fantasies we'd fled to.

Living is, in my writing mentor's words, grist for the writer's mill.

My imagination will always dream and fantasize and spin tales. But I wonder if I'm in a transition. Is this lull, this frustrating 'dead' spot, actually a threshold? A period of growth, rather than stagnation?

Am I now going into a place where my experiences can inform my writing? It's the richness of experiences that really fuels good writing.

In my youth, I think my writing was the explosive force of my angst, burning holes through me. I think it was escapsim, too. I didn't want the mundane. I wanted magic. But it was also my self expression, trying to find its voice--to scream itself into existence.

Re-reading my space opera for the audiobook really shows the loneliness and the struggle that I was having at the time. The novel is an exploration of alienation. I didn't fully understand or accept why I felt that way--but I did, and intensely. writing fiction was the only real way I had to even try to process something I was desperately trying to hide from myself.

Now, I've faced the trauma that is growing up queer and in the closet. Has my use for writing run out? Now that I no longer need lies?

I don't think so. I am still drawn to stories. To creation.

I think I just need to figure out my new relationship with it. How do I use it for love and pure joy instead of survival?

Maybe I just need more life. To live more. And the stories will write themselves again. 

They say pain makes art. Suffering is the artist's lot. Without which, truly good art can't exist.

I have been the most inspired by agony. There is a beauty in suffering. But I don't think that's all. There's still pain stored in these bones, enough to draw upon for sweet magic making. But I grow weary of such masochistic composition. I can draw upon that power later. Let me heal now.

I must let me. This is but the quiet valley after the war, and great abundance lurks ahead. More pain, mayhap. More storm. But life and art, too.

And at least I understand that now.

Unknown Longing

In a small town in a river valley, there was born a boy who listened.

He listened to the wind and the whispers of the secrets they bore. He listened to the hearts beating around him and the murmurs of the pain they held. He listened to the secret chime of an unknown bell.

And he dreamed. Dreaming of a secret place where he was home. A perfect place where the chiming bell rang out and the wind whisked the pollen in sparkling dances and the hearts beat around him with only joy.

Such a place must exist, he thought. It was as if the whispering wind bore its messages to him across the glittering river and the mountains high. It was out there somewhere, calling him.

He longed for it.

A place he'd never known. Never smelled its tranquil dust and woody stillness. Never felt the calm serenity. Never seen the mystery. A goodly place. A wondrous place.

It called to him.

And so one day he left his town and friends and family...the aching hearts. And he set out along the dusty roads, through baking fields of grain and rustling corn stalks. Along winding streams and across verdant meadows. Through towns and into forests thick and deep with mossy murk.

Earthy places, quiet and redolent.

And in the silence, he heard still the whispering wind, calling him on, and the secret chiming.

And though there was no one else about, he heard also the murmuring pain of a human heart.

He plunged on through the twisting trees and lichen covered rocks. Away, away from the quiet agony that stalked him. Away from pain and people, deep into the mountains, following the mysterious call of the secret chime.

Over the mountains, through the crisp snow. Fresh and bright. Sparkling and glittering in a static dance.

Howling wind drew him onward. Shivers wracked him and still the chime rang on and the pain followed him, tugging gently at his sleeve.

Would he ever escape it and find that mythic place he dreamed of?

Down the mountains, into new and exciting valleys, filled with unfamiliar trees and  strange animals.

New towns and New faces.

Across marshes, brimming with exotic scents and murmurs.

Through a barren plain, dotted with dry cacti and bedraggled birds.

And to a city, humming with noise and choked with smoke and hundreds of sweaty people, bustling, ever bustling.

And on from there, dogged by the murmuring heart pain and drawn on by the secret.

It must exist, it must!

Across grassland and into hills alive with steaming geysers.

Mystical and bubbling with possibility.

A canyon of holy magma. A quiet place.

Not the place.

Not his dream.

Tears stung his eyes and he knew at last that the heart pain was his own.

The hot salt poured down his face and the chiming pulled at him and his heart cried out for that place he had never known.

And a bird sat upon his arm and whispered to him.

It does exist.

It does.

But you will not find it by running and searching the world for distractions to mask your pain. Your heart is broken from being ignored and your soul is dry from not being watered.

The secret. It lies within.

The hidden place was deep inside him. Buried beneath cares and lies and the falsehoods he had believed as a child.

But it chimed on from within and called to him. It longed to ease the heart pain and heal him.

It is real. It is here.

The home you long for but have never seen, it is you. If you will embrace yourself. As you are and not as the world has made you out to be.

Shed the shadows and let the light shine out of you.

Cash Rage/Rage Money

I labored hard and long,

At the Mill of Despair,

Believing I was wrong 

Almost to much to bear:

Such loathing, hate, and fear,

By my hand, mass produced.

Crafted with sweat and tears,

Terror of what could be loosed.

And now it is complete,

I have left the machine,

And its arduous feats,

I’m ready to be seen.

I have been paid my wage,

A wretched recompense,

In currency of rage,

I’m bitterly incensed.

Now I must spend it, lest

In the bank it languish,

Collecting interest,

And festering anguish,

Investment of ire.

Withdraw the rage money,

Incendiary cash,

I will throw it away,

Let it all burn to ash.

I don't want your money,

I'm going to break free.

You can't pay me to hide,

To be quiet and small.

Not anymore.

I shall say gay,

I’ll scream it.

I’ll scream it at the top of my lungs.

I’ll scream it until the day

No one else suffers,

Grinding the mill of internalized homophobia.

I’ve earned this anger.

I’ll use it to buy my freedom,

To attack the machine.

Break the gears,

Tear the sprockets apart,

Down with homophobia and its parent company,

Patriarchy Incorporated.

Burn it to the ground!

You’ll never hear the last of it,

Until I’ve spent all this cash rage.

It burns holes in my pockets.

Let it burn you, instead, Patriarchy Inc.

You silenced me,

Turned me against me,

So that I feared what you feared.

You were afraid of me and my ilk.

Because we confound your system of oppression.

We won’t let you hold women and queer people down anymore.

As you give, so shall you receive.

Its coming back around,

And I’ve still got lots of this stuff setting fire to my wallet.

Have some. Have it all back.

You’re going down, bitch!

It’s a stage of grief,

For what I lost.

For the child that suffered.

If only I could go back and tell them.

It’s ok. You’re ok.

But I wouldn’t have listened to me.

Thirteen and afraid.

God hates queers, right?

No. He doesn’t.

I’m telling you.

It’s ok.

It’s ok.

Live reading of this poem

The Last Church Days of McCallum J. Morgan, Summer 2020

I remember once, after church, standing around with the youth group guys.

Gossip was, a church girl in Canada had left her husband--
Left him for another woman.
The disgust was palpable, performative, pulpy, shock, horror, and awe.
I stayed silent. By this point I had admitted my own sexuality--to myself, to a friend, to a pastor...this youth didn't know he was wrinkling his face in disgust at something that he stood very near to. I squirmed inside. But didn't move.
"There had to be something wrong with her from the start," he says. The others agree. Readily and without pause. I don't remember if I joined in automatically, so used to condemning others like me to avoid any suspicion that there is also something wrong with me.
But it strikes me--in the derisive, dismissive tones of these youths--if they truly believe there is something fundamentally wrong with this lesbian, where is the compassion? Don't they profess to be Christians?And isn't that the core tenant of their religion? Our religion, at the time. I was still trying to hang on to it.
The core tenant of our religion was that something is fundamentally wrong with all of us. Yet this was different. There was none of the compassion we were supposed to have for mankind. Just skin-crawling  disgust.
I follow the youth guys out of the church building into the sun.
I feel more lonely than ever before. Each Sunday, after hearing about how Jesus will deliver me from my sins, I stand in the circle of the youth group in the parking lot. They laugh and chatter. I used to linger until the last one had gone home, or off to lunch plans, hoping that I would find a place in the conversation, hoping I could open up and actually make friends.
But each Sunday the emptiness increases. The sermons don't make me feel better. My homosexuality isn't going away. I can't get rid of it. And God isn't going to remove it, either.
And I can't linger as long, hoping as the group gets smaller, I won't be so shy, hoping maybe someone will invite me over for Sunday dinner.
I have nothing in common with these people. And they are disgusted by people like me.
And I can't keep pretending to be disgusted by people like me. I can't sit here on my high horse of righteousness, claiming that I am resisting sin and so therefore I am not the same as those malfunctioning individuals that apparently deserve no compassion from Christians.
I leave early.
My heart hurts. A heavy burden is crushing me. And Jesus isn't taking it.
But this is the final stretch. Soon I'll realize that I was asking for the wrong thing--I wanted him to change me, because I thought I was broken.
What I really needed was someone to take the shame away.
Shame that I carried for how others looked at people like me.
Shortly thereafter, I stopped attending church. There was a 2nd covid hiatus and I didn't go back when services re-started.
I stopped getting that weekly dose of guilt.
Slowly, I accepted that I am who I am. And that's ok. Its good.
I already knew that the unnamed Canadian lesbian didn't deserve the blatant loathing from Christians. I know now that the Canadian lesbian and I don't need their compassion, either.
They need ours because they are blinded.
I hope that wherever she is, she is happy and has let go of all the shame that she should never have had to bear. I hope she is free, like me, and I hope she flourishes.
Amen

Let Us Be

I wrote this piece in response/inspired by uproar at my local library last year...a group tried to recall the board of trustees, believing that they were allowing smut into the library. They failed, but now they are trying to elect their own people to the board. This reflects the uproar across the country about books deemed inappropriate. Usually these books feature queerness or racism as topics. I'm focusing on queerness only because that is where my personal experience lies.

Let Us Be

By McCallum J. Morgan

Gay and trans kids have always grown up feeling like no one understands them-- alone, isolated, and unsure why they feel that way. Now that things are changing--now that their identities are more visible and are finally being normalized with positive depictions in media, you are making it your mission to take that away from queer kids. By trying to repaint queer identities with the old stigmas, you will make queer kids--who might possibly be *your* kids-- feel alone again. Isolated.
You ban the books, ban the topic in schools, ban drag, and try to erase queerness from public.
Suddenly, queer kids have no frame of reference for their feelings. If they never hear about queer people in a positive way, they will internalize all the negativity.
I speak from experience.
All I ever heard about gays was that they were decadent, delinquent, unnatural sinners.
Any of my interests that weren't stereotypical boy interests made me feel like I was weird and strange. Crushes on male celebrities were carefully compartmentalized in my brain where I could pretend they weren't crushes. I just wanted to be like Orlando Bloom, I identified with blonde Peter in Narnia. They couldn't be crushes. That would be gay. And gay was bad. I learned to hate myself before I knew what I was. I used denial to protect myself.
But not everyone can do that. Some kids will face the truth sooner than I did. Some won't be able to handle being the monster that everyone taught them they were. And then what? If they are unable to see past the lies you taught them about themselves--that they are rapists and pedophiles because they aren't straight--if they can't unlearn those lies, will they choose to live in pain all their lives? Or will they decide the pain isn't worth it and cut their lives short?
Society wants to change, people want to leave homophobia behind. How does being queer do any harm to anyone else? But because you insist your book says it is unnatural, you cannot let it go. So you keep teaching that it is an abomination. And those of us who are queer grow up hating ourselves with your hate.
We grow up broken and alone. And you still insist we're wrong. That we're broken and Jesus can save us.
Save us from what? Ourselves? From *what* harm? The only harm we face is from you and your refusal to understand, your refusal to truly love.
If only Jesus would save us from you.
He taught love. And in the name of that love, you alienate, isolate, and drive children to choose death over this pain we are taught to feel. That you taught us to feel.
We are not trying to indoctrinate your kids. We were indoctrinated by you. We aren't telling kids to be queer. We're trying to make it safe for the queer kids to be queer. To exist as themselves without the pain and the hate.
And that is what you are trying to take away. You are trying to destroy any peace that we claw back from you. That we are claiming.
I'm done explaining myself. I'm done telling you I didn't choose this. It just happened. I don't need to justify or explain it to someone who will not listen.
Now I am explaining you instead. You've told me long enough who I am, what I am. So listen here.
Just shut up and listen.
You hurt us. You created the closet we had to gnaw our way out of. We don't want revenge. We're just trying to live outside again.
And then you come along and try to stop us, rob us of what we fought for, and silence us.
Just shut up and let us be. We're not after you. We really want nothing to do with you. Stop following us into bathrooms to scream at us. Stop waving your bibles in our faces in the name of false love. Stop rising up in fury at the mention of a Pride parade. Just turn the other cheek, God dammit. Stop burning our books. Stop erasing us.
Just stop.
And maybe fucking listen.