I’ve been told to stay strong. not cry be the rock pull it together and I’ve succeeded. I’ve successfully built a wall around me, locked up my emotions, and lost the key.
All this time I thought someone else would have a spare, so I’ve been looking for myself in others. But when has a locked door stopped a prisoner from escaping. Perhaps, I need to bring down these walls with the same strength that built them. Because there is nothing weak about vulnerability.
This poem was inspired by a recent opportunity that allowed me to let my guard down and share a personal story to the public. After years of thinking that my strength came from internalizing my story, I realized that sharing it and allowing it to be a beacon of hope for others was my real display of strength. Strength is not limited to the constraints set by the media that showcases our lives filtered and perfected, and a culture of always putting on a happy face. Breaking through those constraints and embracing the authenticity of being vulnerable, accepting mistakes, and needing help is also a display of strength.
I have come to that periodic point in my life where I feel emotionally stifled. You know when you have so many thoughts rushing in and out of your head, and you just don’t know what to do with them? There’s school, there’s home life, there’s work, and all you can really do is go to sleep just to get some peace and quiet from your emotion-filled day. Well, I’m there. I guess when I think about it, I could address everything as it comes. Collectively go over why that made me feel this way and just be done with it, as soon as it occurs. But, I guess I’m just human.
So.
What should I do about it? In the past when I’ve gone off the deep end, crying one minute and jumping up and down to a Beyonce song the next, I took to my favorite pastime to get me by. Blogging. Tumblr, specifically. Yes I’d write a long, passion-infused text post about everything I’d endured that day. From the moment I got up, to the time I took to sit down and write, I’d jot down everything. I’d write down my thoughts on why I felt that way, and then forced myself to come up with a better way of how I could go about the situation next time. The beautiful part about this emotional outlet is that no one really follows my blog, and if they do, they have no idea who I am. I could be as boisterous, cynical, selfish, and pathetic as I want because it was my blog, no one else’s. I still go on there from time to time and enact some of my online journaling, but this time I don’t think it’ll do the job.
I could put my feelings into my apartment? Okay, that sounds weird, but follow me on this. Even though I moved into my apartment two months ago, I haven’t gotten around to decorating it. I have high aspirations for what I want to do to the place, yet whenever I get around to buying a pillow or a flower plant, it doesn’t ever seem to come together. Maybe my emotions can open my creative abilities. I could put time into researching what works and what doesn’t work, what I like and what I don’t like. It could be freeing and fulfilling, and it could let me escape the hustle and bustle within my head just for a little bit. Possibility?
Let’s be honest with ourselves. Dealing with emotions are very hard. We’re all human, we all have them. Some more than others (pointing at this girl). But finding fun, creative and, most of all, fulfilling ways to deal with them will always be the challenge. First, we have to come to terms with the fact that we need to deal with them at all. Second, we need to take the time out of our day to do all we can to comfort ourselves. It may not seem like a difficult task to start, but who really wants to go through everything that’s upset them or made them sad that day? But, then again, who really wants to let it build up continuously, to where it becomes difficult to function.  Find your outlet. Blogging, decorating, painting, dancing, it could be anything. I’m still figuring out what I should do with mine, but to be honest, I feel like writing this little post on Arts Ink helped a lot.
With Blood Battle just around the corner–the blood drive competition between the University of Michigan and the ohio state university which measures who raises the most donations–it’s important to remember that not all people are allowed to donate blood. I’m a man who has sex with men. Thus, I cannot donate.
But I don’t care. I have no ethical imperative to gush blood on those that need it.
While some feel discriminated against, which makes sense because it does ban a specific portion of the population (men who have sex with men–MSM) because of a particular “sexually deviant behavior†often equated with “homosexuality,†I don’t have any personal problem with this. There is nothing in the world that makes me feel morally responsible for people who need blood (#IntroToPhilosophy). There are non-sexually deviant hetero folks and people who don’t get tattoos nor travel who can donate blood, so, in general, its covered. (I know the blood pool is low, but people can still get some pretty good height on the diving board of.)
I’d rather focus my time away from liberal-reformist-assimilationist goals of ending blood discrimination and marriage discrimination in favor of liberation, or just not being killed. Also, most of these reforms continue the stigma of “risky sexual behavior†and the stigma around folks living with HIV/AIDS.
However, for the time, I think it’s important to mediate on people who have an extreme amount of empathy with folks in need. While I don’t particularly have an interest in all of humanity, some do and I respect that. I may be a bitter, postmodern, queer revolutionary, who hates everyone. Full stop.
819 signatures to change the policy banning MSM from donating blood. 99,191 signatures left until the White House will view the document and take the petition seriously. 100,000 signatures needed in total.
Behind every number is a person who supports this cause who lets a little information about themselves out into the public sphere and waits until 99,999 people come to the same consensus. There is so much hope with signing a petition, especially when its electronic.
Looking at the list of signatories reminds me of trying to crack a secret code: “Signature #738, November 06, 2013, Lake in the Hills, IL., C.M.†I wonder what was going through “C.M.’s†head on November 06 at x o’clock. They didn’t decide on the 7th or 8th of November and so they locked themselves in to be number 738. Perhaps they were swimming in the lake in the hills lake in the hills on the 6th. I wonder who they are. What is their story? Why are they an ally? How are they an ally?
In each signature lies an actual person (maybe) and that is terrifyingly beautiful. People with their own lives, stories, histories, futures, all of which, for one moment, stopped to sign a petition that could potentially help save lives.
Stopping to stare at the amount of people who have signed this document is like reading the unreadable. K.B. J.L. E.B. D.L. are just a combination of letters that points to 4 people in the world. Each unique person reduced down to 4, sometimes 3, facts all encompassed by a grey speech bubble. Missing voices, missing bodies, intentions present. The symmetrical nature of these intentions all pointing to one goal.
