I was on gay.com last night and realized how negative, bitchy, catty, and down right nasty people can be on that site. When I first moved to Pittsburgh I would fight with anyone who said anything catty or nasty towards me. I was very unsure about my place and felt so alienated. I felt so broken, like I did not fit. I find that the gay community as a whole does this to themselves.
The gay standards of being acceptable destroy so many people. You have to be under 30, 6'2", 165#, with tan skin, and make over $75,000 a year. You have to be at all the good clubs and parties. You absolutely have to work out and have amazing abs of steel. This is the gay mirror we have to look into. I am 40, which in gay years makes me Jurassic, I am 6'1" but 200# (curently) which makes me a bloated sack of protoplasm. I do not tan in winter but do lay out some in summer, which makes me a pale farm boy. I do not work out which makes me inferior. This is what gay society forces upon us.
This is one of the several reasons I have shied away from anything gay. Sure I used to frequent the bars, but that was in my youth and I was a BIG HOT MESS then. This fall I started returning to the bars figuring things would be different. NOPE.... SSDD... Drunks (to be expected) and pretentious people who think they are beautiful and won't talk to anyone outside of their status. No wonder so many gay people are so socially damaged. Smoking, alcohol, drugs, sex, unprotected sex, unsafe sex, and so many other things. So many are on the roads to destruction. I used to be one of these.
When I first came out I was in a fraternity, so I was already a big drinker. When I first started wanting to come out that got so much more out of hand. The suicide of my first lover culminated in 3 nervous breakdowns which lead to some serious boozing. After all, how inferior can the suicide of someone you love make you feel.
Before all of this I was dubbed inferior by the men in my family and the school kids because I did not hunt, fish, or watch sports. I was "wrong" because I did not live up to their status of masculinity. I look back at these people and think WTF was wrong with them. Why did I have to be the one to conform to their set of standards. I was (and am) an amazingly creative, warm, loving, intelligent person. Did any of them really get to know me past the slurs and bullying?
This need to conform to a straight ideal is what is holding me back now. The feelings that I lost my SELF along the way. The feelings that the real ME is walled off inside this body. Over the last few years this realization has made me work to recenter myself and explore what TIM really is. After depression, anxiety, and some anger, I am on a journy to find myself again.
I am a wonderful, warm, loving person. I am creative. I am very intelligent and able to convey information to virtually anyone. Knowing this in your mind and feeling it are two different things. The inferiority drummed into my head over the years still tells me I am "wrong" that I need to be the same as everyone else.
Last night on yahoo.com I had a discussion, with a new friend, about Camp Davis and Rosewood. These being gay camps. The last year I had considered going to one or both of these places just to see what they are like. I have heard one or two stories of them being the typical stereotyped gay sex spots. I have also heard stories of how they are amazing places for gays to just be gays. I love how I gave into the stereotypes and actually grunted at the mere mention of the names. In this way was I not just making these places as inferior in my own mind as the people of my youth did to me? A serious change in my mentality has occurred about a lot of gay things.
I at some point this year will go to either Camp Davis and/or Rosewood. I need to experience these places for myself and not judge them based upon the (probably bitter) words of others. I need to open myself up to new experiences. I need to accept people and places as they are. My biggest thing has been the acceptance olive and let live mindset. I choose my friends carefully, but I do not need to judge everyone who comes past me based on my ideals.
While certain cattiness is expected in the gay world, the is no need to cause someone else to have an inferiority complex about certain things. I have done this in the past. I know I have hurt people by pre-judging them, their beliefs, their actions, their reactions. A lot of this came from my own inferiority complex (es). The need to make me feel more whole by pointing out to myself how they do not conform to my ideals.
I have hurt people by being catty, bitchy, and down right nasty at times. All I can do is try to make myself a better person, and perhaps reach out to someone I hurt, or reach out to someone else who is hurting from feeling inferior.
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