Hey Ma, It’s Your Birthday

There are some things that, no matter how hard you try, you simply cannot control.  The sun is going to rise every morning somewhere, the stars are going to continue making a nice home for themselves up in the sky.  Seasons will change.  Lovers will come and go until either one comes and never leaves or you go…permanently.  You can choose how you react to these things, sure, but the fact remains that they’ll happen and there’s not a damned thing anybody can do about that.  For me, there are two major things in my life that I cannot change yet strongly need to contemplate: I am a bisexual, and tomorrow is my birthday.

My name's not Stephanie, but...rainbow cake!

I certainly can’t stop myself from getting older, no matter how many deals I make with Disney witches.  It’s just something that sort of happens.  Usually, around this time of year, I’m knee deep in the middle of some kind of crisis; I’m getting another year older and the panic begins!  Am I getting old?  Am I at the point where kids will stop thinking I’m cool?  Have my most attractive days left me without me even realizing it?  Have I done anything with my life?  Will I DO anything with my life?  Am I going to be single forever?  These are the thoughts that take my mind hostage and won’t let go without being paid a ransom of praise and cake.

This year, though, is somehow different.  I’m getting older, sure, but I’m not panicking.  I’m not freaking out about whether or not I’m getting old or if kids still think I’m cool (mostly because the kids at my new job have made those answers very clear).  I know that, no matter how much times passes, I’m always going to consider myself better looking in the past than I am now, so I might as well entertain the thought that I might currently be pretty attractive (this time next year I’ll certainly think so).  For the first time since I was an overly confident, know-it-all high school kid, I actually do feel like I’ve done something with my life.  In the quarter century that has passed, I’ve made people smile, listened to those who needed it, organized programs to help my community to become more civicly and politically minded, and, most important to me, taught children that it’s alright to be just the way you are and to have a crush on whoever you do.  Also, for the first time since high school, I have a clear idea of what I want to do with my life, clearer than I’ve led most people to believe.  Someday, I will make that dream happen, even if I have to create a job that does not exist (and so far, I don’t think the job I truly want exists yet), but at least I know what it is.  And, with my “someday it will stop raining and things will be beautiful” attitude, I’m convinced that I won’t be single forever.  Here’s hoping on that last one.

What’s truly amazing about this whole “not changing stuff” thing is how much potential it leaves for the future.  I cannot stop night from turning into day, but I can greet it with a smile and a sleepy shrug.  I cannot stop the rain from falling, but I can march around with a rainbow umbrella.  I cannot be everywhere at the same time, but I can nurture the things in my area that need help.  I cannot protest every injustice at the same time, but I can stand up for what is right around me and encourage my friends far away to do the same.  I cannot rid the media of homophobes such as Michele Bachman or Rick Santorum, but I can work against them until they hold no power and are seen for the irrational, underhanded hate factories that they are.  I cannot make every parent accept their GLBTQ child, but I can provide support to any of those kids I meet and walk them through the process of coming out and figuring out what’s safe and what kind of life they want to live.  I cannot make every person of faith see the equality of all people, but I can be open and affirming and work to make my church and my Church an example to follow.  I cannot make my mother appreciate the complexity of my sexuality and that there’s a good chance that, if/when I marry, it will be to a woman, but I can…well, I can’t really do much about that at all.  I suppose I can just sit and drink and talk about how hot Tina Fey is until she changes the subject.

Oh, and there’s one other thing I can do in this world.  I cannot make it perfect for everyone, but I can try to share my thoughts and insights in an attempt to make it a little more perfect for someone.  I can take the thoughts jumbled up in that scattered brain of mine and put them down and post them on this blog so that someone may find them.  I don’t pretend to know who all reads this.  Some of my friends do.  Some strangers I’ve never met do.  Some people I used to know every well that I hardly see at all do.  I don’t really know specifics, but if at least one of those people has read something here that made them smile, gave them hope, or made them think, that I’m a happy person.  When you scream out into the wilderness, sometimes you hope that maybe even just the echo was heard by someone.  You can’t always prove it (in fact, you rarely can), but you hope that something out there knows your voice.  That’s what writing on the internet is like.  Maybe, just maybe, if you speak loud and clearly enough, it will make it past the brush and the leftover ruins and the muck and actually find its way to someone.  For as long as I am able and find this sentiment worthwhile, I will continue writing.  I encourage you to speak back, lest I miss my own opportunity to hear your voice in the woods.

Tomorrow will be Thanksgiving.  I hope you have something in your life to be thankful for.  I hope you have something in your life that you’re thankful you can change.  I hope you have something in your life that you’re thankful you can’t change.  As for me, I’m thankful to be turning 26.  I’m thankful to be home after a long 2/3s of a first semester.  I’m thankful that, no matter what city I’m in, I’m surrounded by caring friends and lovely people.  I’m thankful that there are fun, amazing, attractive people who I’m waiting to meet.  I’m thankful that I live in a place where I can be openly queer to the point of exaggeration if I want to and it’s okay.  I’m thankful that the generation below mine will inherit the hard work this and other generations have put in to make it acceptable to be a boy in tights or a girl building things or a man who kisses other men or a woman who wants to marry another woman.  I’m thankful that people still rage on for the right to marry, for children kicked out of their houses, for the trans* community that still does not receive the attention or respect it so rightfully deserves.  With all of this, I am thankful that I have you, whoever you are, to read it.

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