Queer Isolation: Back in the Midwest

After over a week of being in a bedridden depression, I finally feel like I’m getting out. Now, I’m forced to sit with the present: I’m in Indianapolis living on my grandmother’s couch. I miss having my bed. I feel isolated from my friends and chosen family. I feel sad to be back in a place where being myself in its fullness is hindered by distance and geography – maybe even people. I feel a deep dissatisfaction mixed with pressure in my head that’s a combination of frustration and inner turmoil. I have myself and most times that doesn’t feel enough.

I want to cry, but I’ve cried so much over other things. I feel as if my tears have been all used up. I want to be in a place where I can live in the freeness that is myself. It hurts that that’s been the uphill battle of my maturation these last few years; that becoming has pushed me to the brink and past it; that mental collapse made way for truth to be accepted and grieved.

Since I was 21 years old, for the last four years or so, I’ve battled with my queerness; with coming to terms with what it meant to be me in the family I was reared in. Most of my days were spent being swallowed by the pain that coming out in a religious, anti-queer family causes. I let it consume me and struggled to move through the world when I wasn’t fully accepted by the ones I was taught I had to please my whole life. I spent four years in a deep grief that entered into every aspect of my life, a grief that most didn’t understand or recognize as such.

Growing up, I was isolated from most of my counterparts because of my religious beliefs at the time. I thought associating with people outside of my way of life would make me less of a Christian; I followed what I had been taught by my parents. I never spoke about my inner feelings to friends; I remained mute in most situations; I used my schoolwork to take me away from any feelings I had. And being the good Christian girl I was, I thought being set apart meant that I was meant to live this journey alone, isolated from those not on the same Jesus train as myself.

Now, I realize the cult-like teaching for what it was and the problems that living such an isolationist life has caused in my adulthood. It’s been difficult to create a tangible community; the internet has been my only source of connection to like-minded people since my unexpected reentry into the Midwest. I’m lonely in my everyday life which is mostly spent surfing the web and trying to stay awake. The occasional conversations I have with friends are refreshing but often leave me feeling more disconnected after I hang up the phone.

Most of my maturation in friend relationships happened in college. That’s when I stepped out of my comfort zone and started to open my mouth. In turn, I was able to create a semblance of community–a few friends I called close who I rarely talk to or have lost kinship with now. I still held the loner qualities I hung so tight to throughout my elementary and middle school years; however, I was finally actively trying to make friends and therefore community. I think coming from a small city that became even smaller due to my loner and spiritual ways easily contributed to my tendency to go into my shell. Since I could only have certain types of friends, it was easier to have none at all. And mostly, I just didn’t have anything in common with the other kids. While I was watching videos to become a mini evangelist, they were listening to the latest hip hop and rap songs which I had no clue of–my brother and I weren’t allowed to listen to secular music unless we snuck it in or heard it from someone else.

Now I understand that I lived under a strict sense of restriction both mentally and physically. I couldn’t wear certain clothes, couldn’t watch certain things, couldn’t go to certain places. Now, I realize I’ve had about six years of freedom in my life and probably one full year of full freedom (both mentally and physically). That year was my year in LA, a year that broke me to my core and gave me the time and space to live the life I wanted to live. A pang rips through my chest when I think of only having one year to live in my truth; to figure myself out.

Now I have to figure out how to get back to that place; where I’m able to live freely in all my truth. Right now my queer present is excruciatingly lonely and often invites tears to follow me. It hurts to be so isolated once again; to feel the same isolation that I felt while deeply closeted and deeply religious; while wrestling with a religious practice I was gradually growing out of. It hurts to tell my truth to those around me only to be dragged back to places of prayer where nuance and conversation aren’t available tools to mine the never-ending questions I have and had.

Those questions won’t be answered. I finally realize the people around me can’t answer them because they have no desire to. To answer such questions, they have to wrestle with the very fabric of their beings like I’ve had to. And just like that wrestling has broken me, they probably don’t wish to be broken; they probably have no desire to be remolded. And that is the journey of my life: demolishing my own house just to build it in a new way, brick by brick with my own hands. I’m tired from this arduous journey and just want to sleep in a bed, in a home where the fullness of me isn’t too much for the floorboards to carry.

For me, that means making my own space for myself somehow. And that’s been the most elusive thing for me to grasp these last few years. I want it so desperately that I feel my heart ripping in two each moment I don’t have it; I feel tears on the tip of my tongue and pressure all over my body. I want to scream but know that no matter how much I scream, I’ll be the only one to hear it. No matter how much I scream, I still have to figure it out by myself; it feels cruel and it hurts and I’m exhausted. I’m exhausted. I’m angry. I’m screaming internally hoping that this pain will have a place to be released someday; that I can finally heal outside of the places that have hurt me.