I posted on Facebook earlier that I feel that All Lives Matter. This isn't to say that I feel that we all end up getting treated the same, but I wish that we would. I believe in a future where we can all be treated with dignity and respect without regards to genetic permutations that we have. I believe that in order to make that future happen we need to make changes today. Our lives matter because we are all human. It disgusts me that there are those that think that a few differences in our genes make some less human than others.
When I was a small child, I was blessed with darker skin. I'd say that I still looked pretty white compared to full-blooded Natives, but I was darker than I am now. My grandmother, who taught English on the Crow Reservation, felt it was important for me to know about my Native heritage. This was especially true given that my biological father had been raised by people that taught him to never admit that he was a quarter Native. My grandparents took me to many Pow Wows when I was a kid. Every trip to the Flathead area always included a stop in Browning. I was surrounded by Native images in my room. I saw myself as Native. I was proud of it and I looked forward to spending time with "my people."
Then something weird happened. The summer after I turned fourteen, I participated in a car wash with DeMolay. Up to that point, I had never really needed sun screen. The summer months were easy on me and my skin always bronzed up pretty nice. As such, I never even thought to put any sun screen on. I spent about twelve hours in the sun and I got burnt. Despite wearing a t-shirt, I was bright red pretty much from head to toe. I was miserable waiting for it to heal. When I peeled, my skin wasn't brown. It was white. More peeling. More white skin. I still had my freckles, but I just wasn't as dark as I had always been.
After that, when I'd go to Pow Wows, I got weird looks. Those same looks followed me when I'd go to Browning. I was made to feel unwelcome in these places. I was made to feel that they weren't my people. I was too white now. It got to the point where I stopped going. I took down all of my Native images from my room. I was told I was an outsider. And I hated that feeling.
When I was much younger, before my mother moved us to Helena, my one close friend was a girl. We'd play with dolls together. If we played with her Barbies, I was always some variation of Barbie and she was always some variation of Ken. I didn't really mind. My mother moved us to Helena when I was around three and the first toy I remember was a Strawberry Shortcake doll my Grandma Riley had. I can still smell the manufactured strawberry scent from the doll's plastic skin. I remember there being a Raggedy Ann and a Raggedy Andy doll at my Grandma Riley's house. I preferred the Raggedy Ann one. But, when I started asking for an Easy Bake Oven from Santa, my mother told me, "Santa doesn't bring girl toys to boys." I switched the kind of dolls I played with, preferring to get the boy action figures like G.I. Joe or He-Man. My favorite of these two genre were a Jinx action figure (a female ninja G.I. Joe) and the She-Ra one of my female friends bought me. But, I kept these two a secret, because my guy friends would laugh at me for playing with them. They were for girls, after all. Like my Native things, I kept them hidden and locked away.
My friends started talking about girls and I was flummoxed. I didn't understand their interest. They'd ask me to comment on one or another and my heart would race. Not because I was flushed with young love, but because I was anxious. I didn't know what to say. I'd either lie and try to sound like them or I'd make an excuse to go home. I didn't like girls the ways my friends were beginning to like girls. But, I liked them that way. I ever acted feminine, my mother would tell me I was, "too butch to be gay." I didn't know what gay was, but apparently I wasn't it. I didn't know what I was, because I didn't know anyone who as gay. I didn't know that what I was feeling was normal for someone like me. I was made to feel abnormal because I didn't feel like everyone else. I hid it away as much as I could. I dated girls because I was supposed to.
Once I came out, I started to meet other gay people. I hoped that by being out, I'd find some sort of acceptance. Instead, I was told I wasn't gay enough. "You should dress better if you're gay," I was told. I have been a big guy all my life and there is slim pickings when you are husky. I wore what we could afford. By that point, I was too gay to fit in with some of my straight friends and too straight to fit in with my new gay friends. Gays were starting to be shown with more regularity, but none of them were fat. Again, I felt alone because I didn't fit someone else's definition of who I was.
People that know me may know that I struggle with social anxiety. I have an irrational fear that people are staring at me and judging me. It may seem irrational to someone that has never had it done to them, but so many parts of my life it has been my reality. I try to identify as one thing and I am told that I don't fit in. I try to fit in and I am told, both by my self and others, that I don't fit in. I don't know how to act. I don't know how to fit in. For the better part of thirty-five years, I have been judged by the outside world and told how I should be, what I should like, what I should play with, how I should think, how I should act. And every time I try to be the person that people seem to think I should be, I make some misstep and find myself falling out of the box someone put me in.
Despite my social anxiety, I made a decision a few years ago to try to just be me. To stop trying to fit in other peoples boxes and just act like me. I get reminded constantly that people aren't comfortable with me being me, despite the fact that those closest to me tell me it is ok. They love me for being uniquely me. But, the rest of the world still stands there, in judgement.
Things I have heard in my life:
I am too white to call myself Native.
I am too girly to play with boys.
I am too boyish to play with girls.
I am too straight to be gay.
I am too gay to be straight.
I am too fat to be attractive.
When I said on Facebook that I felt that Human Lives Matter, I wasn't attempting to dismiss the ways that black people are dehumanized. I wasn't trying to say that Trans lives matter less. I was not speaking as a white man and dismissing how unjust the world was. I was trying to stand up for people like me. People that have been told all their lives that they need to fit in a box and are dehumanized when they don't or can't fit.
The fact is, there was a time when I believed my life didn't matter. I felt like an abomination, not simply because I was gay, but for all the things that make me exactly who I am. I was so convinced that my life didn't matter and that I wasn't human I attempted to end my life. Since then, there are who continue to try to make me feel like my experiences don't matter. My life doesn't matter. That I need to "Man Up." I need to accept that "Life is Tough all over." I am told that it is irrational to think that other people are judging me, but at the same time told that I need to act this way or that. People don't even realize that they are judging each other.
I have written this a few times, but it is appropriate here too.
I put on faces to hide from the pain.
I put on faces to keep me sane.
I put on masks
for anyone who asks
the Truth.
Those words have been in my mind for over twenty years. Despite trying to be myself, I still feel this way. I want to live in a world where there are no boxes. Where we are all human and are all treated as equals. I want to live in a world where I feel like I belong. Where I don't have to wear masks and try to fit in. But that world isn't the one I live in. I live inside this box, right now, right here. If I speak out, I am slapped down. I am told "How Dare You?!" when I try to stand up for people like me. Thankfully, I am too stubborn to give up and say, you win. I stubbornly try to keep just being me. Sometimes my words will come out wrong. My intent muddled by other peoples interpretations. I will fall down. I will get hurt. I will be emotional. Because that is who I am. A human, trying desperately to get rid of his masks.
