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phreddd(The following statement was originally posted earlier today on the "Gay Men with Depression" tribe on Tribe as an answer to the question "What's so gay about depression?" - however, I decided to repost it here...)
In my case, it's these dueling feelings - that society sees me, "young and black and fine and gay" (to quote Audre Lorde), as a (varying degrees of) "valuable pelt"; but also that I have a cultural legacy/legacies that seem to have some social/commercial cachet that the larger culture wants little bits and pieces of. On top of that, I still have to try to live my own life, with all of the experiences (positive and negative) therein, within a society that has always preferred conformity to a strong degree despite platitudes and national constitutions claiming "freedom of..." or "freedom to..."
Everytime I have turned around, I get told or shown that my thoughts, my life, and my love of peace and comfort - and my feeling that others are entitled to the same - are less popular than I think it should be in this society that "liberty and justice" are supposed to be (on paper, at least) the bases of... and that lacking is something I take personally, maybe more than I probably should, to the point of letting it severely compromise the good relationships in my life - including the intimate ones with those men who love me and whom I should be loving as fully as I can in return.
Then again, not having been exposed to a sufficient amount of loving relationships in my much younger years (let alone loving relationshps involving someone of the same gender) and being overexposed to a lot of drama-bearing relationships that were less than healthy, how would I even know that you're supposed to REGULARLY do more than just say you love 'em and break off some dick-ass action every now and then? Of course, all that does is spread the bad feelings around, having the other partner(-s) wondering where things went wrong, if they were ever right to begin with.
In my case, it's these dueling feelings - that society sees me, "young and black and fine and gay" (to quote Audre Lorde), as a (varying degrees of) "valuable pelt"; but also that I have a cultural legacy/legacies that seem to have some social/commercial cachet that the larger culture wants little bits and pieces of. On top of that, I still have to try to live my own life, with all of the experiences (positive and negative) therein, within a society that has always preferred conformity to a strong degree despite platitudes and national constitutions claiming "freedom of..." or "freedom to..."
Everytime I have turned around, I get told or shown that my thoughts, my life, and my love of peace and comfort - and my feeling that others are entitled to the same - are less popular than I think it should be in this society that "liberty and justice" are supposed to be (on paper, at least) the bases of... and that lacking is something I take personally, maybe more than I probably should, to the point of letting it severely compromise the good relationships in my life - including the intimate ones with those men who love me and whom I should be loving as fully as I can in return.
Then again, not having been exposed to a sufficient amount of loving relationships in my much younger years (let alone loving relationshps involving someone of the same gender) and being overexposed to a lot of drama-bearing relationships that were less than healthy, how would I even know that you're supposed to REGULARLY do more than just say you love 'em and break off some dick-ass action every now and then? Of course, all that does is spread the bad feelings around, having the other partner(-s) wondering where things went wrong, if they were ever right to begin with.
