![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Green Doc Martens boots, black Hanes tube socks
(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.