wanted: dead or alive

“If people were cookies I think you’d be double chocolate chip with macademia nuts.”

 

Back to the world with 2010 and along with a whole new head of worries.

I’m back, moreso, my computer is back. Holiday was long, I got sunburnt and eaten by mosquitos as well as being insult by text messages because I kissed one of my straight friends for New Years Eve. Bollocks.

I’ve been meaning to write this for awhile, (i.e. it’s being sitting inside, stewing about in my mind while I painted my nails again an again) so I’ve decided to let it all hang out. My dreams for 2010, my expectations, my fears and all that loverly denial I have. So where should I begin?

I’m petrified of…

Myself. Yes, that person staring back in the mirror is terrifying to me. Her hair is messy, her skin is bumpy and red, let’s not even describe the state of her make-up and her smile is crooked; but none of this is really the problem.

That girl in the mirror, she’s not me and it’s taken me so long to realise it. You see, I’m the short-black-haired girl who wears dark lipstick, talks about gender and sexual equality, sex in general, contradictory religion, patriachal society and it’s effects on feminism. I’m the girl who spends majority of her time alone, writing or painting or composing. I’m the girl who walks down the street amid taunts and who somehow still keeps her head high.

But I’m also not her. This person that I am is simply a product of what my life experiences have created. To be truthful…

I have long blonde curly hair, I don’t wear make-up all that much and I don’t really like confrontation. I prefer to stay quiet than to talk up a storm and I prefer to hide away everything I create because I don’t believe anybody could really understand.

These two people, one of them Cal, the other with an unmentionable name; they don’t fit together. They’re my past and my present and neither can represent my future; not how they are right now so I’m at a loss.

I’m confused. I’m confused because in two weeks I’m expected to go to a place, make new friends, live my dreams and just be a person but that’s something I don’t know how to do.

I don’t know how to show people every side of myself. I’m an enigma, even to me and it kills me inside at times.

I can label myself all I want, but in truth, I’m the girl whose dreams exceed her means. I’m the girl who walks with her head high but whose feet stumble on the ground because she’s too scared to wear her glasses. I’m the girl who still won’t smile wide because the memory of her braces is too startling to consider what she looks like without them. I’m the girl who composes music but can’t read it; the girl who can’t sequence properly and who has to read majority of things three or four times before it actually makes sense. I’m the girl who wishes on stars, believes in fairytales and wants nothing more than to be rescued.

But I’m also the girl who knows better than that. I’ll stumble and trip, smile through insecurity and pretend that I understand what my eyes are seeing even if it’s all jumbled in my mind.

I won’t be rescued from myself; I have to learn how to rescue myself first before anything else can be done.

I have to learn how to accept this multi-faceted person and that nobody is ever going to know each side of me; not yet.

I have to learn how to accept that labels, no matter how much I might despise them at times, are beneficial to not just my understanding of who I am, but everyone else’s too.

I have to learn that fear is empowering, and that’s going to be a long process.

I dream of…

Pictures… The way the actors move and say those words I’ve written. The storylines that weave a pattern in my mind and that I cannot rightfully put down on a sheet of paper but try over and over again because it’s all I can think about.

Conversations… The talkshow that I’ll produce and the people that’ll make it amazing; the views they’ll have and the success that’ll come with it, as well as the acknowledgement that I’ve made a difference.

Music… The double meanings and the chords, the rhythms and the melodies that I can share. A refuge for those concerned, dreaming, confused and wishing. I could create a world.

I’m a dreamer, and I can admit some of my dreams may never come to fruitation but I’m sure of some. These are the ones that I’m going to fight for this year, and that I promise and swear to you all, I’m going to do…

1. Publish a book – the already completed “As You Were” that catalogues the possible future I might have if I give up, something that is used for me as a retaliation to all my inner-insults.

2. Photograph the truth – all the people in the LGBT community; each label, each couple and each piece of language that echoes in their mind. I’m going to capture it somehow, and you’re all going to see it.

3. Hold an exhibition – I refuse to sell the art or give it away, it has to have meaning before I can do that. People and their perspectives have to give it meaning, so that’s what I’m searching for.

4. Make a movie – expose the trials, tribulations and discrimination against transfolk. Something I can’t rightfully understand but something greatly unappreciated: the struggle some of these people go through.

5. Start a talkshow – I’ve got things to say and damn me to hell, I’m going to say them, but I know I don’t have all the words, so what better way to find all the others?

6. Work how I want – stripping and prostitution. Sexuality, gender and sexism is so easily displayed in sex; you can read person in it and I plan of reading alot of people, not because I think it’s cool but because we’re all human and sometimes the world isn’t as simple a place as we would like it to be.

7. Date who I want – finally not categorize the people I see and just want who I want, whether it’s the foxy red-haired femme polishing off her third martini or the butch at the pool table giving everyone else a whipping. People are beautiful and I want to see it.

So that’s what I want, and it’s what I’m going to get as well. Doesn’t sound like much at all, does it?

I believe the world…

Can give real equality, not just to the LGBT community but to everybody on this whole damn, retched planet. REAL equality, that means country vs. country, race vs. race, religion vs. religion, job vs. job, sexuality vs. sexuality and life vs. life. No-one more effected than others, and no-one more forgotten.

Can overcome it’s war with words, unless of course we’ve all forgotten our education and have taken to sticks and stones again.

Can be environmental again, really admire nature and the way it controls us, and not the other way around. To care about the environment in all ways, not just the parts that immediately effect you.

Can make a difference to poverty and create a proper global economy that we as humans can be proud of, instead of using and abusing each other.

Can give a voice to those who can’t rightly speak – Give the people real nerve to make hard decisions when it comes to disabled people. I believe in euthanasia.

And I’m in denial of the fact that…

My parents don’t believe me when I tell them I’m gay, and that they’re thinking along the lines: ‘As soon as she finds a nice boy he’ll straighten her out’.

My extended family thinks I’m an extremist because I choose to speak out about things that immoral and that I can appreciate the beauty of tattoos and their meaning, whether symbolic or otherwise.

My friends don’t bitch about me behind my back, because they’re meant to be my friends right?

So, here I am world.

The odd, quirky, eccentric person who wakes each morning a little bit different than the day before. A person with a loud mouth and stretch-marks on her bum (the only claim to fame she has). A person who enjoys pornography and finds sex fascinating. A person who still has no idea who she really is, but is determined to find out, whatever the cost.

I’m wanted: dead or alive.

– Cal.