Hug you

Just a simple hug is all I want to give you. Maybe a cup of tea and a tissue to dry your eyes would be the right thing to give. So many years and so many memories between us and all I can do now are give you words of comfort over a screen. Only words on a screen. You have been there for me dear friend. Always been able to fall at your side and cry my sorrows. Now I cannot do the same for you and it is hard to swallow. Am I a good friend after all this time? So sad you are and it is too early to call you, the family would wake and I am reminded of the time difference. Not much to do I suppose. Just type the words I write and hope they comfort you. I pray they do but I really just want to hug you.

Always want to be a writer?

I didn’t always want to be a writer. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be when I was a child but being a writer wasn’t something that came to mind. That came later. That came much later after I left high school and I wrote in journals to vent frustration. When my notebook was open I had something to say about the sorrows and joys I was experiencing. It didn’t matter that no one would read them, they were mine and that was just fine with me. I sit here and wonder what changed that those simple words I wrote to myself became something I wanted to share. Was it a single moment where I thought my words mattered and I wanted to write for a living; letting the world know my words and tell them it mattered? I think it came over a series of moments. Periods in my life where all I had were the words I wrote on cheap notebooks and pretty journals. Periods where the love I had in those pages transformed into something great and passionate; something that I slowly saw that could be used and not suppressed in books collecting dust. I still have all those notebooks but I cannot reach them, they sit in the attic of my father’s house and truthfully, I miss them. To look back on them, see how I have changed and how my writing has changed. I might ask him to send them to me. Maybe I don’t need them any more as I have grown into something better than I thought I would be back then. The notebooks I do have with me I rarely look at; only on occasion to look back on a particular moment for writing or because a conversation brought that subject up. Should I look back? So many questions I ask myself and often I find the answers but in places I didn’t think to look at first. They can come from me in time but they also come from those I love and still they come from places I never looked at before. Given the opportunity to write for someone I now know I want to do. I am a writer; I just never expected to get the opportunity. I applied to write for a company, submitted works of my own to show my ability and didn’t think much on it after. I submitted it and was done. I didn’t dwell too much; I didn’t even tell my partner until I got the acceptance letter. Shows how much I thought about it I guess. I was accepted! Someone thought the samples I sent were good enough to take a chance on me and the words I had to say. That feeling is irreplaceable and indescribable. The opportunity is something I can grow from. Does the person who accepted me realize the gift they have given me? Maybe not but I am eternally grateful to them. I am a writer and someone saw that. There is something else. I was given a gift certificate from the company I write for. It was a contest I wasn’t aware of and I won. It was on using a particular tool we can use to promote ourselves and the company. I apparently used it and was successful in it enough to be given this. So I bought two writing books with it to better my writing skills. If I can use those books bought by them to better my writing for me as well as the company I write for then that’s what I should use it for. And all this is for a girl who never thought to be a writer when she was a child? For someone who uses words daily, I haven’t the words to express what all this feels like, what all this means to me.

Needing

I need to be able to express what weighs down my heart and mind. There must be a way for there to be openness, a means to accept the words I give you as my own and not an attack on anything. Simply accept them. Yet with this plea there lays doubt. Doubt that what I have to bare you will take to heart and judge me for it. Attack the emotions and thoughts I have and ignore that I simply mean to express. I love you, no matter what has been or will be I love you. There have been periods in our relationship where we have been mother-daughter, friends, sisters and enemies. We have tried to pour it all out and at times succeeded while other times failed. I am desperate to find a balance to share with you as you have shared with me but I am scared. Afraid that you won’t hear me; afraid you will banish them as rambles or worse yet belittle them until I feel I have wronged you. I write all this in some attempt to rationalize our rocky periods and find peace when life was beautiful, I write all this in some form of preparation to the real words I am about to write. Whether it works or not remains to e seen and probably won’t show until after you have read this. I do not nor have I made light of our relationship and what has gone on. On the contrary I have held it all dear and close. Sometimes too close but that is my own doing. I have taken and learned the lessons taught me and taken the experiences given me and made them character builders, good or bad. I have taken it all and loved you all the same. At times hating you, angered or hurt by you and other times cherishing you. Cherishing you for who you are, what you have gone through and have achieved. With all this there are times where I feel I still don’t understand you. I feel as though I am a child desperately trying to grasp onto the world around me. Maybe none of this is any attempt or preparation but only a means to stall what I really mean to ask and say.

Mom and my wedding

I think about my mother and I can’t help but think of all the trouble we have gone through. My life and the choices I have made weren’t always the right ones according to her. The things I cannot change and the things I had a hand it, it doesn’t matter. Since I was a child we have struggled to have a relationship that was good and strong though there were plenty of times where it was weak and we failed at making a relationship that weren’t full of fights. We haven’t spoken on several occasions and yet there were times where things were good and we talked constantly. Right now I don’t know where we stand, I don’t know how I feel and though I want nothing more than to finally have a solid and argument free relationship I fear I am mad and hurt. Do I express them and rock the boat. I am scared. I am so scared that if I do then there won’t be anything but fights, tears and silence in the end. It has happened before and as much I want to think things have changed, I don’t know that they have. She isn’t coming to my wedding. And while the reason she sounds legitimate and very well could be but something troubles me. There wasn’t much emotion. Did I want her to somehow convey that she was remorseful about it, cry or simply a sniffle to show she really did regret it? Maybe I want too much and there wasn’t any need for such drama or emotion. In either case I am hurt, I am sad that my own mother will not witness my happy day. The day I say ‘ja’ and am considered married in the eyes of the Dutch government and she won’t be there. Granted it will be a gay wedding and I know how she feels about gays, seeing as she is a born again Christian and all. She has said she would come; that she loves me regardless and be there for her only daughter’s wedding. Is it really too hard and the inability to get the time off just a clever way to avoid? These things I can’t help but think about. I could be making something out of nothing because it is such an important day to me and the thought that she won’t be there hurts, tears a little at the seams. It could very well be that because of the significance I am making too much out of it, trying to read something that isn’t there. Am I? I want her there, and now she won’t be. There weren’t tears that I could hear, there wasn’t much said on it at all actually. I being afraid to snap the thin and worn thread and she, I don’t know. She was able to get time off in July and not my day in September but maybe she can come then to finally see where I live, how I live and simply want to be near me. Maybe she will.I love my mom; I really do and want nothing more than for us to finally have a solid relationship. Yet part of me is scared that history repeats itself. Am I paranoid, scared or simply being ridiculous?

An odd moment in Hilversum

As I was walking to the store to get coffee and something for dinner tonight I noticed something about those standing under overhangs or just inside the door of the stores. It rains a lot in the Netherlands. The rain comes and it goes and the dutchies I saw about were waiting it out. I had never thought, wait until it passes so I don't get wet, I just go about. Why wait inside when there are things to do and places to be? I imagine it's like waiting for the rain to stop in London on a spring evening. An observation is all it was.

There was a moment the other day after I got my letter of acceptance that life was really going to begin for me in Holland. My goodness I can't get that bubbly scary feeling in my stomach. After waiting for my residence permit to be applied for and then to wait while they process it that's all I can remember doing is waiting! Now that all I have to do is wait just a tad longer for it to come to me I am a little curious as to what it feels like not to wait. What does it feel like not to wait?

Discrimination

What does it mean? Is there anything I am missing? Why won’t people just give me what I want and leave me alone? It isn’t like I am asking for the world here. I really don’t see how it is too much to ask really. Everyone of the ‘norm’ has it so why can’t I? If there was a way I could conquer the world and get it myself I would. Truly I would and I wouldn’t stop at just me. I would get it for any one else in my shoes unable to get it for themselves. Why? Because it isn’t right, it isn’t what I thought people were like. Of course people have let me down before on a variety of other issues so it should be no surprise but it is and it hurts. What is it that makes me so different from everyone else? Am I alien or deformed from any recognition as a human being that they can be so cruel to me?
From the time I was a child I knew I was different. I looked at myself different when I watched people. I did not have the capability to know that there was a term for people like me. That didn’t stop me from wondering, that didn’t keep me from roaming around the playground and stores looking for people like me who looked at others the way I did. Terms didn’t stop me from looking and terms didn’t stop me from wondering if I was somehow broken. Was I different because I wasn’t made right. Maybe my parents noticed I was odd but didn’t want to hurt my feelings. If I told them I thought I was odd would they hate me? Just a few things a child comes out with. I was gay and I know that now.
So what does that mean to me now? It means I like the same sex. It means that I am in fact different from the norm of society. And I suppose it is that difference which means people can look at me as though I am plagued. It means that because I have someone in my bed that society does not approve of I can be treated as though my voice does not matter. However, I want to tell you something. My voice does matter. Just because that voice comes from a gay person does not mean it sounds any different, it doesn’t and it wants to be heard. I see it as such an issue in politics and religions all over the world. It makes its way on the news and the floors of government parliaments and congresses. There are parties trying to treat me like I am diseased and I don’t understand why. Can’t anyone tell me why?

Guilt from my own words.

If I write these words and point you out will you forgive me if everyone sees? My secrets, my life and the stories I put into motion as someone turns the pages. What would you do if they knew I was speaking of you with the actions and hatred you bestowed upon me while they read on? There are days where I put into question any talent I might have. Do I have the right to call myself a writer, a title given to the privileged few? Those afternoons where I feel the talent and ambition flow through me, I wonder how other writers deal with the consequences of the words they write. We press to paper things we know, the pen flowing with drama and horrors we grasp. Sure, we stretch the truth as we see it but the loved ones around us see themselves or our own life’s story in the pages they turn. What does that make me as a writer? The storyteller people want to hate? I fear the day you read my work, I dread the moment you see some part of your life in there for the entire world to see. The guilt I see in myself sometimes eats at me until I don’t ever want to hold that pen and paper ever again. Do I believe you could handle the words I write? Not at all. My life as I see it and lived I use however I chose in the works that I write. However I must tell you I truly dread letting you even peak into the world I have created for myself. It is my words and my life, you just happen to be a part of it in some way. Does that make me a vile monster to express what I feel and think to the pages I desire to create? You would have be believe it so and I tend to agree today. Will that change? It always does, tomorrow I may aspire to be the greatest writer I can be. Though right now, I beat myself up for the words I write, the dreams I show shattered and secrets I reveal for all to see. I dread the moment you open the pages and see the world I created. A work of fiction or non it doesn't matter, you will hate them all the same and detest my fingers for putting it all down. I am a writer, though today I don't feel like one. Today I don't want to be a writer.