For me life stateside was filled with all kinds of emotions and events, just like everyone else. However, unlike most people, I can easily describe these events and my reactions to them into two categories: the Base, and the Lesbian. However, the broad range of my emotions evelopes them together under the umbrella of human experience.
Let me start by saying that I don't like being known only for my sexuality. I hate it really. I've known too many people who have let their sexuality define who they are. For me it's a piece of what I am. I don't want it to consume me. But, there are two reasons why I focus on my sexuality in this blog; 1) I think it will be easier for the general reader to relate to me if I categorize everything, and 2) living in Korea is very difficult for me on some levels and this is my outlet. It satisfies an emotional purpose. Living in the West I would never draw so much attention to it.
But let's get back to it!
On the whole, life in America was mundane. In all my activities I was unchallenged. I had always been highly intelligent so I was never easily stimulated. Public school and university were terribly, horribly, mind numbing lumps of dullness for me that I was forced to participate in for some valuable piece of paper. I read voraciously, and if I'm honest I have never felt more myself than when I had a book in my hand and a few dozen at my disposal in close proximity.
Social situations were fun and enjoyable on the surface, but I could barely stand the shallowness of the people around me. None of them seemed interested in the outside world beyond the borders of our city, our state, or the country. They talked about the same boring ass shit everyday, who slept with who, who tricked out their Honda, who was acting crazy on the lastest drug, who had gotten fired from their deadend job for doing some kind of stupid shit, and needed to find another one fast before they got kicked out of their apartment. I wanted to scream!
When I lived in Tennessee briefly with my girlfriend (let's call her "Harriet"), I worked a deadend job at a local restaurant and lived in a shitty, tiny apartment off Middlebrook Pike. And Harriet made me fucking miserable, more miserable than I've ever been in my whole life. Her interests included partying, clubbing (which included making out with random girls...in front of me!!), spending money as soon as it grazed her fingers, and pouring verbal salt into all my open, emotional wounds. I could write a book about her...
I had a great friend of mine, one of the most intelligent people I've ever met (let's call him "Gabe"). Gabe was a man of refined tastes in knowledge, an expert in obscure authors and texts, and obsessed with research. A conversation with him was my drug, and we would talk for hours about the ethics of human social norms, philosophy, religion, politics, etc. Harriet would often be there for these conversations, during which she never spoke unless it was to make a joke inappropriate to the subject at hand. And she always had the same thing to say to me on the way home: "I don't like going to Gabe's house because you turn into a complete asshole. You don't talk about things I want to talk about. You talk about things I can't have an opinion on." That's when it hit me. Not only did she not HAVE an opinion (which I could have dealt with), but she had already refused to form one.
These are the kind of people I'm talking about. And I met them everywhere I turned.
As for my sexuality, I spent most of my life trying to cure it. I had always known that I was attracted to girls. But, like most of us, I grew up thinking I was the only one and one of the reasons for that is I was unaware that society had a word for people like me. Had I known the word "lesbian" or "gay" I would have understood that there were people in the world like me and my early misery would have been null and void. It also didn't help that I grew up Mormon (more on that later). Though my family did break from the church I still struggled with deprogramming myself and trying to justify my sexuality with my newfound nondenominational Christianity. Living in the Bible beating South didn't really help much. I really didnt feel free until I embraced my atheism/agnosticism in my early 20's.
My parents remain Christian, my emotionally abusive mother becoming more and more of a Bible thumper day by day. I do not trust my parents, which is no secret among my few close friends. They betrayed me at my most vulnerable, and for that I cannot forgive them. To this day I'm the only homosexual I know who has had to come out twice to their parents. That's another story.
Though I'm only scratching the surface of the surface, I suppose any reader would understand how thoroughly unhappy I was in America. Living abroad has given me a new sense of self, incredible confidence, enhanced my adaptibility, and opened up endless possiblities for me on different levels. For now I'm content, but I don't mean to stay that way for long.
Let me start by saying that I don't like being known only for my sexuality. I hate it really. I've known too many people who have let their sexuality define who they are. For me it's a piece of what I am. I don't want it to consume me. But, there are two reasons why I focus on my sexuality in this blog; 1) I think it will be easier for the general reader to relate to me if I categorize everything, and 2) living in Korea is very difficult for me on some levels and this is my outlet. It satisfies an emotional purpose. Living in the West I would never draw so much attention to it.
But let's get back to it!
On the whole, life in America was mundane. In all my activities I was unchallenged. I had always been highly intelligent so I was never easily stimulated. Public school and university were terribly, horribly, mind numbing lumps of dullness for me that I was forced to participate in for some valuable piece of paper. I read voraciously, and if I'm honest I have never felt more myself than when I had a book in my hand and a few dozen at my disposal in close proximity.
Social situations were fun and enjoyable on the surface, but I could barely stand the shallowness of the people around me. None of them seemed interested in the outside world beyond the borders of our city, our state, or the country. They talked about the same boring ass shit everyday, who slept with who, who tricked out their Honda, who was acting crazy on the lastest drug, who had gotten fired from their deadend job for doing some kind of stupid shit, and needed to find another one fast before they got kicked out of their apartment. I wanted to scream!
When I lived in Tennessee briefly with my girlfriend (let's call her "Harriet"), I worked a deadend job at a local restaurant and lived in a shitty, tiny apartment off Middlebrook Pike. And Harriet made me fucking miserable, more miserable than I've ever been in my whole life. Her interests included partying, clubbing (which included making out with random girls...in front of me!!), spending money as soon as it grazed her fingers, and pouring verbal salt into all my open, emotional wounds. I could write a book about her...
I had a great friend of mine, one of the most intelligent people I've ever met (let's call him "Gabe"). Gabe was a man of refined tastes in knowledge, an expert in obscure authors and texts, and obsessed with research. A conversation with him was my drug, and we would talk for hours about the ethics of human social norms, philosophy, religion, politics, etc. Harriet would often be there for these conversations, during which she never spoke unless it was to make a joke inappropriate to the subject at hand. And she always had the same thing to say to me on the way home: "I don't like going to Gabe's house because you turn into a complete asshole. You don't talk about things I want to talk about. You talk about things I can't have an opinion on." That's when it hit me. Not only did she not HAVE an opinion (which I could have dealt with), but she had already refused to form one.
These are the kind of people I'm talking about. And I met them everywhere I turned.
As for my sexuality, I spent most of my life trying to cure it. I had always known that I was attracted to girls. But, like most of us, I grew up thinking I was the only one and one of the reasons for that is I was unaware that society had a word for people like me. Had I known the word "lesbian" or "gay" I would have understood that there were people in the world like me and my early misery would have been null and void. It also didn't help that I grew up Mormon (more on that later). Though my family did break from the church I still struggled with deprogramming myself and trying to justify my sexuality with my newfound nondenominational Christianity. Living in the Bible beating South didn't really help much. I really didnt feel free until I embraced my atheism/agnosticism in my early 20's.
My parents remain Christian, my emotionally abusive mother becoming more and more of a Bible thumper day by day. I do not trust my parents, which is no secret among my few close friends. They betrayed me at my most vulnerable, and for that I cannot forgive them. To this day I'm the only homosexual I know who has had to come out twice to their parents. That's another story.
Though I'm only scratching the surface of the surface, I suppose any reader would understand how thoroughly unhappy I was in America. Living abroad has given me a new sense of self, incredible confidence, enhanced my adaptibility, and opened up endless possiblities for me on different levels. For now I'm content, but I don't mean to stay that way for long.
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