Sunday, May 17, 2009

Grey or Gray


The other day I learned one of my best friends made a beautiful decision to live his life, today a rally was held in NYC to protect that. This is for him, others, and anyone else who assumed life would go a certain way or can't.
LILA,32
It’s a complicated situation. But most things are. Complicated. When I was a little girl I thought things were black and white. Right and wrong. Good and bad. Either you loved someone or you didn’t. And surely if you did love them they would love you back, all of you, accept all of you. Hug you in acceptance, just because you loved them. And there was high school and college, and love and marriage and children and milestone markers that people gave you cards for. And that was life. It was recitals and barbeques and summer vacations and baseball games, and boring dinner ‘parties’ in which no games were played. And that was a given, that was our legacy, what was expected, maybe the car or the vacation or the house of the kids would be different than you expected but it would happen it would be yours. And I wanted that. Never did I not want that. I still do.
When I was in college I used to hate my body for making those things difficult, making them seem impossible. Special. I used to pray, I used to pray all the time not to make me like everyone else or make it okay for me to be ‘like everyone else’ or stop feelings or change them but just to be able to experience, in whatever way God or whoever saw fit, just to be able to have me experience and maybe take for granted those things too.
And I know, I know no matter what is and is not legalized I’m not going to have the same taken for granted experience I’m not going to have the same life. But I want the boring dinner parties and the recitals and barbeques and high school graduations, and vacations and a yard. And I didn’t think I was going to have to fight to get them.