Well That Happened

If my classmates didn't know I was bisexual before, they do now. I couldn't have made it any clearer if I'd gotten on the PA system and said, "HELLO WORLD! I'M SEXUALLY ATTRACTED TO GIRLS!"

In my Twentieth Century Literature (affectionately and hereafter known as Lit) class, we've been doing oral speeches about the American Dream, and how our American Dream compares to our families' dreams and those of the main characters in the novels we've read. Since Jay Gatsby's dream was to find love with Daisy, I talked about my own dreams of love:

Yes, my version of the American Dream would contain love simply because I, like anyone else, want the privilege of being able to fall in love, get married, and have kids freely and equally to anyone else, without being told that that love is wrong regardless of the gender of my spouse. Right now, that dream is out of reach for so many people, and I dream that they will be recognized as equal. I dream that people will be respected and appreciated for who they are, that no one will be condemned for being different, and that love - whether interracial, romantic or queerplatonic, between people of the same gender or sex, or between three or more people - will be accepted as being purely, simply, beautifully love.

And now they knoooow...let it go, let it go...can't hold it back anymore...let it go, let it go, turn away and slam that door. I don't care what they're going to say. The cold never bothered me anyway. (There was a theory going around Trevorspace last summer that Elsa was a lesbian. 'Let It Go' does sound a lot like the thoughts of someone abruptly coming out of the closet.)

I didn't hear any mutters of "dyke" in the audience, so that's good. There were some people snickering after I was done with my speech, but really, we're teenagers. It's not like I wasn't expecting that. For all I know, they weren't even about me.

I do think I heard someone whisper, "She's gay?" But that doesn't bother me. There's nothing wrong with noticing someone's sexual orientation, any more than there's something wrong with noticing their race or disability or body size. It only becomes wrong when you judge them for it. And contrary to what some people think, gay is not an insult. So you know what? If people want to talk about my sexuality, that is just fine. (Not that I won't be just as neurotic and weird about this as I am about everything else.)

I did get a few points off, but not for the whole coming-out thing. The teacher's a cishet ally, and she already knew anyway. It's just because I went over the time limit - I just had a lot to say. Also, after the Big Queer Announcement, I panicked and started tripping over my words. It didn't exactly help that I had stage fright to begin with. And I didn't practice my speech beforehand - I think I knew that if I thought too much about the fact that I'd be declaring my sexual orientation to an entire class of potentially homophobic teenagers, I'd run out of the room screaming or puke or something when I had to do it for real.

I'd been worse earlier, though. Two hours before the speech, I started twitching uncontrollably. It was like my old panic attacks, but bigger. Yes, I know that I made a coming-out post that literally the entire Internet-using world has access to. But really, that was the Internet. Let's face it, nothing feels as personal when you put it on the Internet. If it did, we wouldn't have flame wars or online erotica.

This is real life. And in real life, I feel like that scared fifteen-year-old again, just admitting to myself that most straight girls didn't notice other girls the way I did and terrified of telling anyone that I was different (jeez, I'm like the female Nico di Angelo). Only now, I'm not just admitting to myself that I'm bisexual. I'm admitting it to an entire school of people that could ostracize, harass, bully, or proselytize me.

But here's the thing: I'm not that scared fifteen-year-old anymore. I'm not going to hide from the truth behind food and books. This has happened, and I'm going to handle it. If I do get hurt? Well, I still have God, and God is the only one who needs to define me. 

And just like Elsa, I don't care what they're going to say. The cold never bothered me anyway.

So, I'm Seventeen

Dang, I've been seventeen as of right now for approximately fourteen hours and ten minutes (because I was born at 8:22 a.m.) and still I can't get used to saying the words "I'm seventeen." I've actually said them out loud a few times now for practice. I do believe my mother is getting annoyed by this.

Every year when my birthday falls on a school day or a Sunday (because church), we have a party with both sides of my biological family (because with the stepfam present, there would never be enough food for all of the extensive Catholic ragtag bunch of assorted rednecks, vegetarians, hyperactive cousins, neurotic dogs, snarky cats, and other various oddballs who are all either somehow related to me or have declared themselves family) a few days or weeks or sometimes months before my actual birthday. This week we had it on Sunday evening at a pizza place called The Alibi.

 Mind you, American pizza will never measure up to the awesomeness of the real deal Italian kind, but unless it's meat I'm not one to turn down food and this place was pretty good. They had these breadsticks that were doughy but not too doughy, a little salty, and melted in your mouth so easily you didn't even need butter. On the pizza, the cheese was bubbly and oily but not overly greasy. I had tomato and green pepper pizza. The little green pepper chunks were cooked to perfection, so they burst when you bit into them. The tomato slices were so juicy on the inside and firm on the outside and just amazing. Oh, yeah, Italian Americans love us some food porn. You're all probably orally orgasming right now from my epic food porn. The Alibi should be grateful right now; I'm probably getting them so many customers.

There was some awkwardness what with the fact that I was sitting next to Ella - on our grandmother's advice - but she didn't say anything rude and neither did her sisters. I think they know I would have punched them or something if they had. Or something, most likely. I did enjoy seeing everyone else, though. Also presents and cake :)

On my actual birthday, I went to Bangkok Cuisine with my parents. America does have a track record of screwing up the foodstuffs of other cultures, especially racial minority cultures (my friend Jimena hates Taco Bell with a fiery passion), but if they did so with Bangkok Cuisine they did it pretty dang fabulously. I had a vegetable curry dish with eggplant, water chestnuts, broccoli, lettuce, baby corn, carrots, mushrooms, and rice. The sauce was this amazing stuff made of coconut milk and curry, and there was also this peanut topping which I instantly adored. Also, vegetable spring rolls, always a favorite of mine. I couldn't eat all of this, of course, so I'm having leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

I also went to Erebus for the first time. Those of you also from Michigan know that Erebus is the stuff of legends. It's this haunted house that's so scary that they actually keep track of how many people have run out screaming, wet themselves, puked, or fainted - and proudly display these numbers on an electronic board near the entrance. Since its opening, the (combined) number of fainters, pukers, and wetters has gotten disturbingly close to the thousands. But I write horror, and honestly what I was thinking most of the time was how much I respected the effort they put into scaring people. It startled me when something randomly made loud noises, because I couldn't see very well, and with my irrational fear of moving tunnels I of course got freaked out in that part, but other than that I was pretty chill. In every room, my mom told the haunted house workers it was my birthday, which was not nice. If you make it all the way through without losing your cool, they give you a free t-shirt. Of course, I now have a free t-shirt compliments of Erebus. It's black and says Erebus Experiment on it.

So, that was my initiation into the age of seventeen. Only one more year until legal adulthood!

This is harder than I thought...

I feel weird writing this post on my birthday, but I needed to vent.

About what, you ask? Evidently, my classmates have discovered - or they just suspect, I don't really advertise my sexual orientation at school, as it's none of their business - that I'm queer. I don't really know if this is just my own paranoia, of course, but I swear, whenever I hear anyone gossiping about a girl they think is a lesbian - like it matters - they all seem to be looking at me. This doesn't bother me, but they say the word lesbian like it's an insult and that pisses me off. (I think their suspicions are due to my vehement liberalism and the fact that I'm a vegetarian, because apparently all lesbians are vegetarian and I have to be gay to care about equality.)

Coming out was so freeing. Actually being out?

 Well, with the awesome people in my life, like my awesome queer friends and the cishet allies I've found among my family and other friends, I love it. With everybody else, though, it's either awkward because they're being all squeamish about bringing up the subject or it just sucks because they're ignorant.

I hate complaining. I mean, as a disabled, formerly fat female, it's not like I'd never known what it's like to face prejudice. But this really is so frustrating.

I would be a lot more willing to let them know (nicely) when they say something ignorant, if only they'd bother to actually ask questions. But they don't bother - like I used to before I realized I was one of the people I'd been stereotyping, most non-ally cishet teens around here would rather just come up with "theories" about queer people than try to educate themselves by actually ASKING us non-stupid questions (stupid questions are, for example: so do you have a penis or a vagina? Does butt sex hurt? How come you don't look gay? Do you have a small dick? You're dating a guy, do you only say you're bi to turn him on? So you're a hermaphrodite, then? Does pan mean you like orgies?) and when we call them out on this ignorance they don't listen. I'm sorry, are these people supposed to know more about my sexuality than I do?

It's also really annoying when a cishet person of another minority group uses heterosexist, dyadist, and cissexist slurs, randomly accuses a gay person (or someone they think is gay) of hitting on them, says things like "That's so gay", etc. Um, intersectionality much? It sucks when ANYONE marginalizes any minority group, but I hate it when minorities marginalize EACH OTHER. How can someone who themselves is oppressed honestly do the same thing to someone else?

Well, this rant was fun. Bye now.

A Shout-Out

It's Christina's sixteenth birthday! She is one of my best friends - actually, possibly my best friend now that Ella knows I like girls and is obviously not okay with that - and one of the best people I know. She's hilarious, down-to-earth, incredibly smart, never has a mean word for anyone, and today we're finally the same age (my seventeenth birthday is tomorrow. The fact that I was born the day after her, am a year older, and we're both juniors is a source of great amusement to us). Ordinarily, there would be cupcakes and a buttload of double-stuffed Oreos followed by a sugar-fueled giggle fest for us tonight but there's no youth group this week so I'm making this post for her - and our mutual obsession with TV shows about witty lesbians - instead.

So! It is Christina's birthday, as I've said. Read about her on the Cast of Characters page, or if that sounds too much like work, read about me babbling about how badass she is here.  Christina's awesomely blunt and is one of the few people I know who truly doesn't care what other people think but does care strongly about other people. We have the coolest conversations, ranging from urban slasher legends to whether or not Winnie the Pooh is transsexual to the pronunciation of the word orgy to potential love interests for Queen Elsa from Frozen. And it's weird but it not awkward because it's us. I swear, we could be the main characters from All or Nothing.

Beyond that, Christina's just really accepting, confident, and chill. I've never ever ever seen her get mad, she could make friends with a brick wall, and when I came out to her last June she was just like, Yeah, that's cool and moved on. Christina's basically the only friend I have that I would honestly feel totally comfortable talking with about female crushes, and the great thing about this is that she wouldn't freak out on me over that even though she herself isn't into girls. She's totally liberal, is in my experience one of the only American white girls who is totally comfortable talking about race without being a Tumblr Social Justice Warrior (despite her addiction to Tumblr), and is currently writing a liberal children's book entitled Differences are Good.

All in all, Christina is a fabulous person and friend and I hope that she has a very happy birthday.

And now for the witty lesbians - more specifically, Amy Raudenfeld. Amy, woman, you are such a boss and I wish you weren't a TV character because I kind of want to date you. Tonight I saw the episode of Faking It where all the hot Brazilian refugees come to Hester High. This brings two very interesting developments into my life as a rabid queer fangirl. One, Theo and Lauren just might be a thing soon. Scratch that, they'd better be a thing soon - Thauren is just too adorable to not be a thing. Also, Amy was attracted to a guy! Is she bisexual and homoromantic? Straight-up bi, like me? Something else? This rabid queer fangirl is going to stay tuned...

Resolving My Issues...Kind Of...

Those of you who know about the whole coming-out drama I've had with my family (i.e. Betty, we chat about family awkwardness on NaNoWriMo occasionally) or who've read my old blog already probably understand my neuroticism over the subject matter of this post.

But many of you don't know the full story. So, I'll bring you up to speed.

The summer when I was fifteen, Ella was sixteen, Abby was thirteen, and Lili was eleven, I discovered, much to my astonishment, that my dear cousins were against homosexuality. Just about two months later, I finally realized that straight girls didn't notice other girls the way I did. Awkward much?

Around the same time, I met a really awesome teen lesbian whose name shall not be mentioned because I'm not sure if she reads this. I'll call her Marie because that's her middle name. I was crushing really hard on Marie, harder than I'd ever crushed on a guy. Of course I wanted to ask her out (I haven't thus far).

But I knew how high school worked. I knew that even if I got up the nerve to ask Marie out, people would talk once they realized I was dating a girl. I also knew that there was a good chance that this talk would make its way to my cousin Alex, who went (and still goes, he's a senior and I'm a junior) to the same school as me. I figured that he might bring this up at a family function, not knowing why it would bother me (though he probably knows I'm bi at this point and simply doesn't care). Had that happened, Ella (my "best friend" at the time, though thank goodness I've put an end to THAT) would have known my secret within minutes. And the thought of her knowing terrified me. I was really shy back then and I was afraid of losing her friendship. But letting her opinion scare me into silence like that simply wasn't healthy.

I still wanted to ask Marie out. Which, in my mind, left only one option: come out to Ella first so she'd at least hear it from me. With all the related issues, I started having what I now  realize were panic attacks whenever I thought about coming out to her. Which led to panic attacks when I thought about coming out to anyone. Thankfully, after a few months I got sick of this and told Mrs. Avila, my beloved youth minister. With her support and a whole lot of prayer, I found the courage to come out to other people, to start this blog, and to stand up to my cousins. It's been a long, trying, but amazing journey. And not even two months ago, I finally had the nerve to end the unhealthy friendship I'd maintained with my cousins. We were all upset about it, but this was the best thing for all of us.

Then, I posted the poem I'd written the night I came out to Mrs. Avila. Two of my relatives commented on it: Ella's sister Abby and our grandma Fran (not the same grandma I mentioned in a post last summer. That grandma isn't entirely sure how the Internet works :) ). Grandma was awesome and wonderful and wonderfully awesome. Abby's response was harder to interpret. She said that, and I quote, "All the Micola's love you Bess!"

Is that supposed to make me less nervous? IT DOESN'T MAKE ME LESS NERVOUS!! My insides twist with anxiety every time I think about it, but I take some deep cleansing breaths and meditate to calm myself down. Things will be fine, I tell myself.

I'm right. Things WILL be fine. Yes, God will give me the strength to get through this. Yes, I know my fears might be totally irrational and I'm obsessing over nothing. Yes, I know that in the grand scheme of things, my obsession with this stupid little comment is practically nonexistent.

But that doesn't stop me from obsessing. Urggggggggggh. Can anyone help me dissect exactly what Abby meant?

NaNoWriMo is coming!

It's that time of year again. With only 23 days and five hours until NaNoWriMo, I need to pick a prompt. And one of my favorite fandoms is American Dragon: Jake Long. So, pick a plot bunny, any plot bunny, from this list I made over the summer. Or submit your own ideas. FYI, you've probably guessed that I'm into fantasy. And books about queer people. And fantasy books about queer people. :)

Vegetarian Awareness Month

For those of you who don't pay attention to that kind of thing, it's Vegetarian Awareness Month. And for those of you who aren't either a) Wrimos or b) someone I know in real life, I'm a vegetarian. So I decided to make a post for those of us who skip out on hunting season by including some recipes. Most of them will be links to cooking sites, but I'll also some things I came up with myself.

Farmers' Market Chowder
Apple Sauerkraut Salad
Obazda Cheese Spread
Indian Mixed Grill
Feta Tortilla
Three Sisters Casserole
Vegetable Rice
Curry-kuri Squash Soup

Apple Basil Sandwich

Ingredients:
1 bagel or roll, sliced in half the long way
1/2 your favorite flavor apple (I use Fuji, Johnagold, or Granny Smith), sliced thinly
A mixture of fresh spinach and basil leaves
2 tbs. of Italian dressing
1 1/2 Tbs. cream cheese, vegetable or plain
1 slice of your favorite cheese (if desired)

Instructions:
1. Spread cream cheese on each half of bagel/roll and sprinkle Italian dressing on cream cheese (I've heard that most countries don't use salad dressing like Americans do. If you live in one of those countries, you can substitute balsamic vinaigrette or olive oil with spices)
2. Place one-half of the mixed greens on top of cream cheese and salad dressing. On top of this, add 1 slice of cheese if using.
3. Add 1 half of the apple slices on top of this
4. Add the other half of the mixed greens on top of the apples. On top of this, add the other half of the apple slices.
5. Place other half of bagel/roll on top

Serves 1
suggestion: I personally think avocado or sliced carrots, or both, would go really well with this sandwich, though I've never tried it that way.


My dietary staples:
*Spinach
Good for: smoothies, salads, soups, scrambled in eggs, soufflés
*Pureed pumpkin
Good for: crepes, smoothies, soups, soufflés
*Soybeans
Good for: soups, stir fry, dried and eaten as a snack
*Apples
Good for: juice, smoothies, sandwiches, salads, soups (I've never tried it this way but it sounds great)

Strange but delicious:
1. Apple, cheese, and veggie sandwiches. Apples just taste good with almost anything, but apple and cheese is definitely a winning combination
2. Spinach smoothies. I've been drinking these a lot lately, usually prepared ahead of time and drank the next morning for breakfast. The best combination I've made so far is peach, pineapple, and  spinach, but feel free to experiment. I'm also a big fan of Bolthouse brand Green Goodness smoothies, and pretty much anything else from Bolthouse.
3. Broccoli, soybean, and pineapple stir fry. This is my favorite thing to eat at BD's Mongolian Barbecue, my favorite restaurant (it's a stir fry buffet, you can combine anything you want and they cook it for you while you watch). I vary the ingredients, but broccoli, soybeans, and pineapple are always in there. Some good things to add are peapods, baby corn, bean sprouts, crushed nuts, and noodles. I recommend a sweet and tangy sauce if you decide to make this.

Okay, that's it. Happy Vegetarian Awareness Month!

Coming Out Poem

The day I first came out to someone (Mrs. Avila, you can read about her on the Cast of Characters page), I was so thrilled and relieved that I wrote a poem about it. And now that I'm out to quite literally everyone, I figure it's time I shared it.

Day of Silence is coming
and already I am mute.
For months I have been silent
I have been scared,
desperate, a liar.

I blew my chance with an amazing girl,
Because she didn't know I was bi.
But I promised myself
I would come out to someone
And tonight I've finally found my courage;
I've finally found someone I can trust
My youth minister, the woman who
Has been more like a mother to me
Than my own mom.

I walk up and force out the words,
And she just hugs me and says it's okay
Not that it's a choice
Not that I'm going to hell
Not that I need to be cured.

It's my first time coming out
And I've never been more terrified
Even though I knew she would accept me
Because DNA doesn't make a family,
Love does.
And families stick together no matter what.

So I just wanted to say
No matter how scared you are,
It does get better.
I found my courage and faced my fears
I don't have to be straight to be loved
God made me bisexual
And that is something to be proud of

The Day of Silence is coming up
And I'm speaking out -
Finally, I'm not silent anymore
--------

And yes, I wrote it two days before Day of Silence. I'd promised myself I'd come out to someone,  in solidarity,  and I trust her more than pretty much anyone else in the world. So I told her.