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  • 1

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After breaking into the GLBT community and making so many new connections, networks and friends, I grew up with such speed that sometimes, I find myself panting. It can get overwhelming. Everything was too much too soon. On the brighter side, it challenged my older mindset of putting sexuality on a pedestal. Ironically, I was as rigid with sexuality as I was before coming out. After going through so much trouble to label and define myself as lesbian, I didn’t want to go back to square one and change my position. Because that might make me look indecisive and make my straight friends question my sanity again.

Not many people know this but I have crushed on a boy before. And till this day, I still crush on him a little. He was my neighbour, and we met when we were ten years old at the playground. I even used to imagine that I would have my first kiss on the slide. He is and remains the only guy who makes me feel for him the way I feel for other girls. Not just a physical fling, but something real. Something deeper.

On top of this, meeting a whole spectrum of character types and colourful people in the GLBT community has challenged my old prejudices and biases. About what is right and wrong (who are we to judge?), and how I perceive others. It changed my notions about race, religion, age, and socio-economic background. I began to think twice about the people I say I will only date and could only possibly fall for.

In the end, my neighbour crush and my experiences in the GLBT community has made me realise that my sexuality is actually such an irrelevant concept. Love is love is love is love. It surpasses all boundaries, be it race, religion, gender, or class. Just as the self-identified lesbian (me) can still feel butterflies in her stomach for the now-grown up ten year old boy she once (and still) crushes on. Just as the upper-class, rich white girl can fall for a poor black man and call it true love. Love grows outwards from the heart and it doesn’t matter what’s on the outside in the end, does it?

———

People always look at seemingly incompatible couples with curiosity or disgust. I’ll admit, I once did the same. Because I’m thinking, one is too good for the other or something along this line. But then again, love works in mysterious ways. And I believe that in every one of us, lies the capacity to love that someone special. Regardless of the picture you see outside.

The identity-aspect of sexuality can be empowering. However, it can also box us in into stereotypical behaviours, mindsets and norms. Sure, you might say that sexuality makes it easy for us to understand this complicated world, by putting a simplified name on a complex issue. But more often than not, most of us don’t realise the walls we construct within our own minds when we put a restricted definition on ourselves. *For example, what happens when the proud lesbian one day falls for a guy? Would she brush aside her feelings because it threatens her lesbian psyche?*

Maybe one day, all of us can discard this idea of sexuality and just embrace the idea of love as it is. Love. Not gay or straight or bisexual or what-have-you. It’s just another label in the end.

If anything, my sexuality is lover. I love, therefore I am.

 

Comments   

# wwaterbaby 2010-02-02 02:50
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waterbaby said,

July 10, 2006 at 1:33 am

My favourite justification for being ‘me’ is that, “If i love a person, i love them regardless of their background, education level or gender. I love them for who they are, the connection between us, and the way they make me feel”…

In my lifetime, i am lucky to have been really in love and in a relationship with 1 male & 1 female (at different times! hee) Both relationships are treasured by me, both have their appeal, not one is better than the other for any reason..

Therefore, its true that when ‘LOVE’ comes in.. ‘SEXUALITY’ fades away…
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# mmumsy 2010-02-02 02:50
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mumsy said,

July 10, 2006 at 1:35 pm

This is a fantastic piece. I think when one is “coming out” a label can be very empowering. As I continue on my journey though, I feel the need for labels and definitions dropping away and the power of the concept of love, not necessarily romantic love, just love for my fellow beings in whatever form it takes, becoming much more important.
Experiences within the GLBT community, and reading more about the community, things like Stone Butch Blues for example, have so helped me suspend judgement on how people see themselves and live their lives, and i still feel that the GBLT community is made of very brave and admirable people. But as I move on, I see the value in a more mixed community, and hope that we’re moving towards the day when some of these walls between communities come down.
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# beanel 2010-02-02 02:50
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beanel said,

July 11, 2006 at 9:43 pm

this totally hit home about the things i went through and informs me about what is ahead. i admit to constantly trying to ‘out’ myself in every way and i feel no shame or guilt in being who i am. but i always thought about how i’d ever tell my friends if i ever like someone of the opposite sex again. would that make me more straight and less gay? i think not now. it will just be who i am. maybe someday i’ll be able to say, ‘love is love’ and really practise it.
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