On Little Victories (Or, Pictures of You - But Actually Me...)

Strap yourself in, dear reader, because I have a confession to make.

Remember my post about my first tattoo? Not to brag or anything, but it's my most read piece, which makes what I'm about to say that much worse. You may recall that said post was punctuated with a photo of myself with Janet Varney, performer/producer/podcaster extraordinaire and creator of the content that led to my wrist buddy. It's a cute picture. A cute picture that harbors a terrible secret.

Are you ready for it?

...

I have food on my face.

Man. It feels good to let that go.

I realized it almost immediately, of course - it was just a wee bit of curry ketchup (all that remained of the top notch vegan hot dog I'd consumed about 10 minutes prior, thanks, Outside Lands), barely noticeable. Virtually impossible to notice, in fact, unless you were looking for it. But I knew it was there, and had to face the grim reality that it would always be there, haunting me. The question was, would I be able to suffer in silence?

Now, I say, "suffer," like I didn't immediately put it in a blog post less than 24 hours later and use it as my Facebook profile picture for months. Perspective, guys. I do sort of have it.

I did keep the secret for well over a year, though I finally told my best friend and one or two other trusteds when I couldn't take it anymore. Who knew this baby spot of ketchup would become my way less murdery Tell-tale Heart?

I didn't know Janet very well then. I know her better now, and trust her pretty implicitly based on how that's gone. What I'm saying is, in the time between those two points, I probably definitely could've explained the situation and asked for another picture to eradicate the shame. Friends do that. Unless your friend is me, because I am a ridiculous person.

Cut to the last weekend in March. I was in Seattle for a long overdue visit, prompted in part because my favorite places from when I used to live up there keep closing (R.I.P, Piecora's and the Easy Street on Mercer). It was a visit I'd planned to coincide with Emerald City Comic Con, which I'd loved and always regretted not attending every year I was in school. It was a special con for a lot of reasons. It was an emotional con for a lot of reasons. Partway through, I had to start wrestling with the reality that I was losing a family member back home. It was a much more overwhelming and raw trip than I ever could've known when I bought my tickets last fall. That's life, you know? I don't believe the universe punishes you, but it's a little harder to remember that it also doesn't play by your rules.

I'm letting you know all this because I want to make it clear that on the last day of the con, when I placed myself squarely at the back of Janet's last signing line, it was with a serious mission. She was a guest, obviously, and we'd gotten to see each other already. I'd even asked my first question ever at a convention during her panel the day before, as it had seemed like the safest place to do it (also probably my last question at a convention, because it was still horrifying). Under other circumstances, I probably would've texted, "Bye," and gone on living my life. But, like I said, I was a little raw and a little overwhelmed. So sure, I wanted to say a proper goodbye to a friend that I don't see very often, but more than that, I wanted a victory. I wanted to make up for Foodgate '13.

Janet checked in with me about what was going on in my life, because she is a good person. I lost my composure and cried for a minute, because I am a human person. After that, we got down to business. I laid out the tragic story of our only existing picture together, and she agreed that we needed to rectify the matter. Then, to my surprise, I added this: "Also, I don't even look like myself in that picture." It was not a thought I'd shared, publicly or privately, but as soon as I said it, I knew it was true. Take a look at this (I'm the brunette, duh).

That girl is six months away from coming out, and that honesty is going to finally let her settle into her life. She's stiff and she's nervous. You can't tell, but she's wearing a dress, and while she knows how to do it, it doesn't feel quite right - it's a style, not her style. Soon she's going to learn how to tie a bow tie, and that's going to change everything. Almost a year to the day later, she's going to sit in a salon with the hair she'd been growing out for lack of a better idea and say, "I want something different, but I don't know what," and because her stylist is a genius, she's going to walk out looking exactly the way she didn't even know she wanted to (one of her favorite fictional characters will follow suit soon after, and she will be unabashedly smug about it). She's going to start running and she'll learn how to ride a bike and just start doing a whole mess of stuff that terrifies her. That girl is going to remake herself, not to spite who she is, but because of who she is.

And the thing is, I love that picture. Food (can you see it?!?!?!) be damned, it's kind of the beginning of a friendship that I value very much, and it's a stop on a big journey that's gotten me to a place where I feel more like myself - physically, mentally, artistically - than I ever have. The girl in that picture has a lot of work ahead of her, but she fucking did it, you know? She took that on.

The result of that work is that I feel so at home in my body now. I'm nesting within myself, building better foundations and hanging art and decorating exactly the way I want to. Boys and girls are allowed here now. My outside matches my inside, and it's so much easier to move and breathe and be. Because of that, while I do feel total affection for the photo above, I can't look at it and say, "Hey, there's CDog being CDog."

Suddenly, my little victory wasn't about pure vanity anymore. It was about the fact that I had gotten up that morning after a rough night and still put on a shirt and tie because it made me happy. It was about the fact that I stood in line and engaged strangers in conversation. It was about the fact that I let myself feel my feels for a second and be supported by a friend, and despite all of that, still wanted to take a picture. And not the super posed awkward prom picture that I take with strangers. A good, proper, here's-me-making-the-face-I-make-when-I'm-relaxed-because-pictures-are-ridiculous picture.

...and it was about vanity. A little bit.

The girl below? She looks like me. And she's got a lot more stuff ahead of her. Some of it's going to suck royally. Some of it's going to be totally rad. But check it out. I think she's going to be okay, don't you?

On Teaching Acceptance (Or, No More Hiding...)

There's a thing I've been trying to talk about, and I don't know how. So I'm going to talk about me for a little while.

I learned what it meant to be gay in school.

It was maybe around 1996. I was about ten years old. We were in music class. It was December, and we were singing, “Deck the Halls.” One of the boys raised his hand and asked what, “gay apparel,” meant, not because he was curious, but because ten is the age when kids really start figuring out how to be snarky. The old-school nun behind the piano looked at him sharply and said, “In this song, it means happy. It also means something very inappropriate that we don’t talk about. But in this song, it means happy.”

I’d heard, “gay,” used the other way before, but not with enough context to understand what it meant. This was pre-Google, and I wasn't going to ask my parents, so I didn't really have a lot to go on. Now I knew – sort of. It meant something bad.

That’s how easy it is to plant an idea in the mind of a trusting child. I still get upset about it, about the months I spent genuinely believing it.

It was my older sister who eventually set me straight, as it were. Six years my senior, she’d often pick me up and bring me back to her high school if she had meetings and both of my parents were working too late to pick me up from extended care on time. We had a good relationship – I was never treated like a cumbersome little sister, never banished to a corner or told to stay away from her friends. I knew her friends, and liked them. One of them, I learned, was gay, and I whispered a question about him once. Maybe she didn’t know?

“Yeah,” she said firmly, “It’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

That’s all it really took to reverse the damage that had been done.  I had wanted, since learning its true definition, to believe that being gay was fine, because it seemed a silly thing to think otherwise. It’s equally silly that I needed somebody else to give me permission to trust my own feelings about the matter, but I was ten. I’m willing to forgive kid me for not being better.

I was raised Catholic, and I received an exclusively Catholic education, from kindergarten right on through to college graduation. During this massive chunk of my life, I learned a lot. When I hit high school, my personal value system really started to form, and I was so lucky to have teachers who encouraged me to trust myself. A few of those teachers really stepped up and acted as mentors, patiently helping me navigate the challenges and curveballs that got thrown my way while I tried to carve out my path. They never judged. They always listened.

When I think of the eighteen year-old kid in her college dorm who had just experienced conscious feelings for a woman for the first time, I think of how much harder it could’ve been for her if she’d been born to a different family in a different city. I know it would’ve been harder if she’d had different teachers.

It was still hard. It would be another two years or so – two years of quiet denial and confusion – before I fully understood and accepted that I was bisexual. It would be another eight years before I said it out loud.

Full disclosure: my master plan was to only indulge the attraction I felt toward men so that I would just never have to talk about it. It was a really dumb plan. Like, it was always a dumb plan, because feelings are feelings and we should really just go with them, but it was especially dumb because wherever I fall on the wider and much debated spectrum, I’m for sure attracted to women more often. Not exclusively. But more often. If you're thinking of adopting a similar plan, maybe don't. Just some friendly advice.

Saying it out loud? Best ever. There was so much of me that I was holding back because ridiculous, paranoid closet logic told me that letting it out would let everyone know. You know how sometimes you’re playing hide and seek, and you’ve got the best hiding spot, but after a while you kind of just want to be found so that you can go back to having fun being loud and visible and a part of the world? That’s how I felt at the end of that gross and complicated decade.

I don’t know that I hid all that well. There were people who definitely knew, or suspected. Toward the end, the closet door was cracking like crazy, I was so sick of keeping it closed. But it was a punishing way to live all the same, and I want to go back to that me and let her know that it's all going to work out.

Once I did it and the initial wave of euphoria passed, I spent a lot of time being irritated with myself. It was upsetting to acknowledge that I spent such a long time denying a huge part of my identity, not because I thought it was wrong, but because I thought it was wrong for me. I had gotten so worried about what people would think that it felt like I had arrested my development – like I had wasted time in understanding myself, and was now behind everyone in the race to be a person.

People who were much younger than I was with much more to lose came out everyday. I felt like a coward and a hypocrite.

Last November, I got to see Rhea Butcher and Cameron Esposito live for the first time. I was a week off my first bike accident. I was tired, my ribs were kind of busted, and I needed the laughs. I got much more. Rhea and Cameron are stand-ups and fiancées. They talk about their lives without apology. Their sets touched me and made me happy in a way that I don’t think they could have if I hadn’t stepped up and taken ownership of who I am. Post-show, after receiving compliments from them on my tie (always makes me proud), I said, “Listen, I came out this year, and what you said – what you do – really means a lot.” I mean, I probably said it way worse than that because I was nervous and being nervous makes me a jackass, but that’s what I meant to say. And immediately, Cameron pulled me in for a hug, then looked me in the eye with a big smile and said, “Hey! You’re doing it!”

That stuck with me in a big way. I have no problem admitting that I repeat it to myself when I hit rougher patches, when I start to get mad at myself or do something that scares me. It was a nice thing for one stranger to say to another stranger because she knew, and I’m grateful for it.

The way we treat each other matters. The things we say to each other matter. Words carry weight, whether we want them to or not.

Ugly words have been thrown around recently by powerful people in my city. It’s upsetting, disturbing language designed to denounce and condemn. It can call itself whatever it wants, but that is what it is. And it is wrong.

These words, and worse, have existed for a long time. But now it feels like they’re in my home, in my safe space. I’ve been trying to write about it for weeks and I haven’t been able to. I get too angry to do it right.

I don’t know that this is doing it right.

So yeah, rather than talking about it, I decided to talk about me. Because there wasn’t some Divergent-y ceremony when I turned eighteen where I stood up in front of my peers and sliced my hand open over the bowl of bisexuality, making my choice. It’s who I’ve always been. I started writing stories when I was in grade school, guys. It is not that difficult to read between the lines and see that I was a little bi kid with gently romantic feelings for a pretty diverse range of people.

My parents didn’t get weird when I didn’t want to play with dolls and begged for a poster of Jennifer Love Hewitt to put above my dresser, where she remained for years, looking amazing. When I came out to them, they said okay, and kept right on loving me. I’m so, so lucky for all of that.

Despite what some of the textbooks and official party lines may have said, my teachers taught me to honor myself exactly as I was, because that was more than enough. I don’t know that I believe in a higher power – and I’m so happy in the not knowing, so don’t worry about me – but if I did, the one with that message is the one I’d get behind.

I’m a teacher now. I’ve had chances to be the mentor, advisor, and non-judgmental ear that my teachers were to me, and I hope that I’ve done even half as well as they did. Standing up and being myself – loving who and what I love, wearing what I wear, doing what I do – feels like a responsibility now as much as a right.

There is no rule, no word, no power that will make me go back to hiding any part of who I am, nor tell anybody else to do so.  

I will do my best to lead by example, because I’m in a position right now to do that. I will continue to try and be a good person, who surrounds herself with others who are trying to be good people.

“Good,” is not who you love or do not love. It is not who or if you marry, how or if you have kids, who or what you believe in. It’s not what you look like or where you came from.

It is how you are. To yourself. To others.

I will teach acceptance.

And I stand proudly with teachers and students and parents and people who are doing the same.

Hey. We’re doing it.

On Driving, Part 2 (Or, Step One All Over Again...)

Welcome back.

When last I left you, the exploratory period had ended. All non-practical steps forward had been taken: a driving school had been found, an inquiry was sent, an instructor contacted me, and (far more quickly than I intended) an appointment was made. I already had a permit that had been sitting quite uselessly in my desk for the better part of six months. There was nothing left to do in the matter but drive.

And drive I did.

I promised that I would be candid about this process - the good, the bad, the whatever - and I intend to keep that promise, whether the end result is me gaining a license or lighting the aforementioned permit on fire and dancing on its ashes while loudly and ritualistically forswearing automobiles forever. I'm starting to get the sense that I may be more inclined toward the former, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

On Driving, Part 1 (Or, The Journey Begins...)

I feel like we're really getting to know each other, guys.

When I fired this bad boy up a couple years ago, I had no real directive. My earliest posts are certainly indicative of that, full of deliciously self-aware meandering toward sort-of-maybe-conclusions. And let's be real - there's still no theme here. Posts about making vegan banana bread or whatever will follow ruminations on religion, and that's kind of how I like it. But I feel like I've settled in now - getting personal feels more comfortable than it did before.

In the spirit of that comfort, I'm going to tell you a thing.

I can't drive.

I know, it's not really a secret. I've mentioned it before - in my last post, as a matter of fact. However, I've never really gotten into why I don't know how to drive, and as I **spoiler alert** start the process of learning, I feel like it's important to get a grip on what exactly has been holding me back.

Let me give you a hint: starts with "a," ends with, "nxiety."


Here's the thing: life as a chronically anxious person isn't all panic attacks, all the time. That's the limit, the extreme (at least for me). Mostly, it's a daily practice of facing situations and deciding not to be afraid of them. It's a learned skill that I've come to really value, and even pride myself on - the ability to actively decide that I can do things that terrify me. As awesome as it is to do things you know you love and are good at, there's nothing quite like the feeling of empowerment and accomplishment that comes from doing (and perhaps discovering that you love) a regular, not at all threatening activity that once made you feel as though you were marching toward your doom. I've lived a better life since acquiring this ability.

But I can't drive.

It never felt like something I was actively avoiding. I grew up in San Francisco - public transportation takes time, but it can get you everywhere and you don't have to worry about gas or parking. Done. My parents offered to give me a car if I stayed in state for college, but I wanted to go to Seattle, so forget that. Then it was back to San Francisco, where my first rule still applied. Never mind that, as an adult, I was starting to feel confined by the borders of my city and the limited reach of buses and trains and ferries to points beyond.

There was always an excuse, a reason to put off or delay, until finally - under pressure from my parents - I got my learner's permit. My aunt took me out to an empty parking lot to practice for the first time, and on the way, I got to work with the self-talk: I told myself that I would let go of being nervous and listen to everything I was told. And that worked for a little while - until we tried moving from the parking lot onto the real people street. Instant, pervasive, muscle-obliterating panic.

After that, I suddenly didn't have time to practice. I let my permit expire. I got crazy defensive whenever the issue came up. All hardcore, giant-sized steps back.

Maybe a year ago, I was visiting my sister in L.A. We were having lunch, and she gently inquired about my driving progress. All my old standby excuses came pouring out, but instead of fighting with me about them, she said, "Okay. And do you think it might be something you maybe have some anxiety about?"

To my own surprise, I almost immediately said, "Yes."

She's a tricky one, my sister. It's starting to occur to me that I give her far too little credit when it comes to understanding me.

If you read my last post, you'll know that this came up when I was in the middle of getting my head around a lot of stuff, but I put a pin in it (I know, I'm sorry) so that it wouldn't get lost in the shuffle. When I finally started seeing a therapist, it was one of the things I brought up as really wanting to work on, and we started off great. I took my permit test again. I started exposure therapy - sitting in the driver's seat of a car, putting my hands on the wheel. But that's as far as I could get. The thought of actually driving ramped me up from zero to losing it in seconds.

That's where I am now. What started as a fear has taken on the additional burden of shame and frustration. I don't love being twenty-seven and still bumming rides from people without being able to return the favor. I don't love planning my life around bus and train and ferry schedules. Perhaps worst of all is the thought that I've found a fear that I can't conquer, that will control me and restrict my life while everyone around me passes me by.

A chance conversation with a friend on Saturday lit a fire underneath me. Some well-chosen words and shared experience busted through my self-doubt, and a little seed of excitement was planted. Because you know what? That's not me. I'm nervous and I'm phobic and I somehow always manage to very publicly spit out my breath mint while trying to have professional conversations, but I don't back down from challenges. So I took that feeling and researched driving instructors on Sunday. I found a school with specialists for adults with driving anxiety and panic disorders, and I contacted them on Monday.

An appointment has been made. The journey has begun. And I'm going to share it here, step-by-possibly-painful-step. You'll never know the specifics of my appointments or tests or anything else in advance, because I don't need the added pressure, but I'll for sure be coming by to fill you in after the fact.

And posting vegan banana bread recipes in between.

Buckle up.