(TW: Rape) I’ve stopped hugging people

I noticed a couple weeks ago that I no longer hug people. I was trying to remember when it stopped being such a big part of my connection with other people, especially close friends. I used to hug people all the time. When I was in high school and the beginning years of university, I was known to give really great hugs. You know, the type of hugs that feel warm, inviting, the aura of friendship epitomized in that moment. I hugged a lot to just feel the positive energy, to express my relationship with them in a touchy-feely way, to let them know I love them through my physical expressions.

I stopped hugging people, though. Trying to pinpoint the moment I stopped hugging people, it was shortly after the second time I was raped, about two years ago. I was really, really high. Like, I maybe smoked weed twice in my life before that moment, and during the night I was raped, I smoked maybe 4x that amount. I was scared before it even happened. I said out loud “I can’t feel myself move, I can’t feel my limbs.” I was paralyzed by the weed. At that moment, and for a long time afterwards, I blamed myself for being raped. Eventually it was left with me and one other guy in the room. He moved closer to me, and I was practically incoherent. He was a close friend. He raped me.

The truth is, I did like him. I actually dated him after that, until we unceremoniously broke up because he was graduating. I never told him, or mustered up the ability to tell him that the first time he did anything was when I was way too high to give consent. When I wasn’t even ready. I felt taken advantage of by a close friend, and I haven’t been able to touch or hug or even be physically close to a friend ever since.

I feel myself growing colder. I don’t like my family touching me now. I think I am finally starting to warm up a little bit, which is why I acknowledged that the first time I hugged someone in about two years was a couple of weeks ago.

I want to date people but that fear is still there. It’s embarrassing. I never thought something like that would happen to me.

Disinterest

I haven’t had sex in over a year.

This concerns me in two very different ways:

1) I have no real desire to have sex. I’ve even told some of my friends this. I still have an online dating profile, the dating apps, etc., but I am wholly disinterested in any form of sex. This doesn’t mean that I don’t get “worked up” by myself, but just that I’m not interested in trying to find someone to do it with me.

2) I’m disinterested in everything. I’ve always wondered if I have had depression, but after being unemployed for 3 months (going on my 4th month in a few days), I feel like doing nothing. I wake up, check for new jobs, send some emails, and then feel disinterested in everything. I used to love playing video games, but I hardly have any interest in that, despite a brand new Wii U and a Steam library full of games. I can’t even focus enough to watch TV shows, as a combination of anxiety and complete disinterest come over me after a few minutes. The only thing that I am not disinterested in is writing. It feels therapeutic.

I’m wondering if my sexual disinterest stems from the possible increasing depression I have been in over the past year. I know the micro-aggressions I am dealing with by living in a homophobic household have started to take a real toll on my psyche.

I’m fighting to convince myself everything will work out, eventually. I feel like once I get a job, I will be able to move out and really start my life. The back of my brain, however, is riddled with thoughts of “If you wanted to start your life, why wait?” I don’t want to wait, I just feel incapacitated. I’m hoping I hear of another job opportunity or if I get that job this week. I really need a win.

The Mountains We Have Climbed

I just submitted my Late Night Writer’s packet for NBC Universal. I found out about the packet during the submission period, and was not fully prepared to create topical, witty, and complete jokes within less than a week.

In fact, in the three days between when I found out about the opportunity and the submission deadline, the first two consisted of mostly panicked resignation. I didn’t feel like I could get it done in time. I wanted to submit something that I thought was powerful, political, and purposeful yet could still entertain. The pressure I inflicted upon myself incapacitated me.

Conciliatory thoughts filled my head, attempting to rationalize myself out of trying. Things like; “You can always do this next year,” “You want to submit your best work,” and “Maybe you’re just not meant to be a comedy writer.” They felt reassuring and validated my feelings at the time.

However, on the third day, after already resigning to not finish my packet, I decided to spend the day reading one of my favorite books, Hero by Perry Moore. I won’t spoil the book for you, but I had a major personal catharsis about this moment in my life. I believe there are small moments in your life that can define your character. Sometimes you might make choices that you don’t like or regret, but you live with them. I wanted this choice, today, to finish this packet, to be a moment where I prevailed and pulled through.

So I did. I spent the entire day creating a respectable late night packet, finishing two SNL-style sketches, late night monologue jokes, and late night desk bits. It was long and exhausting, but I wanted and NEEDED to do this to prove to myself this is what I wanted to do. Maybe if my work wasn’t that good, I would have a different response (that I tried, and maybe don’t see myself getting better). But I thought my jokes could be seen on any of the late night shows, especially since they were infused with a twist of me.

Maybe I won’t get a call to interview with the NBC Universal Late Night program, maybe I will next year or the year after that, or maybe never. Regardless, yesterday was a personal victory for me. I overcame my doubts and worries to write really promising material. I could not be more proud of myself for that.

Unapologetically Me.

My brother called me a faggot, in the heat of a blistering argument about race. Completely ignoring the satirical subtext in South Park, my brother, inspired by the comedic voice of Cartman from South Park, started referring to people as “stupid jews”.

One thing led to another, and my brother called me a faggot. Further, he insisted that our parents treated me better because I was gay (which I scoff at because my mother tried to send me to gender realignment therapy) and he is sick of having to be careful of what he says. I tried to go outside to calm myself, only to be stopped by my hysterical mom and frighteningly violent brother who ran towards me.

Sitting on our front porch, I hear the whispers inside of my mother trying to calm my brother down. My brother is one year older than me, and I have never felt badly for him than as moments in these. Here I am, trying to collect myself outside, leaving a sticky confrontation maintaining my dignity, and here is my older brother who is unable to stop yelling for thirty minutes after I leave, a campfire that rages on without being stoked.

My mother is not consoling me. I wonder if this is because she knows I can handle myself and the abuse I have just taken, or if she truly believes I should have held my tongue. She desperately wants to be our friend and to keep the peace. I remember she used to always tell me to “let people be.” I don’t believe in that. No zebra is too old to change their stripes. Still I listen outside sitting on an oak bench while my mother consoles the wrong person.

I went inside and straight to bed after everything calmed down. I did not speak to my brother for two weeks.

Although I love him, silence was his punishment. He knew this was his punishment. I have forgiven my brother in the past for his homophobic outbursts of anger. In a different argument, he said he was “afraid to bend over near me”. Another time, he kept calling me a gay faggot. But I forgave him every single time, because I love my brother and you are supposed to love your family.

So, inevitability I forgave him. He said to me, “I didn’t need your forgiveness, you need to stop being so sensitive.”

There was no apology, no sense of remorse, nor any repentance from him whatsoever. I forgave him because I wanted him to think more about his actions, but instead I feel like I have always done in the past, which is giving him another free pass to screw up.

No more. From now on, there are no free passes to screw up. I’m not going to apologize to people for hurting me. You either get better at life, or get out of my mine.

Not In Your House

My brother and sister both brought their respective, heterosexual partners to dinner the other night. My sister, who has jumped from boyfriend to boyfriend for as long as I can remember, never had a problem bringing her men to our house. My brother, although more shy, has brought his partner to the house a few times.

So comes the fateful question from my mother, “Why do you never bring any of your partners over for dinner?”

I’m not going to answer that question because it hurts too much to answer. I just can’t handle it. My mother loves me, but only me, and not parts of my life that she doesn’t agree with. I will not feel comfortable bringing a person home to my family when they make queer and racist jokes. All the love that my mom possesses is not enough to repair the damaged emotional scars her actions have caused.