will it be//Could it Be

“This journal, both washed and found, whose owner failed to detail or date his thoughts and friends, respectfully acquiesces to your solicitation.” 

So I’m afraid again. Of my own emotions, and the fact that I must own them at the end of the day. The old route included miles upon miles of suppression. 

Time for the new me? Who am I? Scally, they said. Is this my 24601 moment?

I am learning how to feel for the first time in my life. I’m learning both the cost and the price of love, for they are totally different entities. The hurt that it comes with is unimaginable, scary, real, and necessary. This is me. But first, let’s back up.

A small town kid. An “old soul” when I was young. Matured too quickly out of a need for survival in a world that was not built for me. A kid with a family. A really good family. A family that was wired differently than me. Perhaps wired correctly? I like to think differently is a kinder word to myself. A kid who at a young age felt like I needed to fully rely on something bigger than myself. That I was nothing in this world if I wasn’t led by something higher than me. And I was celebrated for that. I was lauded as the best rule follower, which in turn made me a great leader. 

All because I was fucking bullied at the most formative time in my life.

It made me become the antithesis of who they were, until it didn’t. Until it created an actor. Someone who knew when he was watched by those above him, and when he was the highest in the room. I became the antithesis of myself, until I stopped. Until that very same actor became aware of his own talents and used them in the same manner they were used against himself, becoming the bully that once bullied me. 

The physical leaders in my life showed fault, the spiritual remained the same. I wondered why those original allegations seemed to ring true in my desire, and how others could know my own future before I did, and why they labeled it as something worth degrading someone over. I prayed, and prayed, and prayed some more.

Praying the gay away. Something many, many, many people have done, but very little have received an answer from. Disordered. I was disordered. I could’ve told you that long before it was a label put onto me by the very people that called me an old soul, the very people that created leadership roles for me, the very people who have authority to speak on that which they cannot prove. 

I prayed, and prayed, and prayed some more. From jumping into someone’s arms to allowing myself to walk for myself, alongside the One who always did carry me when I needed it. Because somehow the incredible friendships that I had were rooted in disorder. The desired friendships that I had weren’t, even though they were envious of the very people who created such a hurt within myself.

Even though I learned the very respect any other man would claim to have but rarely put into practice. I listened,and spoke briefly, and was loved, respected, yet tokened. Distrust. Because I was disordered. 

Sport became an answer. Because it takes balls in various shapes and sizes to prove that you have the same ones every other man claims to have. A man, clumsily running around a court like the old soul he was. 

Music. The one time a week I felt free to express and feel beyond that which I was confined to by belief. The one place where I was not intended to be anyone but myself. Where creativity and fluidity were the law. And then back to the reality of what was only disorder. 

Convincing myself I was on top of the world. Making myself feel good by doing good for others. Lauded for being a great and loving friend. Ignoring the parts that were not a previously answered prayer yet. I couldn’t sin if I denied myself anything at all right? Wrong. Every part that was suppressed ended up causing more and more hurt down the line.

If I embraced the feelings as they came, could I be normal today? Normalcy, lol. I thought I did the right thing by denying my feelings and living my life helping others through hardships, all the while realizing I’m the one that needed help all along. 

I was eventually blessed with some of the most incredible people someone could ask for in a friendship. Finally, a prayer answered. But not the prayer. Not the prayer that I prayed over and over again to bring “order” to my life. However, my old soul was allowed to become young and live an exciting, fun, and silly life. I rediscovered a boyhood that I never go to experience, a beautiful, childish life. 

I defended the version of myself I allowed the world to see, while educating myself on the parts the world couldn’t see just yet. I think I still am to this day. If all things will come to the light, why not strive to be the light and allow the truth that I create to shine through myself. Too many people have created labels that I dare not repeat here. But if honesty is to be the way forward, let me tell it, and be able to defend it. 

Independence. Freedom. Words that will have different meanings with each new sunrise. 

And then I moved to the big city in a state I thought I had already grown to know so well.

Enter Miss New Orleans. 

-s

date unknown