Pray the Gay Away

After over a year of being an out and proud gay men I can't help but to wonder where all the homophobia I prepared myself for is?  I am fortunate enough to be a White Cis Gay male but even then I was expecting a world that is against me.  To my surprise I have found a world that frankly doesn't take notice, a world of people who are to busy with themselves.  I am not saying I have not experienced any form of homophobia.  There have been comments and 'jokes' passed my way regarding my sexuality, all of which had little impact on me.  I suppose it comes down to a persons perspective of the world.  You either think it is with you or against you.  When I came out I made sure I came out into a modern world, one that is very different from the world of hate crimes.  No longer do we live in a world where we had to fight for our existence.  Although this is not exactly accurate, for me in Australia I have it very well off, I am in no way a second class citizen, and throughout time the 'little' injustices will be smoothed out.  I am one of the lucky gays.

In saying all this some of my biggest experiences with homophobia have left me laughing.  I can't help but to ridicule those who're so backwards in thinking that they want a whole community of people to disappear.  Let me just say that regardless of ones political views, it is completely ignorant and unproductive to place 100% emphasis on "the family" while ignoring everyone else.  Yet it saddens me to think most of my homophobic experiences have been within a political party.  To no surprise for many I am a active and proud member of the Liberal Party.  Although I do not fully support some of their policies, their ideology and their focus on the power of the individual appeals greatly to me.  This ideology is evident in my blogs.  I am constantly placing focus on my perspective, I rarely ever blame the world, I never place myself in a collective and I make sure you all know I am me, I am Jack Barlow and I am a gay man but not the gay community or scene.

So what do I consider homophobia?  Well for starters it is not me just getting upset with people who disagree with my lifestyle, they have a right to disagree, perhaps I disagree with theirs and I have that same right.  To me, homophobia is when someone is clearly disgusted and hateful towards you, when they cannot see you for anything more than your sexuality and when they want you to change that for them.  Homophobia is unjust, it is when someone stops caring about the individual and they only care about their collective, be it Christian, Nazi, Islamic or other.  I am not saying all these collectives are homophobic, because they're not.  Extremist minorities who abuse these collectives on the other hand are the problem.  So where did I first experience homophobia?  A policy forum of course.

It started with me walking into a room of men.  I was then handed a sheet of policies that will be addressed and to my surprise they even made sure to include two condemning same sex marriage.  I am not sure what they're so afraid of?  The forum included a sea of harmful words, a fairfax reporters dream and it resulted in a pissed of Jack storming out.  Within 48 hours I had three executive members call me to apologise for words spoken.  I was surprised anyone noticed and I am glad they did, it was the only thing that kept me in that faction.  From there I had another member pass many other comments, although I have a high respect for some of his views, when it comes to gays he is nothing short of a twat.  Whether it be calling them evil or even suggesting he could convert me straight, it is these acts of discrimination that frustrate me.  I have no choice but to laugh it off.  If anyone truly believes you can pray the gay away then I assure you so many people like me would be straight.  So many gay men and women did pray, they prayed every night to be normal and God didn't change them.  Perhaps, if there is a God, he made us this way.  Perhaps we need to move on from thinking God hates our lifestyle, especially when he made it so easy to live.  It was not God who bashed us, spat on us and kicked us down when we were weak.  It was straight men and women.

So I end this blog on a high note.  Homophobia is dying and the world is changing.  When you come out make sure you come out into the right world, because you live in the world you create.  I am lucky enough to be strong willed and stubborn, I will not let anyone get me down and I won't allow others to use my sexuality as a club to beat me with.  I am lucky and proud.  Keep your heads high and block out the haters. It always gets better.

Life is a beautiful thing.

A life is a beautiful thing.  It is delicate, innocent and so very pure.  We all tend to forget this through our day to day errands and we don't realise that behind our endless sea of work, homework, Facebook, and what ever else plagues our lives that we are our own masterpiece.  It is very rare that we will take time to sit down and think "Shit, I have it good right now".  Perhaps that is the problem.  Life is not easy and it never will be.  From birth to death you will be thrown curve balls from every direction.  For some this can leave them hurt, battered and bruised for others they can manage to score a home run.  How we deal with our issues doesn't make us better than anyone and how we don't deal with out issues doesn't make us a second class citizen.  How we treat others is what we should be judged on and I don't just mean our friends but also our enemies.  Life is a beautiful thing and you must make sure you take care of other lives the same way you would like someone to take care of your own.

I talk about life because I feel it is becoming under-appreciated.  By that I don't just mean we forget the value of other lives too easily.  I mean that we are forgetting the value of our own lives too easily.  I often find myself forgetting that I am interconnected with many people.  I don't realise the impact I have on others and by doing that I often don't realise my own self worth.  It becomes so normal to think I am alone in this world and I would never lie and say that I have not been tempted to throw it all away.  We have all been there, in our darkest moments.  We have all had 'those' thoughts. And perhaps it is the fact that even while writing this the idea of mentioning the word suicide is too taboo.  It is sad that we can't even openly talk about it.  Not only is the topic frightening and morbid but is is socially something we don't wish to recognise.  Suicide is no less of an issue, even when we pretend it doesn't exist.

A life is a valuable thing and although this blog may just be filled with cliches and one liners, they all are completely true.  Suicide is incredibly difficult to talk about, there are no one liners.  When it comes to death the typical lines we use such as "it gets better" are not exactly true.  It is time for blunt honesty and perhaps we should stop trying to fool ourselves and others into thinking these things get better and go away.  They don't.  Suicide is horrible and when you take your own life you will be found by someone and that person will live the rest of their lives haunted with the image of your lifeless body.  When you swallow those pills you leave behind masses of people who will be left shocked, hurt and lost without you.  When you tie that rope you forget that you are going to be leaving behind a family, who for better or worse will always love you.  When you take your own life you also take life out of others.

It is so easy to sit here and rant on about how selfish suicide is but that doesn't address the issues surrounding it.  When a person kills themselves they don't exactly do it because they're selfish.  They do it because they're convinced they are worthless. When it comes to addressing suicide as an issue we should be reminding people that they are important without distorting reality for them.  If people realise their self worth and their impact on the world then perhaps they will become less likely to go through with it. I sit here and I wonder what those moments before death is like.  For some it may be beautiful and almost cinematic for others it may relieve them of great pain.  Yet I cannot help but to think for those who take their own lives, that inside they've already died.

On Thursday morning I received news that one of my readers had killed himself.  I can't express my sadness, my heart is broken and I could not imagine how his family is right now.  I remain in shock to think that on Tuesday he messaged me to commend me on my writing and he even thanked me for it.  He said just by writing I am making peoples lives easier and, Jake I sure do hope I made yours slightly better.  You were so loved and if you could see what is being said about you now you would have never have done what you did.  We were supposed to be catching up sometime, gosh we may have even have become good friends!  There is nothing I can do to change what happened but like hell will I just be another person to stand by and say to your loved ones "It gets better" and say to others "it's such a shame".  Because that is how these things happen.  When we just stand by and let them.

To anyone out there considering suicide all I can say is please don't.  You don't realise the damage such an event does to others, you don't realise how valuable you really are.  When you make that choice it is you last choice.  When you take that path you cannot turn back.  You don't allow yourself to finish your journey in life or even change it.  It's just not worth it.  For those who are seeking help for others I can only insist that you do what ever you can do to wake them up.  Depression is like a deep sleep, their reality is like a bad dream and they cannot see the world around them.  Wake them up, just even if they only get a glimpse and make sure they know they're apart of this world.  Make sure they know suicide should never be an option.  We all have our own demons and we are all fighting a battle.  Life was never meant to be easy but we must remain proud of who we are.  We must strive to live another day and make a positive impact on everyone.  Even a short life can be monumental.  Don't forget you're self worth.

This blog is written in memory of Jake Carpenter.

Jake, my advice to you was that a stranger is just a friend you haven't met yet.  I'd like to think that I had managed to be more to you than just some stranger on the internet who writes blogs.  I'd like to think I left a footprint in your life, I'd like to think I made a difference.  You sure as hell have left a mark on me and I wish I could thank you.  I hope where ever you are right now you're happy, I hope the pain has been taken away.  Until next time, friend.

Frenemes

Being gay and being in a political party ensures me that there is one constant trend in my life. That is that I will always have "friends" who are really enemies.  Frenemies is a term for those who despite your serious disgust in knowing them you have no choice but to be their friend, well you have to at least act like they're your friend.  I have made sure of one thing in life and that is when I die I will have people willing to dance on my grave.  Why? Because if I have gone through life without upsetting a single person or without gaining a 'hater' it means I have done nothing substantial and I have made no impact on this world, good or bad. People will always hate you.  You will be hated for your looks, personality, actions and sometimes just for who or what you know.  You can be hated out of jealousy or you might be hated because you're a shitty person.  Regardless it is always likely that even in adult life you will experience schoolyard hate.

Recently my list of enemies has jumped from few to many and my burn book is reaching capacity.  I have always been known to hold grudges, be passively aggressive and I find myself often being far from a forgiving person.  Yet in the past I have tried to make changes to these traits and in result I found I was getting used and hurt far more.  I asked myself why?  It became clear as more friends turned into enemies.  As you can forgive a bad friend for doing something once, that is fair but the more you forgive them the more likely they will abuse the niceness in you.  Sometimes we have to accept some people are just bad people.  Before any of you out there (and I know my enemies read this too) start to point their finger at me and say "you are a bad person" I want to be the first to say that...

I am not perfect.  I make mistakes and I have done bad things.  I regret them and I am truly sorry for the harm I have caused.

It is rare that I would ever go out of my way to upset my friends, although I can't say the same for my enemies.  When I do upset my friends it is because I have either become blindly selfish, I have misread the situation or they are simply just no longer my friend.  I truly believe friends should and do fight with each other and when they do it should easily be resolved.  Yet for some of my previous friends I do not want things resolved as they do not deserve my pity or my forgiveness.

They say from ages 16 until 25 you will experience a lot of temporary people.  This is completely true.  Most of all, if you're a gay man you will spend time in the scene, which is filled with less temporary people but more enemies.  My two gay friends, potentially at the time my best friends have easily turned into my enemies and hopefully this is known to them.  This all happened over a series of events regarding nothing more than our love lives.  In the end the bitchiness and two faced attitudes all became too much for me and I told them both to please, go away.

In this cases hate was a result of jealousy and it was jealousy from all sides.  Some were jealous of who the others were dating, some were jealous over who the others liked and some weren't really jealous at all, only bitter.  For these friends all I can say is that I loved them and I listened to them bitch about each other and their problems, I gave them advice and I tried to do the best for them.  Yet to have it thrown back in my face and worse of all for them to use a sensitive tool such as my ex boyfriend to hurt me is beyond forgivable.  They can all be friends with each other because nothing inspires me more than knowing I have a group of haters who have nothing on me.  My hands are sparkling clean compared to yours.

Yes I have many frenemies.  I have lots in politics but potentially more in the gay scene.  The two after all are almost identical.  Both are filled with two faced people, both have liars and untrustworthy 'friends'.  In both people will try to burn you out and stomp you down.  They're equally as incestuous and to keep afloat you must not only play the game but play it better than the rest.  So I say this with a bitter taste still in my mouth, one day I will be rich and I will name every car I own after my haters because in the future it will be me taking you for a ride.  Be proud of being hated, it means you're doing something right.

Finally this last piece is for someone who was not the perfect friend but a good one who I wronged.  I wrote you a letter when you went away and despite the wrongs we have done against each other I want you to know I still mean every word I wrote.  I am sorry.