Project Kengikat

Getting Things Off My Chest

// September 23rd, 2009 // Uncategorized

Most people say all I care about is what I am doing. Many people see what I do as being less important then what they do, people come in and out of my life and many of them leave because I refuse to be who or what they want me to be. I refuse to be who people want me to be, I always have. I refuse to talk, dress or look the way people want, I always have. But if you ask these people things about me that are true and real they dont have an answer.

Being true to myself is not something new to me, it has been part of who I am for as long as I can recall. I’ve never been liked by many people and to be honest I really don’t care, never have. I didn’t have a bunch of friends growing up, but the ones I did have are still my friends to this day.

The past few months have been kind of hard for me, I’ve been busy with the my organization as many of you know I always am, I guess this is to distract me, keep me busy and it also in many was protects me from getting hurt by people who say they care for me and it also keeps me from getting hurt by the same people. There are plenty of people in my life, but not many that I would call friends. The word “friend” means a great deal to me, I don’t extend or offer it to many and with few exceptions each time I do I am the one who walks away with a part of me crushed. I don’t have many regrets in my life, but the ones I do have are from thinking people are my friends.

I’ve had several people that I thought were friends show me something different the past few months and normally it would not mean much to me, but I trusted these people, I let them in, they were friends, but in some cases their “Christianity” will not let them be “friends” with someone who is gay and has HIV, others are just people who were my “friend” as long as I didn’t think for myself, voice my opinion or dare to disagree with them. After all I am still very much inches from being homeless again and to be honest in their eyes I am a “huge joke” It’s funny how people say things about you when they think it wont get back to you. It is also funny how people will act when you confront them with it.

Since the lost of my parents there has been no one I feel safe talking to, no one I feel safe being completely open with, simply because of what I have been through and knowing first hand how fast people will use what you share to hurt you, how fast people are to remind you of “all that I have done for you” I know that some people are only in my life because they feel sorry for me, or they need to feel better about themselves and the fuck up life they have. But everything is everything right?

The past two weeks I have seen that speaking up for myself or not allowing people to fit me into what they think is best, refusing to allow people determine who I am, what I should talk about, where I should be, who I should be with and certainly not how I will spend my time has caused people I trusted, people I thought were friends to pull away from me. I’ve seen how people try to take their own crap, their own lack of integrity and make me feel bad for them going back on their word or not following through on things they said they would do, but whatever this is nothing new for me and it certainly will not break me. It just means I must work harder.

My life has never been about being mixed race, nor have I ever spent time on being gay, having Sickle Cell, battles with cancer or HIV, my life is about being true to who I am. I am not Sickle Cell, Cancer, HIV or gay and I refuse to allow these things to suck me into communities that close me off from who I am.

I have so many people in my life who say I can call them if I need to talk, so many that say “we care” but their words dont match their actions and I know if I stopped blogging or vlogging they would not even notice. How can I trust people like this?

Tonight I got a call from someone said she just wanted to her my voice. She simply wanted to talk to me, her friend, her “ace” as she calls me. Someone that doesnt make me feel bad for saying “no thanks” someone who knows first hand what it is like to have people say one thing and do something else. We talked and shared some jokes, laughs and amazing stories about our lives and when we hung up I went right back to what I was doing before she called….working on my next two outreaches to people in need.

But I needed to stop and go the the one place I trust, the one place where I can let go of things and not care about what someone will say or think of me. The one place that gives me a chance to vent and get things off me. I came to my blog and as I type this out and get these feelings off me, I feel so much better and now I can go back to doing what I do…..”being of service”