Born This Way

I recently cut my friend list in half. More than half. I had a friend list of over 1200, and after removing people I never talk with, people who never talk to me, people I didn't remember meeting, people with a blank profile, and people who clearly friended me for no reason, I had whittled it down to around 650. When you trim your friend list like this, something interesting happens. People you haven't heard from in years begin popping up in your feed, and you see even more culling that needs to be done.

I'm now down to just over 500, and it's amazing how peaceful it is when you remove stuff from your life that unnecessarily burdens you. You also end up with more people who will actually care about what you post.

With that being said, let me open this up with this:

This sentiment is often shared on social media. Women are usually the ones to share this quote. Their girlfriends will see it and give them encouragement. Their girlfriends understand. Their guy friends understand also. "She's a woman. She has a right to feel things deeply. That's what women do."

But I have news for you. Guys can be like this also. There are men out there that (like me) feel everything to their very core. If a little kid comes up to them and hands them a flower and says "You're my best friend.", on the outside we smile, but on the inside we are weeping tears of pure joy. Our heart cries out constantly, and it literally cannot be turned off. The world expects men to be able to hide this, though...and if you can't, then you are often labeled as "gay", "effeminate", "weird", or even mentally unstable.

So what do you do when the world expects you to be one way (as social morays dictate) but you are the exact opposite? The answer is simple: You hide. You don't let people in. You spend your life locked inside a mental prison. You don't dare open up to anyone fully, because it will end badly. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but in six months, or a year perhaps, you'll find yourself in a situation that if a woman were in, nobody would think twice about. They'd say "Ah, she's so loving. She has such a sweet heart and spirit. So thankful for her." But as a guy, you find yourself being suddenly ostracized, and when you ask "What's wrong?" you either directly (or indirectly) will have your sexuality or manhood questioned.

So what do we do? That's right, we hide. We withdraw. We gravitate to the tiny group of people who are like us, but even that doesn't work because none of us are truly comfortable with this aspect of our personality, and so meeting others reminds us of the hurt we hold inside. Like a reverse AA meeting, where instead of people with a common problem finding strength together, we are reminded of who we are, and it repulses us because the world has labeled us as mentally deviant from the societal norm.

If you've read this far (which I doubt most have...this blog was mainly for me to use as an outlet for my thoughts, not to share them with others) then I want to share one more thing.

I am an empath. I am the "NF" in Meyers-Briggs. I am in touch with my feminine side...very much so, and I am also straight as an arrow, sexually. I understand what women feel, I understand what children feel, and I don't distance myself mentally from either group...although I am respectful of the need to maintain a healthy physical distance from both.

What I am passionate about is people feeling free to embrace who they are in their heart.

Confession, here. I've cried thousands of times. I've cried a half dozen times in the past month, actually. And by that, I mean I've read or seen something that made tears well up in the back of my throat, and then instead of letting them flow, I push them back.

For example, after loving and reading these books over and over as a child, when I saw this scene play out in the theater when "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" was released, I was an emotional basket-case. Little Lucy peered out from behind that silly lamp post, and when she spoke to Mr. Tumnus for the first time, I wept like a baby.

So now you've met me, and you know who I am, and what an emotional hell I go through in my daily life. It's hell, not because it's bad, but because societal morays label it as not appropriate and acceptable for a grown man. I love John Wayne movies as much as anyone, but his character on-screen ruined life for people like me. We feel weak, incomplete, broken, flawed, and most of our peers would say the same if they knew who we were inside.

I've even had people hate me because of this aspect of who I am. I won't go into that, though.

What I do know is that nobody "made" me this way. I wasn't abused as a child. My parents loved me, and they never did anything to hurt me, nor did any of my family, my teachers, or my friends. This is simply who I am.

Translation: I was born this way.

Let that idea sink in. I was born this way.

Like people who are a part of the LGBT community, this was not something I just woke up one morning and decided it might be fun to try. This has been a hard-wired part of my personality and my heart for as long as I can remember.

I was like this when I was 5 years old and my best friend was a girl and I was fighting feelings of being her best friend and wanting desperately to kiss her.

I was like this when I was 10 years old, and this little kid at my church told me that I was his brother now because his brother had died when he was younger and I reminded him of him...and I went home that night and cried into my pillow.

I was like this when I was 15 and I was writing to a girl 800 miles away that I had met on a pen-pal site, and more than anything I wanted to write her until we were both 100 years old. Because she got me.

I've been like this my entire life, and it's who I am. I've been told that this is to be hidden, to be ashamed of, that I am misunderstood, and that the world will not have a place for me as a man if I am this way.

That breaks my heart, but it's also something I will not change. I will not trim myself to fit the world.

And if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, I love you. I respect you. I identify with you in a way that the world has made me keenly aware of. Do I agree with everything you believe? Probably not, (because I like peanut butter on practically everything, and you probably don't)...but I still respect you. I recognize that you were born feeling this way, and nobody "made you gay" as people who don't understand like to call it.

If you are a member of the LGBT community, you don't have to be afraid of me. I understand. I won't unfriend you. In fact, I might become an even deeper friend if I knew.

On the other hand, if you are a gay-basher, or someone who thinks gays are going to hell because they are gay, or someone who thinks Jesus would hate gay people, or if YOU just hate the LGBT community out of bigotry or spite, please do me a favor right now.

It will only take a second.

Go to your social media account, find me, and click the button that says "Unfriend".

I wish everyone a blessed day.

P.S. -  This also applies if you hate people of different skin color. Ain't nobody got time for that, either.