Bird droppings

What I have known, from the start of my life, is that I am Queer.

At first, the word did not have the connotations of sexual orientation that I now associate with it.

I just knew that I was an alien. A weirdo. A strange oddity unlike others.

I also knew that I had to hide this fact from the world, lest I suffer greatly for it. I caged up my alien nature and locked it as deep as I could lock it inside my psyche. For two decades I was able to keep this contained as much as I was able. But it was a struggle that I could not win. You cannot contain the fires of individuality and freedom forever, lest it tear you apart from within.

My bedroom had a balcony, and I would often go outside and talk to the trees about my longing desire to break free of my self-made cage. I would often write stories about finding that freedom. Unlocking the creature inside me that so desperately wanted to get out. But through my stories and my prayers and my conversations with the trees I knew that to unlock that cage would have dire consequences.

"Htrae is a magical place where you can understand the words of the animals and where you can take pleasure in the sensual joys of the world. But know that once you cross the threshold from your world into ours, you may never return once again to the human lands."

Htrae was a land I kept writing about. A place that represented my world sans the cage that I had placed myself in. And the theme of longing, joy, and loss continually came through in my writings, foreknowledge of what was to come.

I longed to express myself truly. To kiss and touch and fuck the another regardless of their gender. To wear whatever clothes I desired, regardless of their fashionability, social appropriateness, or gender. To go on adventures to distant shores, alien landscapes, and mountain tops. To climb to the top of a mountain, clad in the most bizarre of decorations and scream out to the world, "I AM QUEER."

And so I did. I broke free from my inner cage and the shards of metal on the edges tore my flesh and made large gaping wounds dripping with blood. The loss I suffered has been intense, painful, and horrific. I worked magic and ritual and cried out to goddesses and gods to give me the strength to get through it.

And at the same time, I began to explore what it meant for *ME* to be queer. I began to explore my own alien nature. I looked deep inside to see how far the rabbit hole went. What sexual appetites shall I satisfy and please? What wonders of the world shall I explore and delight in? How far do I take my exploration of magic and strangeness? Shall I reject all logic and rationality and place myself in the clouds of madness in the halls of the faelings? Shall I walk aloof over the world like an angel looking down at the earth? Where do I belong? Where am I? Who am I? How many am I? What is I? What is anything? What is reality itself? Is there reality? What does anything mean? What are the boundaries of existence?

My journey has been towards exploring these concepts. Finding, for myself, what the boundaries of mind and body and pscyhe are. Learning about my world through experiences. Getting my hands dirty in the mud and listening to the wisdom of the earth itself.

I find that, for me, being Queer means that I walk down paths regardless of their relevance to others. I explore concepts of self-identification, self-perception, perception-of-reality, relationships-with-others, and more that I find interesting for whatever reason. While I rarely, if ever, walk completely alone, I rarely find myself with many others in any particular aspect of my Queerness. Rather, I find solidarity with other Queers in their similar experiences of self-exploration and transformation. Though they may be doing different specific things, we're all wandering off the beaten paths.

And yet, though I've stepped outside of the cage that surrounded my heart and self, I still carry around the chains that bound me. I still find myself struggling to accept that I am a Queer. To quiet the voices that say that I'm not "queer." I'm just fucked up, crazy, stupid, sick, twisted, and perverted. That the path I'm walking is a path that will, in the long run, harm me greatly. That it would be best to once again return to the cage and become "normal."

It's such that I still feel, despite the years that have passed since my uncaging, that I still often feel the need to scream and shout at the world. Declaring myself and defining myself as who I am. Yelling out, "I AM QUEER!" to the universe in a desperate attempt to replace shame with pride.

I still talk to the trees, just differently now. I walk through the forests at midnight, full moon over my head, magic pulsating in the world around me, and I listen to the conversations between the trees. And I come to a crest in the hills, looking out over a vast valley, and more quietly, more confidently, tell the universe who I am.