Belonging

Pride weekend. Fun as shit. Lots of queer people, lots of zest for life, lots of color, dancing, celebration. Pride.

This past weekend was indeed one of the most fun times I've had in a very long while.

Belonging is a theme that comes up. Where do you belong, this box, that box. The other box. And by belonging to each box, there are certain advantages, certain disadvantages.

The cool thing about being queer is that you can fit into a ton of boxes. Sure, there is a huge part of the queer community that gets highjacked with conformity, that gets gentrified and conforms to certain ideals. That is not what belonging means to me.

Belonging means to me that you can be comfortable with your own self. Free within, because where else would it matter more than to be free within yourself? Belonging means finding similar enough people to associate with, to feel at home with. It means that chosen family bonds can be more potent, more significant than relative blood bonds. When the whole world feels at times likes it's nothing but straight people, it's nice to have a few days where the queers can just be.

It's lovely to see the mixing. Gay boys with dykes with transgender folk with bi people with allies with all sorts of colors of skin shapes and sizes. There likely is no other population of people more diverse than the LGBTQ folk that exist, these markers do not cater to social boundaries, class, socioeconomic level, language. You are born this way regardless of the group you are brought into by birth, and then the groups mix under the umbrella of LGBTQ+ and more importantly under the umbrella of being.

There's a certain beauty that LGBTQ bring to the world I believe. We, and yes I say we, are survivors. Because many of us had to grow up fighting and navigating complex social norms that did not suit us, we are creative. We have been oppressed, yet at the same time enlightened. One thing that always strikes me about being around so many queer folk is how fucking genuinely jolly we are.

It's nice to have found good friends here who are just as ridiculous as me, maybe even more so. Fearless and care free, we waltz through life day by day, open up to new experiences and living richly. Though belonging is something I carry within and am very cognizant of, it is nice to be able to express and let the colors shine. It is nice to feel for a few brief hours that if the world was a little more gay, maybe all of us would feel a bit more like we belonged. Like we wouldn't have to judge or be ashamed of who we are because difference is an asset, something that is valued, something that is nurtured, allowed to flourish, and seen as a beautiful thing. Maybe if the world was a little more queer, we wouldn't have to obligatorily pay lip service to diversity and we might actually be able to implement it. Maybe if the world was a little more gay, we wouldn't be socially conditioned to attach shame to being attracted to the same sex and we could grow as people and learn more about human sexuality. Maybe if the world was a little more gay, we would all feel a little more like we belong.