I’m surprised I passed kindergarten
I couldn’t help but to graffiti outside the hetero-gender defined lines
Like an awkward categorization you attempted to force into a Venn diagram
I never really overlapped
Falling outside the socially constructed circles
Left to be out of the norm
An outlier
An outcast

As a kid I hated Sunday mornings
My mind had already connected the dots from Sunday
To one day
I’ll be gay
To one day
God will hate me
Because everyone knows that
God hates gays

Sticks and stones haven’t broken my bones
But the constant replay of long ago heard words
Have stabbed jagged daggers through my eardrums
Painfully enough to lodge them somewhere between my soul and my psyche
Tearing scars which have not yet fully healed
Leaving me with the harsh reality that time does not heal all wounds

Borrowing my sister’s hand-me-downs
Which could have been my brother’s hand-me-downs
I felt whole
Whole until the hurtful words of a few misguided
Awoke me to the reality
That I was a freak
A weirdo

They say actions speak louder than words
But no one hears nor sees my soul screaming
Hoping you’d be one to catch me
A bad trust fall gone wrong
You didn’t
And in my downward descent to rock bottom
My ego and self-esteem following suit
Like a line of dominoes pushed to their tilting point
I looked up hoping to see your outstretched hand to lift me from the abyss
But I didn’t
Like a bad trust fall gone wrong
You had pushed me

See, all throughout my childhood
My connect the dot road map to life
Had been etched too deep in the crevices of my mind
Over sketching or shaking couldn’t break me from this mental prison
That boys will be boys
And girls will be girls
And girls will be boys
With a pre-teen crush
On the popular girl?
No amount of math
Or balancing scales with X variable chess pieces
Could make this equation true because
I was just a complex math problem with no solution
Looking for the variable that would make the
Left side of my ambitions and desires
Equal the right of religion and society
This equation produced errors in the processing of my mind
Because here I was trying to tackle a calculus problem with only
A couple years of pre-algebra experience

A pre-teen with an innocent crush
I was bum rushed
With your long ago developed connect the dot frame of mind
That boys will be boys
And girls will be girls
And that tomboys
With a pre-teen crush
On the popular girl
Might as well be boys
Your logic was as flawed as those misguided few
Your disappointment twice as painful
Because reassignment is irreversible
Which means your disappointment isn’t reversible

And all I could think was
One day
I will change
And one day
God will love me
Because everyone knows that
God hates gays
And loves everyone else

Years later
I’m still struggling with that complex math problem
Bugging me persistently
Like the answer to the trivia question
You just can’t think of at the moment
Now instead of making left equal right
Right equal wrong
I’m fixing other people’s problems because I can’t fix mine
I turned to things and people to make me whole
With the false idea and conception
That I was incomplete to begin with

Forced to discover myself with no sense of guidance
Compulsively buying
In an attempt to regain the past I never had
Cover my insecurity with my false sense of pride
Mask my reeking pain and last night’s tears
With cheap smiles and laughs like Dollar Store perfume
But everyone only smells the fresh air
They say it takes twice as long to forget
As it does to get to know
So eighteen years down and
Thirty-six more to go. . . ?

Because
One day
I’ll realize
That in His eyes
God will love me
Because everyone knows that
The hard part is realizing
He already does