Step Into The Spring

The beginning of February marks Imbolc, a Celtic festival marking the transition from winter to spring; crone to maiden. It’s a Sabbat of purification; a spring cleaning, if you will. If you need to look into the future or past, now is an ideal time.

These days I find myself looking around at everything as though I have stepped out of a cave and into direct sunlight. Blinking and rubbing my eyes and trying to make sense of the shapes and landmarks around me. Things have shifted and moved, some have settled, some have not. Some things are still reassuringly familiar and others are new and curious, waiting to be discovered. Things I thought I knew are now cast in a new light, which also changes their shadows which, in turn, is forcing me to re-examine them.

For me, looking to the past primarily means looking at the past year. Things I had previously taken for granted have morphed, some things have disappeared entirely. New things have taken their place and things I had previously neglected have been brought to the forefront again.

One such thing is my relationship with my little sister. We have always had a very close connection, even for sisters. When we moved to Holland we didn’t know anyone else and were thrust into each other’s (initially unwilling) company. Set adrift with only each other to rely on we changed from virtual strangers, who happened to share a home together, into best friends. That close relationship had waned somewhat in the last few years and we’d grown apart in a lot of ways. Distance and vastly different life experiences creating misunderstandings and contempt. Recently we’ve found our way back to each other and, though we are in the early stages of redefining our closeness again, it’s getting back to the familiar territory I had taken for granted for so long while at the same time, through age and how we’ve both changed in the meantime, it’s becoming something new.

 

I had also started to take my personality for granted. I know, that might sound a bit odd. What I mean is that I took my identity for granted. Familiar but fixed, maybe even rusted, into place. There are some things that I have considered quintessentially me. Things that I have come to consider definitive traits, inextricable from who I am as a person. In reality, these things are actually habits more than they are character traits and could easily be changed if I wanted to change them. This spring, I am shining a new light on some of my self-identifiers and asking myself if it’s really who I am or if it’s who I’ve become used to being.

Seeds of change have been planted and I am eager to discover what germinates and grows.

A frivolous example is the one about shoes. I used to be known for owning all sorts of pretty pairs of high heels. I had over 60 pairs of very pretty, very high, immensely impractical heels. Most of which I hardly ever (sometimes never) wore because they were painful after a few minutes as they were either slightly too big or slightly too small and definitely too high. Nevertheless, you couldn’t go on a shopping spree with me without having to fish me out of shoe shops and I would invariably buy “just one more” pair. I can’t even remember the last pair of heels I bought but I more than likely don’t even own them anymore. Now I’m all about boots. Comfort. Faux leather. Big, biker boots in black or brown. I not only buy them but I wear them until they fall apart. Very different from the many, colourful pairs of heels I had decorating my spare room that hardly ever saw the light of day. But it’s still me. Both shoe lovers are still me.

I used to be able to finish off a bottle of wine in one sitting. Usually every night, if I’m honest. I’d have a mild panic attack if there wasn’t “enough” in the house. This last year I have spent most evenings without even a drop. I’m not tee-totalling, but the wine memes certainly don’t describe me anymore. I used to identify as a wine drinker when I was being kindest to myself and an alcoholic when I was a bit more critical. I had made many attempts in the past to cut out my dependency on alcohol but something in me shifted this last year and it just clicked and happened. I wish I could be more helpful than that for anyone seeking to cut the ties themselves.

More interestingly is the fact that my proudest identifier, the thing I really considered to describe me to my core, is something I have been questioning most these days. How much does the word “teacher” still describe me? I used to list it as one of the first things when describing myself and now I’m not so sure I even want to keep doing it. It used to be the thing I considered the very essence of me. I was born to do it. It was a calling. I’m a natural and I enjoy it. That saying “do something you love and you will never work a day of your life” was completely true for me. To a certain extent it still is. But is it who I am or is it what I do? Is it what I want to be doing? If I’m not a teacher, then what am I? Live to work or work to live? If I’m not a teacher, what’s keeping me here in Holland? If I didn’t live here, where would I go? How much of how I see myself determines where I am in the world?

I’m closely examining my other identifiers to see if any of those offer me more insight. Do any of the other habits I have or things I enjoy offer me a new occupation? I’m 40 years old, what am I doing about broadening my horizons? What am I learning? How am  I growing as a person? Am I okay with keeping to my habits or do I want to challenge myself with something new? Is all of this just a mid-life crisis in disguise? And are mid-life crises necessarily a bad thing?

Imbolc is a great time for initiations. What new covenant am I going to enter into with myself? What fresh path am I going to venture down? I think it’s time to dust off the dark and enter into a new turning of the wheel. It certainly feels like I am throwing off something heavy and entering into the light and that’s definitely a sign I shouldn’t ignore.

For now I am going to rub my eyes, adjust to the light and get a better lay of the land before setting out to chart this new territory of me.

xJI

Self-identifying

Some people love labels. Others hate them. Some people think we should all just let go of labels and be “human”. I disagree with that (mostly because that would still be a label). We might all be human but we are not homogenous and “same”. There are a lot of different things that make you You and I think it’s important to know them.

I’m not saying it’s important that other people know them. I think it’s important that you know what makes you You. What are your preferences, identifiers and parameters?

Before I knew that there were bisexuals in the world I thought I was just some odd sexual pervert who was “lucky” she also liked guys so that I could at least be “normal” in the eyes of others. Discovering that bisexuality was a thing may have literally saved my life.

My first established crush was Elliot from E.T.; I had a poster of him over my bed and everything.

Just look at that dreamy face.

My second crush, at the age of 10, was Sorsha (Joanne Whalley) from Willow. I had a Willow calendar (of which I was very proud) and the months with Sorsha’s picture were my favourite. They were also a really easy way to have her picture hung up in my room without anyone questioning it. After the year had passed, I cut out most of the pictures and hung them on my wall as posters. The Sorsha ones were quite prominent but masterfully hidden in among all of the posters of ballerinas and Pierrot dolls. Nothing unusual here, folks. Just a regular Girl Who Likes Girly Things. At that age, I was already consciously hiding the true extent of my interests.

Sadly, this was not one of the calendar pictures.

It wasn’t sexual, as such, but I knew I couldn’t talk about it because boys liked girls and girls liked boys. There were no openly gay people in my life at all. Growing up on a military base the masculine women were “butch” and the effeminate men were “poofs”. I never really knew what that meant but it was very clear you didn’t want to be either. Any student unfortunate enough to fall into either category was instantly a school “celebrity”. Everyone knew who they were and everyone knew they were “weird”. Nobody wants to be weird in high school.

And so it was that my first real celebrity crush, Milla Jovovich, was something I kept entirely to myself. I felt so guilty about the things I thought about her that I didn’t even have a masterfully hidden poster of her on my wall. I was convinced people could read my mind and every time anyone mentioned her name I was terrified my face would betray me and the jig would be up. When a fellow student casually mentioned that they thought I looked like her I nipped that in the bud. Partially because I was suspicious of all compliments but mostly because I did not want people linking her name with mine.

Magical Milla

Part of my brilliant cover-up plan was to construct acceptable celebrity crushes and sell the hell out of them. Enter Sean Astin and Christian Slater. I could rattle off their stats and had their posters everywhere. Easy cover since I really did fancy them. Thanks, boys!

In the meantime Fried Green Tomatoes and Thelma and Louise were my movie obsessions. 🙂

It wasn’t until I was much older (and moved to Holland) that I even learned there was such a thing as homosexuality. I wasn’t terribly impressed by how people talked about homosexuals and was glad I wasn’t one since I clearly was also attracted to boys. I had to wonder what kind of special, deviant freak I was for liking both, though. Surely that wasn’t allowed?

So when I found out that bisexuality was a real thing with a real name and everything, I was overjoyed! Not only was I not a weirdo, there were other Not Weirdos out there as well! Hurrah! Like my gay and lesbian friends before me I now had a name for what I was!

And I still waited nearly ten years before I actually told anyone that I was bisexual. See, the name wasn’t important to me in regards to other people. It was important to me to know it had a name. That it was not some strange thing I had thought up, a figment of my imagination, an exotic fancy. Some weird mental disease I had. The name was important because it validated a part of me that I had felt was unnatural. It meant other people recognized that aspect of me as a real thing, not some odd fetish I had made up, even if they didn’t know that the term applied to me. Knowing that the way I felt about men and women was a real way to feel about men and women made me feel more real. Less fake. It helped me know myself better and accept myself more.

Learning about bisexuality also meant learning about bi-erasure. Those people out there who think it’s a phase or that bisexuals can’t make up their mind if they’re straight or gay. Or that we keep flip-flopping back and forth like some mindless sex-fiend. While that type of thinking is tiresome and insulting, it doesn’t anger me as much as it used to. I know who I am and I know that it’s not a phase or that I can’t choose which “side” to be on. I never needed other people to agree with my self-identification as a bisexual. I didn’t even really need other people to know about it until recently. I needed it for me.

I came out a couple of years ago because I realized that there were kids at the school where I teach (a school with a large representation of gay and lesbian teachers) who had probably never met an openly bisexual person. I realized that some of those kids might be dealing with the same feelings that I was at that age and they weren’t seeing anyone like them in their day to day lives. I wanted it to be perfectly normal for all of my students to have a bisexual adult in their lives that they could ask questions. Someone doing normal stuff and living a regular life. Someone who wasn’t the stereotype of bisexuality that the media likes to present to the world (if they call it bisexuality at all, but that’s a whole other rant). I wanted them to know that it’s normal and that bisexuality isn’t a dirty word.

The initial reactions were really great. Very open and positive and even supportive. Each new group of students that I tell reacts in much the same way. Many didn’t even know it was a “thing” and others wanted to know if what they heard was true: “Are all bisexuals horny all the time?” “Do you have relationships with men and women at the same time?” “How do you stop yourself from falling in love with everybody?” “Who’s your celebrity crush, then?” “If you love both, why are you still single?”, and others skipped straight into witty banter. For example, one of my students compiled a list of possible Valentines for me this year and it was an evenly balanced list of men and women, “because you like both, Miss”.

Stuff like that makes me so happy. I am pleased that these kids will at least have had one, real-life person that they could look at and say, “Oh, that’s a bisexual” (a boring-ass English teacher who knits and crochets and always talks about her dogs and cats). Which will hopefully save those among them who are bisexual the extra angst I carried around for decades. With a little luck, it’ll stop the rest of them immediately assuming we’re all slutty, homewrecking porn stars or just experimenting for shits and giggles.

Recently I also learned about pansexuality. I feel that that does “define” me better but I still call myself bisexual because that was the term that helped me be Me. 

Self-identifier: bisexual. I like my gender and other genders.

xo JI