Just a Little More - 1. Chapter 1

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Just a little more:

This entire saga began with my realization that I was gay. This realization precipitated my issues with my weight, but I will explain that later. Perhaps I will begin by providing you with some background so that you can understand some of the views and attitudes that I hold (it’s so pathetic that I actually care…).

I grew up without any exposure to anything that could be termed “gay”, and I say that now with a degree of disdain, as I hate it when people say that anything is “gay”, but I digress. I attended what can be called an ultra-conservative, religious, private school - at that point I had no religious views either way, but in order to understand later happenings in my tale I will explain a bit about the religious views of my parents.

I suppose I should begin with my mother. My mother was extremely religious as a ‘young person’; its always hard for me to image my mother young, anyway, my mother practiced the catholic faith from her early childhood almost to the point of obsession, but this changed as she became a teenager and veered away from religion altogether. I suppose this had something to with the fact that she grew up in the late sixties and early seventies; a very liberal time, even in Eastern Europe. My mother only told me once about her ‘sinful existence’ at that stage of her life and she only did it in order to teach me a lesson about the possibility of the rejection of sin. Soon after this period in her life my mother married my dad and emigrated from Eastern Europe to Australia. A couple of years after arriving in Australia, my mother discovered what she deemed to be the wonders of a new religious philosophy; the Pentecostal faith. In hindsight I suppose it is obvious that she would return to her obsessive tendencies. My mother then joined a group of ultra-conservative Christians that used to meet in the countryside and thus began my Christian education in all things evil and wrong.

In order to give you perspective about the nature of religion in our house and the constant conflict over it I will also give you some history about my dad. My dad was raised in a very liberal household, at least it was deemed liberal by eastern European standards, especially in a formerly communist state. My dad was the kind of catholic growing up that went to church every Christmas and Easter and that was about the extent of his religious activity. When I was growing up as a child, my parents were going through a tumultuous period of their marriage, which never ended I suppose.

My dad’s absence during those early years of my life allowed my mother to have free reign and thus I was dragged into her religious obsession. There is one example of this which I remember most vividly; I don’t remember what day of the week it was exactly, but that kind of information is rather irrelevant, anyway, a commercial airplane (757 Boeing I think) flew kind low over the neighbourhood and my mother made us hide under the table as she thought it was the end of the world. Now that I look back on it I can almost laugh at the ridiculous nature of such a proposition; however, at the time I thought I was going to die. Unfortunately, that incident resulted in me wasting years of my life is satiating my fear of death by immersing myself in religion and the various causes associated with the religious right.

This all continued for a couple of years, until I turned sixteen and began to question the basic tenants of the Christian faith that my mother followed, as though she was a blind sheep. I figured that a religion that spouted hate and pretended to love just wasn’t worth my time and devotion. My quest for answers about how my sexuality and religion conflicted lead me to conclude that God doesn’t exist, although I have recently altered my views on this in the sense that I have taken the logical step of becoming an agnostic (for those who don’t know, agnosticism is the belief that there isn’t enough evidence to either prove or disprove the existence of a ‘higher power’ or whatever you want to call it), although I lean towards atheism within that sphere of agnosticism. For some reason I feel as though I need to justify my beliefs and so the reason for my split with all thing religious was made up of several different factors. Some of these factors constituted the fact that I believed that religion was clearly the largest cause of hate in the world today (if it weren’t for religious differences, most societies on earth would have been able to exist side by side relatively peacefully – I am making a reference to the Christian crusades in the Holy Land and the subsequent Islamic jihads – Religion is also responsible for most of the conflict within modern society in terms of not accepting others) as well as the fact that when I was younger I would in a misguided attempt to ‘cure’ myself, I would pray that God would ‘cure’ me and make me straight so that I wouldn’t have to live through all the hate and disdain that most of the people knew at that stage in my life displayed towards gay people. Off course I was never ‘cured’, the entire idea is ridiculous even as I sit here typing it; however, at the time i thought I was sick and needed help – after all, the sermons at church would alternate between “all the faggots will burn in hell and they should all be killed” and that “tv is the devil and will only lead you into temptation”.

Despite all these ‘weird’ influences in my life, I think that I turned out rather normal, considering that my only issues were with trust, my weight and depression. My extensive exposure to religious hate caused me to hate myself, as did the fact that my so called friends a school would always mock those that they considered to be ‘gay’ or anyone else who displayed any kind of effeminate behavior. The fact that I was bullied by older students didn’t really affect me that much, I did have a few friends that stuck by me when I was being bullied and I learnt very quickly that gratifying those kinds of people with a response only encouraged them and so, the only remotely bully free year of my high school life was year 12. Throughout this time, my issues with my weight began, mainly throughout year 10, as I was trying at that time to deny who I was and so I gained a very large amount of weight and by the time I finished year 12 I weighed around 90kg’s. I say ‘around’ because the scale was not my friend at that time and I very rarely weighed myself.

My weight issues then precipitated my depression, which I have to truthfully say was a rather pitiful attempt at self-pity. Entailed within my spiral of depression throughout those years of high school and subsequent life after school, was the fact that I began physically hurting myself so that I wouldn’t have to feel the emotional pain that I felt inside. My favourite method involved taking a sharp pin and stabbing it into my arm and then yanking it across my skin as hard as I could and as many times as I could in order to make sure that I would feel the pain for a very long time. I still have the scars that this method left on my arms; evidently I tried a little too hard according to several therapists who tried to see me at the time. The therapy never really lasted very long, usually one or two sessions with a different therapist every time due to the fact that I didn’t want the help and my parents thought that I was fine. For some reason I never understood that my parents didn’t see my pain, especially when I tried so many times to confront them about it, but I suppose my parents weren’t the best people to ask for help; they had their own issues, as at this stage their marriage was falling apart and as usual both my parents tried to be the better parent and spend more money than the other for presents and the such like. However, none of this really perturbed me due to the fact that whenever I was home it felt as though I wasn’t really there. I guess I would disassociate myself from the situation at home and my own emotional pain I could enter a world where none of these things mattered.

This resulted in me throwing myself into my studies, putting off my emotional development in order to survive and just because I didn’t want to feel anything anymore. At the end of year 12 it all paid off I suppose as I bet over ninety five percent of the state in terms of academia and was accepted into the University of my choice.

To this day I still have issues with my weight as I constantly strive to lose just a little more weight in order to be ‘skinny’. I do realize that I probably suffer from some sort of eating disorder, but whatever, I don’t really care, I just want to be skinny. I also realize that my attempts at weight loss have probably been directed towards the fact that I want someone to love and yet I feel as though I am destined to be alone. I never felt love as child and now I seek it out almost everywhere I go in a vain attempt to make up for the love that my parents never gave. I suppose that the physical abuse that I suffered at the hands of my dad probably didn’t help, but at least he was there for me some of the time, I knew that he would be okay with me being gay (he once caught me while I had some gay porn up on the computer and I covered it up saying that it was a popup and that we most likely had a Trojan virus on the computer that was causing all of ‘images’ to come up). Anyway, back to weight issues, in just under a year I lost over 18kgs and I now weigh 70.4kgs, and I am aiming to lose another five to eight kilos, despite the fact that I know that it will most likely be bad for me.

I decided to write all of this down as a release from the stress I was experiencing in my life and still am I suppose. It’s funny how writing things down can give you a better perspective of yourself and the issues you face. Over the years I have encountered several particular shows that have helped a lot; Frasier for example and Boston Legal as well as Will & Grace. My all time favourite scenes from Frasier involved the following;

“Even the happiest of us can find reasons to be unhappy. So, don’t look for them! Take a tip from out animal friends…and treat yourself to your favourite toy…whatever that may be. Life is too short to dwell on every bump in the road. You have to take pleasure in the simple things…In short…EAT A COOKIE!!”

Frasier Crane (All rights to this state go the show)

Ultimately, all of the things I have experienced thus far have taught me that it is necessary to enjoy the simple things in life and appreciate all the small things people do. What has enabled me to remain strong, or at last maintain a façade of strength was my acceptance I who I am and that I can accomplish my dreams of working as a lawyer or in politics.