I don’t remember how old I was, maybe I was eleven. Maybe older, but I was young. I was walking home from middle school and it was spring time, the walk home wasn’t that far but I hadn’t eaten all day and I needed something to drink. There was a fast food restaurant that everyone thought had shut down but just had bad business right at the bottom of the hill I lived on. I knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to walk up a three block hill so dehydrated and walked into the restaurant. I’m sure I got food, I was a growing girl, and I sat down to think about whatever boy problems I was having at that age without the interruption of my everyday life. There wasn’t anyone in the restaurant and the woman who took my order sat down a few seats away from me and stared as I meekly ate my fries under the pressure of her gaze. She was an old woman, dark hair, skin hanging off of her face and the restaurant’s uniform made the color look surreal in juxtaposition to the royal blue visor on her head. I tried to eat quickly and avoid eye contact but eventually I gave up on eating and got up to throw away what I would to have liked to eat but she stopped me before I could pass her table. “What are you?” She asked with no hesitation. My first instinct then is what my first instinct is now which is to ask, “Why the fuck is that any of your business?” But I opened my mouth and let out a defeated sigh, “Well, I don’t know, my mom is White and my dad is Black.” She nodded and said, “Okay,” as if I needed her approval to be breathing and I left slightly stunned by the experience. As soon as I got home I went upstairs to my dad’s office and relayed the story with added emphasis on how perturbed I was that someone would feel comfortable asking me that. My dad loves talking to me about being Black, it’s one of his very favorite subjects. There’s a pride there when his eyes gleam and he talks about the tone of his skin; he sees being Black as a blessing. I’ve always been confused about my body, my skin color changes every time I go out into the sun. My skin color to me matches the shade of a new tree planted in a crowded city. But I do remember him looking me in my eyes, I remember that my eyes matched his and a sense of familiarity warmed me. He said, “If anyone asks what you are, you tell them that you’re Black.”

Being Black to me is more than my skin color, I know that I’m light skinned (I’ve been “jokingly” called high yellow all of my life), and maybe judging solely off of that I would be “passing” but I have those features. The controversial ones, the type of body that everyone on the TV was taking diet pills to avoid, the lips that I would see on a someone doing Blackface. I had the features my barbies were always missing, there’s an aisle in every store with products that promise they can fix my hair and I can say I’ve invested in almost every one. They’re all the same – my body is undeniably Black and because it is Black it is political.

That’s never been a secret in my life. I don’t remember the first time my mom or dad sat me down and said, “Now, Gabriella, you’re Black and here’s what that means,” it was more like an ongoing discourse between my family members. I do, however, remember the first time it became real to me. I was probably six or seven years old and my family was living in White Center, a suburb a few miles away from Seattle. My brother had a best friend who lived across the street from my Grandma’s house, I’m not sure what his name was, probably something like Aaron. CJ (my brother), and Aaron really hit it off, I mean the kid was over at our house all of the time playing video games. They would walk to and from school together and I remember thinking he was so much softer than the rest of my brother’s rowdy friends. My mother, however, would speak in hushed tones about how his mother was racist, about how CJ could never go to Aaron’s house. Then one day CJ came home upset which wasn’t unusual, but then he told us what happened. CJ was walking home from school and he passed the Aaron’s house. His mom was in the driveway and he told my mother that she just started driving at him. Fortunately he ran out of the way in time and wasn’t harmed but it was the first time I had heard of someone hurting someone just because they looked like my brother and me. I couldn’t believe that that had happened to someone I loved, I didn’t want to believe it, I thought it was mistake. But Frantz Fanon captured my sentiments exactly, “I was not mistaken. It was hatred; I was hated, detested, and despised, not by my next-door neighbor or a close cousin, but by an entire race. I was up against something irrational (p. 97).

Race is something I’ve always been conscious of but I had to ignore it for a while. Growing up Black and having primarily White friends really did something sick to my psyche because I started to see other Black people as beautiful but me as flawed. I saw the beauty in my family members but I was lighter than them but then there was everyone else, skinny, White, short, nothing like me. No one pointed out that I was Black to me, race wasn’t a topic of conversation amongst my friends (who were primarily White “skater boys” who, when race was brought up called me a “mutt” and told me to stop talking); I couldn’t find any reflection of myself, not in the books I read or shows I watched, there was nothing of myself. I was experiencing dysphoria but not consciously, I didn’t know where the roots of the resentment I was feeling where and no one really helped me with that. I had my father of course, to tell me stories of growing up in Louisiana in the 50’s when the land was so flat he thought he could see the curve of the earth and he couldn’t’ve drank out of the same water fountain as my mother but that all felt so removed from where I was standing. I couldn’t believe that being Black in America could be psychologically damaging, that it was something that persisted and wore down your morale with age.

But then I got older and the things my father had always told me about being Black were suddenly coming into play in my own life. Like being watched when I walked around the store with my cousin, or being stopped by police officers just for them to ask what I was doing walking down the street. Men started to tell me, again, that I “wasn’t like other Black girls” and that they liked me for that. They compared me to my people and told me I was an outsider still and expected me to take it as a compliment. Then there were the men who treated me like they treated other Black women, backing me into corners and telling me they’re going to fuck me, following me off of the bus and talking about my body as I walked away. Those men treated me like an object whereas the former type of man treated me like an animal – I learned to see the difference. To add to the mess were the White women – friends, friends of friends, strangers off of the street, just White Women – approaching me and touching my hair without permission because they’ve always wanted to know what “my kind of hair” feels like. Their obsession with Blackness mixed with the fact that they would evade the subject of Blackness all together was almost as sickening as their anecdotes about being seven and wishing they had an afro. But then their mother told them that they were beautiful the way they were. And they had a whole society to back them up on that.

The resentment grew and grew until I stopped going to school and stopped leaving the house. I still wasn’t sure what the cause of my complete disinterest in society was about, it was hindering me but I felt like I was grasping at straws when trying to figure out why. I knew that what I was experiencing with people – the comments on my body, on my identity – all of the words said to me were a part of my life that wouldn’t go away. Racism was never presented to be as solvable, but simply a fundamental part of Western society which has caused it to thrive. But it didn’t feel real. I wasn’t an “Other” in Tacoma; light skin Black girls weren’t an oddity, White people were. The idea of “The Rich Man” was more exotic than my hair.

One day I got bored and applied to Evergreen, I got in, and then moved to Olympia. My brother went to Evergreen and he tried to warn me in so many words but I didn’t really get it. He told me by my Junior year I would be ready to leave and never come back. I made friends easily enough however by week three of my first quarter I was crying on the phone to my cousin explaining that I needed to leave Olympia immediately. See, being Black in Olympia feels a lot like telling a joke that no one understands; there’s a strong sense of “Why did I just do that?” mixed with, “Why don’t these people get it?” Evergreen is considered liberal because of the fact that they’ll allot a $5000 a quarter budget to the Shellfish Club not because of their diversity. I’m pretty sure that I know the majority of the Black people on campus and we wave and smile at each other like we’re beacons of hope. It doesn’t matter whether it’s intentional or not I’m almost always the token Black friend simply because there are so few of us. Every time I walk onto campus I know I’m going to be witness to something upsetting, someone is going to say something to me that offends me, and that I’m going to want to go home as soon as I can. It seems pessimistic but I can safely say that it’s true. It’s hard to continue going to school when you know most encounters you have will be psychologically damaging.

Then I went to Europe.

Now, while I was there my head was occupied dealing with the fact that I had to speak another language and that I was far away from home and I didn’t fully recognize the way I was being treated and why. There were a couple incidents where shopkeepers wouldn’t look at me or speak to me, a French drug dealer referring to Black people solely as “niggers”, and all of the street harassment was jarring but I thought it wasn’t out of the norm for me. When I got back from France I read a book, Black Skin, White Masks, by Frantz Fanon which completely changed my perception of what I experienced not just in France, but back at home.

In chapter five, The Lived Experience of the Black Man Fanon begins recounting the remarks he’d received simply walking through the streets of Paris and how raw they made him feel. When a young child with their Mother cried, “Look, Maman, look, a negro!” and the mother responded with, “Ssh! You’ll make him angry. Don’t pay attention to him, monsieur, he doesn’t realize you’re just as civilized as we are,” Fanon was at a loss. He wrote:

My body was returned to me spread-eagled, disjointed, redone, draped in mourning on this White winter’s day. The Negro is an animal, the Negro is bad, the Negro is wicked, the Negro is ugly; look, a Negro; the Negro is trembling, the Negro is trembling because he’s cold, the small boy is trembling because he’s afraid of the Negro, the Negro is trembling with cold, the cold that chills the bones, the lovely little boy is trembling because he thinks the Negro is trembling with rage, the little White boy runs to his mother’s arms: “Maman, the Negro’s going to eat me.”

The White man is all around me; up above the sky is tearing at its navel; the earth crunches under my feet and sings White, White. All this Whiteness burns me to a cinder. (p. 93)

That sensation of being gawked at, of having your body discussed and ridiculed by strangers, even children was something I had experienced over and over. When I was in Galway at a coffee shop, a child hid behind her father and began crying and when he asked why she pointed at me. She was confused and her father was embarrassed but I just wanted coffee. Even with all of my knowledge of the politics of being Black I still don’t expect my body to be verbally mangled when I’m simply trying to be. All I wanted was coffee. Fanon writes a lot about wishing to simply be able to exist without the ignorance of others constantly bombarding him and my wishes for myself aren’t far off.

So, how do I feel about being myself? About being Black? I see myself in Spirits Swirl by Levoy Exil in 1991. He’s an artist from Haiti who used abstraction to capture dysphoria.

In the center is a Black girl, in a circle that resembles the sun, but with eyes. Around her women surround her, twisting around each other with their languid, brightly colored bodies. The girl in the center is visually overwhelmed by the activity outside of her bubble. All of the eyes in the painting are staring at the viewer, there’s a flatness to their faces and bodies and yet one feels as if they could plunge into the scene if one looks too closely. It’s ghostly and mystical but not in a horror film way; the figures around her are spirituality and ancestry floating around this Black woman constantly. Her ancestors call to her, and even though she appears intimidated, there’s also a sense of openness and possession as the spirits reach for her.

That’s the best way I can describe what it feels like to be me. My history doesn’t just follow me around the store, I carry my Blackness in my heart every day. I make sure not to forget my history, to stand up for the people who died in the process of making it so I could attend schools and apply eyeliner in the same bathroom as my White friends. Despite the process of demonization we’ve experienced, despite slavery and other forms of systematic racism that hinder my daily life, I’m still inclined to agree with my father. Being Black has given me a valuable perspective on the world and features I have grown to admire in myself. And I’m proud of that. If anyone asks me what I am, I tell them I’m Black.

When you see a Black person, what do you see? If I asked you to picture a Black person in your head, which features would you accentuate to let yourself know that you’ve imagined an accurate representation? Have you ever stopped to think about why it is that you’ve developed whatever associations are coming to mind now? Have you considered the external influences on your perception of people?

I can’t tell you where it all began; there’s always been a prejudice against darker people throughout history. I’ve never been in a World History class where the instructor says, “Now, such and such year is when the prejudice against dark skinned people was conceived by this dude”. That’s not really how it works. Throughout my studies it seems like shadeism of some sort has been incorporated in cultures all over the world, but I’m not here to make an argument for universal biases being a natural tendency because I’m almost positive I don’t believe in that being inherent. What I can do, however, is look at the way the image of us has transformed over time creating a depiction of us in the mainstream media that doesn’t even begin to capture the brilliance I see.

I never really had to think about these things when I lived in Tacoma. I went to a school where it was rare for there to be more than three White people in the school. Whiteness was reserved to the highly resented staff, the only White authority figures respected by the students were the ones who proved their ability to speak our language and break up a fight. It’d been like that in elementary and middle school, too, so it’s safe to say moving to Olympia, Washington was a culture shock. I went from a classroom setting where we learned about code switching and talks about how I won’t be received well by professionals because of my skin color to a place where I could go hours and hours without seeing someone who even vaguely resembled me.

The first group project of my Evergreen career was a presentation on a cult in ancient Rome. I was in the basement of the library in a study room with two people who were nice enough; I don’t remember how we got on the subject of racism but as I would learn it would be a topic that got brought up frequently in my presence, because of my presence. The man sitting across from me fidgeted with his baseball cap and casually told me that I’d never experienced racism because I wasn’t from the south. See, he was from the South and that fact apparently made him an expert on the subject of terrible biases. He said that I was lighter than his Black friends back home who have experienced “real” racism and I couldn’t possibly understand what it was like to truly be Black. He then began talking about my features and asked if my hair melted when I straightened it. I told him that I didn’t understand what he was asking. He said, “When I see my friend’s girlfriend straighten her hair it melts. Your type of hair melts when you use a flat iron, I’ve seen it.” It did not matter how much I objected to this idea of our hair being this magical, exotic substance growing out of our heads that melts when it gets too hot, he dismissed my narrative in favor of his distorted White supremacist ideals. I can’t count how many times strangers have walked up to me and began petting my hair because they had an idea that my body was open game. It became immediately apparent after my first few weeks in Olympia that the concept of Black people’s bodies being objects was deeply ingrained in the mainstream psyche, revealing itself in various ways.

What happened? I can’t believe that we’ve always been seen only as objects in the eyes of White people. There’s proof, look at Peter Paul Rubens one of the greatest Renaissance painters. The Four Rivers created in 1616 depicts the God’s of the world’s greatest rivers: Nile, Tigris, Ganges, and Euphrates. Surrounding them are cherubs wrestling with alligators effortlessly while a tiger hisses at divinity toying with nature. Each River God is paired with nymphes who act as feminine power for the river’s flow.

In the center of a painting is a Black woman as a Nymph accompanying Nile, there’s no distortion of her features – she is just as beautiful and alluring as the rest of the Nymphs. She’s the only person engaged with the audience, looking us directly in the eye as if she were inviting us into the painting, to submerge ourselves in the depth of the dark blue tones. While they didn’t make Nile Black (even though he was the one God typically represented as a Black man [p. 348 Black People in European Art]) the association with the people living on the land that the Nile river flows through is represented with the Nymph. She is not an accessory in this painting. She serves a role on conveying a theme and works together with the other deities depicted to do that effectively. She was not portrayed as a caricature of her Blackness; she had a central role that involved her personhood and heritage as opposed to reducing her role to her race.

There are countless depictions of Black people within Renaissance art, and while it might be due to the realism of the era, I could not find any racist or tragically distorted representations of Black people in Europe during the 1600’s, which is coincidental since the first colony came to Virginia in the beginning of that century. Depictions of Black people transformed from the beginning of the century to the end.

The French Encounter with Africans by William Cohen documents misconceptions and prejudices created and perpetuated by Europeans. Cohen writes, “In Europe the color Black denoted evil and depravity and, in an age that believed in symbols, some meaning was attached to the fact that some humans were Black.” (p. 13) What did this meaning consist of? The theories as to why Blackness existed varied from one xenophobic perspective to another. Everything from Black people being descendents of Cain (our skin was turned Black by God to show our affiliation with Satan), to the idea that Africans were born White but turned Black by the sun, dirt, or paint. (pg. 13) The Europeans had negative associations with Blackness from their first encounters. Cohen notes that, “Frenchmen saw the Blackness of Africans as symbolic of some inner depravity, since they thought the color aesthetically unappealing. They followed a tradition rooted in the classical doctrine of physiognomos, which held that what was not beautiful was somehow depraved.” (p.14) In short, because the French and other Europeans went to Africa and were confronted with the antithesis of their societal standards they began to look for “Rational” reasons as to why Blackness existed. The conclusions they came to were that Europeans were blatantly superior simply because they didn’t understand the differences they had with Africans and could not accept them as equals because of their polarity.

Behind the Eurocentric Veils by Clinton M. Jean is titled effectively; this 100 page book covers a span of history from the slavery era to the Vietnam war to evaluate the systematic racism perpetuated by Europeans and how it affects the identity of minorities, specifically Black people. He argues that because Reason is the new God in the Western world, this powerful ideal has othered Second and Third world countries which are seen as primitive and painted in a negative light for the European public. He uses specific examples of important philosophers and sociologists to emphasize the fact that oppression is an inherent part of their ideological structures. One person Jean believes is integral in the process of White supremacist motives being incorporated into modern thought is Hegel. Jean wrote, “Hegel himself described the aboriginal Americans as vanishing at the mere breath of European presence. His stripes on African culture were even harsher: cannibals, traffickers in the sales of their children, primitives (heathens, too) needing the civilized schooling of Western slavery.” (p. 15) The European attempt to understand African culture was a massive failure. Mainstream thought drastically transformed along with the rise of colonies. I suppose it’s easier to support terrible things when there’s widespread propaganda telling the gun-toting majority that the people suffering are less human than they are, especially when the rhetoric is supported by popular philosophers. It’s probably easier not to think about why you have what you have when someone bled for it. And with popular philosophers supporting and creating a rhetoric of White superiority.

Paintings like Her Mistress’s Clothes by an anonymous artist in 1815 effectively boil down the apparent agenda of White supremacy. In this painting is a woman standing in front of the mirror with a menacing hand clutching the face of her Black servant. The Black woman is wearing an ill fitting necklace with flowers, her White dress is pearly  compared to her skin. Her face is flattened and compressed, her hair is done in the same style as her Mistress – a cheap, thinning version at least. The comparison one’s mind makes when looking at this painting is jarring; the emanating quality of the White woman’s skin dominates the photograph. The woman is holding her servant’s head in place in front of what I can assume is a mirror. It’s a dialogue – she’s telling her servant to look at herself while she’s submerged in the Western in that moment. She’s telling her that in order to be beautiful her servant must look and dress like her, something truly unattainable.

The message of White superiority is blatant. The body of a Black woman has been controversial since the conception of this country and has been distorted and skewed under the White male gaze. Our bodies are not seen as beautiful or valuable, but rather as an instrument for pleasure. Our bodies are not seen as strong regardless of the fact that the prosperous life White Americans revel in would not be possible without our sweat and our blood. Here you see the Black woman’s body displayed by a White woman as flawed, only acceptable because of her temporary subscription to Western dress.

Another point of tension between Africans and Europeans were their drastic differences religious practice. In The French Encounter with Africans, Cohen explains, “The Africans’ animism piqued Europeans’ interest, as perhaps their most prominent feature next to coloring.” (p. 15) Missionaries attempted to transform Africans into Christian but weren’t met with great success. The association with Africans and Blackness to hedonism were deepened using Biblical morality. Cohen writes, “… After 1700 Africans were depicted as responsible for their lack of Christianity, a conclusion due, it was said, to their moral failings and to their bestiality.” (p. 17) The African failure to complacently conform to European Christian morals made them sinners.

While the demonization of Black people and Black culture insisted, the fetishization of non-Western culture grew and flourished. The relics which were once used as evidence against African humanity are now being sold in Sotheby’s catalogues for hundreds of thousands of euros. Europeans can appreciate what Black people create (for example: our art, our music, the United States of America,) however when it comes to us as people there are moralistic differences which have greatly hindered unity.

Cette tête commémorative royale, Edo, Royaume de Bénin is item 109 in Sotheby’s Art Africain et Océan which is a catalogue of two patron’s personal collections. They describe the statue, “Cette tête représente un oba, indentifié par la couronne royale, le bandeau frontal et le très haut collier à 28 rangs composé de perles de corail. Chaque côte de la téte est orné d’un motif en forme d’ailette, au born ajouré. Le visage présente des traits naturalistes travaillés aves une très grande finesse, les sourcils signifiés par des hachures réguliéres, de trés fines cercles gravés sous les yeux dont ils suivant la ligne courbe, le front orné du motif classique de triple scarifications.” (p. 26) But what they’re failing to mention when regaling all of the ways which art historians deduce the meaning of these ancient pieces of art  is how these pieces of art were procured. What they’re failing to mention is that the selling of sacred art of another culture, specifically Black culture, that has been demonized and degraded they are further perpetuating the idea that our culture is valueless. These pieces of art were not made necessarily for Western consumption and yet Europeans insist on placing value on our art as opposed to our livelihood. This phenomenon in and of itself is evocative of the dehumanization of Black people and how only valued for our usefulness.

The representation of Black people in Western art and in the media has rarely shown our true colors. There is no exploration of our depth, only our fetishized backgrounds and the disfiguring of our identities. However, while the Western world has created this depiction of us which is simply offensive and wrong, it’s caused Black people to create a counter narrative. Now, this narrative may be ignored by Western media, but it’s still alive. We are actively trying to reshape our image and prove that we are more than slaves in their mistress’s clothes.

Alzheimer’s: Caught Between Two Worlds
Vairea Houston

“People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of
life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they
continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It
is as though they were traveling abroad.” Marcel Proust

I watched as the perfect pink rose I set on my grandmother’s casket was lowered into the ground. Beautiful and serene like her, that rose would remain within the ground forever. It’s hard to register that a loved one has passed away until you are staring at their casket. I began to sob on the shoulder of my Uncle Rio, who put his arm around me in comfort. But there is no comfort in death, so I accepted his shoulder to shield me from my own grief. My estranged family all stood in a half moon around the burial plot while the hearse driver stayed unusually close behind, watching. We all stood about five feet from each other, uncomfortable. Five days after her death, Oma (Dutch for grandmother) was here in Bainbridge Island, being buried in the plot her friend had given her. The day was bright but a breeze kept me wrapping a shawl around my arms, it seemed understandable that the day would keep its chill. It had hit me that I would never hear her tell a story again, or hold her hand as we wheeled her around when the sun came out to play. I hoped that she saw me from up above, and recognized me one last time.
Katrina Rutunuwu was born January 5th 1929 in Sumatra, Indonesia to her Indonesian parents, Martinez and Katrina Rutunuwu. She was one of fourteen children. Her father was in the Dutch army so they often moved around throughout what was then the Dutch East Indies. After Katrina was born they moved from Sumatra to Jakarta.One of her earliest memories is her family’s trip to her grandparent’s farm in Sulawesi when she was eight years old. She recalls her grandparents waking her up at 5 am to go to their fields for food. An old wagon pulled them along through the fields, led by an oxen. Oma talks about how excited all her siblings were to be traveling in a wagon for the first time. She was told to wash up in the stream before they ate. She would tell me about the cold, clear stream that ran from the mountains down through her grandparents property. It was then that Oma ate her first pineapple on that field in Sulawesi. “It was so sweet and delicious,” she said. It was five days of firsts for the children visiting their grandparents. They spent nights in a tree house while her grandma would build fires down below them to keep the wild boars from eating their crops. In the morning they would wake up to fresh rice from the fields, sweet and green. Her grandparents would make bbq corn, sugar cane for dessert, and a drink out of a nearby tree that produced sweet and sour liquid. It was stories like this that my grandma would tell me when I was little and they were always so bright and vivid like you were watching them through a magnifying glass.
On December 12th, 2008 Oma was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. For years she had started developing Alzheimer’s while we were blaming her symptoms on old age. Once she was diagnosed we realized her actions over the last two years made sense. Earlier that year, my brother’s friend Julian was working at Town & Country, a little market down the street from Oma’s apartment in Bainbridge Island. It was pouring rain outside and he saw Oma wandering the store, completely drenched. He recognized her and asked her if she needed a ride home but she couldn’t tell him where her home was. Julian called my brother Dylan to ask where she lived and took her home. Finally we had a name for her disease. She began to tell the same stories repeatedly, from forgetting where she put her jewelry, to accusing her family of stealing her things. She couldn’t live on her own anymore, so she moved from her apartment in Bainbridge Island to Crista Senior Living in Silverdale, Washington. It was a small distance from Bainbridge Island but a huge difference in her lifestyle. She was limited to the amount of possessions she could own, no jewelry, and only one cork board for pictures. She had to live with three other women and had strict breakfast, lunch, and dinner hours to adhere to. Trips anywhere had to be done with family or on designated days with other seniors. Initially her transition to Crista wasn’t smooth. There were days we picked her up that she begged us not to take her back, so she’d stay over and we’d do our best to pamper her while we could. When we would take her home I’d watch my mom walk Oma to her room and kiss her goodbye, and I saw Oma’s fear of being alone written across her face. It reminded me of a child’s face the first day you drop them off at Kindergarten like you won’t ever come back. It felt like this to Oma, and certain days it would take her longer to register who we were anymore. For her mind, she was living the life of a kindergartener, stuck with strangers, playing bingo, singing music, and taking senior field trips.
I saw Alzheimer’s slowly take over her life while she lived at Crista Senior Living. She began to have trouble remembering our names, where she used to live, and stories that she used to tell all the time. At night she would roam the hallways, restless, and forgetful. It escalated to the point that she needed to have assisted care. Finding the correct home to take care of Oma was essential to prolonging her life. My mom and Uncle Rio were the only two siblings proactive in taking the time to find the right place. They eventually found Crista Shores Assisted Living in Edmonds, Washington. This, where Oma spent the last five years of her life, are the most vivid in my memory. I recall the entrance of Crista, it’s warm embracing feeling around Christmas time. Ornaments dangling off the receptionists desk, a fireplace surrounded by couches. A refreshment table offers snacks for visitors. The receptionist with bold red hair asks you to write your name on a stick-on name tag (which barely sticks twenty minutes into your visit). Once you walk down the main hallway they start to steer off into separate wings, named after different types of trees. Oma was located in Dogwood, separated from the other wings by locked passcodes. While the entrance gives off an inviting feeling for guests, the rooms gave me the chills. Each room was covered in white blank walls, hospital looking beds that were easily adjusted, and very simple decorations. Outside each room was a plaque describing the person living there, how old they were, and where they called home. She called herself Cathy here in America and that’s what the sign read. At the entrance to Dogwood, a sign-in book held the signatures of those that visited and the day they came. In the first few months her only visitors had been me, Leilani (my mother), Uncle Rio, and his wife Rita. Oma’s stages of Alzheimer’s had taken over aggressively in just those few months. It was unfortunate that the rest of our family weren’t there to share moments with her while she was still alive. I observed other seniors who were at different stages of their dementia or care. I saw some wander the halls aimlessly, others glued to their beds, a few watching television, and many rocking a baby doll in their arms with a look of longing.
Being around someone with Alzheimer’s means handling with their mood swings and not looking for their recognition for your continued patience. You see a new form of this person you once knew, and so my Oma’s journey through Alzheimer’s isn’t only influenced by my observations but watching my mom see her mother differently. The absolute calmness that Leilani developed towards Oma after a few months of being one-on-one with her disease. Oma was born into a family of fourteen children, but she could easily name every single one of them up into her early stages of Alzheimer’s. When my aunt Arisa asked her, “How do you not forget some of them?” Oma replied with, “How could I forget.” Eventually Oma did forget her siblings, one of the hardest things to watch when observing someone with dementia. Memories she thought she would never forget are suddenly harder to find within the deep recesses of her mind. Oma had so many stories to share that are important to who she was but also to understanding who I am as a person. Eventually her stories became scarce, the four languages she was fluent in (Malaysian, Indonesian, Japanese, and Dutch) were jumbled together into her own form of communication. We would nod our heads when she did speak, wanting to make her feel as stress free, and comfortable as possible.
Katrina experienced first hand oppression when the Japanese took control of Java on March 9th, 1942. Japanese officers began taking families from their homes and putting them in internment camps to keep the Europeans from interfering with their control. Several hundred of these internment camps existed across the East Indies and other Pacific Islands in their control. Over 300,000 people were forced to live in them, including Oma and her family. Her dad was in the Dutch army so they were placed in an internment camp in the outskirts of Jakarta. The conditions that she lived during her teen years here marked some of her earliest memories, most that she chose not to share with us. She watched as her homeland was swept up by the Japanese and taken away from her. Every Dutch citizen was stripped of all but bare necessities and taken to prison camps. Men and women were separated from each other and placed with strangers. There were schedules and regulations in the camps, times to wake up and times to go to sleep. Jobs were administered to everyone– anything from making dinner to cleaning the soldiers’ houses. Soldiers expected their prisoners to greet them in Japanese only. I expect that Oma had to fight to survive, and rape by Japanese soldiers did exist. Guards were constantly around, coming in and out of homes in the camp.
Oma was fourteen years old in the concentration camps. The barracks she lived in were far out from the city of Batavia which is now known as Jakarta. Her mother’s friend lived a couple barracks down from Oma’s house. One day her mother asked her friend to come for tea at 2:30 that afternoon but she never showed up. Oma was told to go get her from her house, worried that something bad had happened. Oma found her mother’s friend laying down in bed with a ten foot snake lying across her body. Oma could vividly describe the snake as it lay on the woman’s paralyzed body. She says it was old, based on the amount of skin falling off it’s black, grey, and white colored body. Since Oma was the first one to find her she ran to find the owner of the property that the concentration camp was located on. The man was an animal communicator and believed that the snake was acting as the communicator for the paralyzed woman.“Are you hungry?” The snake shook his head no. “Would you like some tea?”The snake nodded it’s head yes. “How many teaspoons of sugar? One?” The snake nodded again. The man gave the drink to the woman instead while the snake lay still watching her drink it.“Would you like a cigarette?” The man asked the woman this time and she nodded approval because she couldn’t speak. When the woman would exhale the cigarette the smoke would blow into the face of the snake. Oma says the snake inhaled the smoke from the woman. The snake eventually slithered off the woman’s body and Oma followed it where it dove into a small hole in the ground outside. This large, ten foot snake went down the hole and flicked its tail and closed the dirt behind him. Not long after the snake had disappeared, the sick woman died. Oma remembers the red ants that covered the woman the day they found her dead inside the barracks. “I can see it like it was yesterday” Oma said as she recalls burying the woman in white sheets and helping her family bury her in the ground, close to where the snake had disappeared that one day. Her mother’s beloved friend was wrapped in white sheets and buried in the ground because her family had no money to do a proper Indonesian burial.
Stories like these lay in audio recordings Oma had requested my Aunt Arisa make three years before we found out she had Alzheimer’s disease. You wouldn’t know that the woman who described the colours of the snake on the woman’s body would develop Alzheimer’s. The woman that experienced the hardships of daily life in an internment camp, and her childhood, riding through her grandparents fields in Sulawesi on the back of a wagon. At Crista Assisted Living home, a few of the caregivers were from Oma’s homeland of Indonesia and spoke her native language. Oma’s children didn’t grow up in Indonesia so this grounding to her home was important for keeping her mind active. My mom and I used to take her to the “Sun Room” located inside of Crista. We would wheel her past the automatic doors leading to the courtyard that we usually booked for our day out with Oma. The room had a biblical reference painted on the sunburnt orange wall and a table faced the blinds surrounded by floral printed chairs. My grandmother was a great singer and she grew up singing songs with her family in Sulawesi. Oma couldn’t remember our names most of the time, nor how to pick up her fork but this was the one thing she never forget, even a week before her death. She would sing an Indonesian song from her childhood called “Esamo,” tap her leg and sing every word. Oma always wanted to be a singer, but she ended up working for Girl Scouts of America to support her family. Oma continued to astound me. The gracefulness as her lips moved with the words, her pink lips bright (my mom would brush them with lipstick,) as if we had the old Oma back even if it was for a short time. Her gorgeous brown hair had turned to a sophisticated pearl white against her dark brown eyes. She was happiest when she was singing even in her old age. The crow’s feet in the corner of her eyes would deceive you from seeing the hard life that she had endured.
In the summer of 2013 Oma’s youngest son Bobby died of esophageal cancer. Bobby was similar to Oma in the way that he touched lives, always the life of the party, usually the center of attention. He had an unending taste for adventure, at a young age he began working as a crew member on a cruise ship. He traveled to places like Tahiti, Antarctica, Australia, and Hawaii (to name a few). It was rare that Bobby came home to his bachelor pad in Seattle, near Lake Washington. His siblings loved him and cherished those moments that he came home for Thanksgiving or Christmas. My cousin Reed and I looked up to him like a cool older brother, always begging him to take let us stay with him for the weekend. He’d take us inner-tubing on Lake Washington and tell us to be careful for the snapping turtles that would nibble on our feet and we believed him. After a long day floating on the lake he would make us orange cream milkshakes and pour it into two Tiki-men themed mugs. He eventually met his wife Toni on a cruise ship and she finally got him to settle down in Australia, having two kids. He found out he was battling esophageal cancer only two years after his second child was born. While Bobby was in Australia battling cancer, Oma was dealing with Alzheimer’s. Bobby had many, friends in his forty-eight years alive and his death was a devastating loss for not only our immediate family. We decided that his funeral would be a celebration of life instead of a normal funeral procession. My cousins and I hand wove 130 bracelets for the guests and each prepared a small speech for the funeral. Oma had mostly forgotten our names by now and she would have no idea how to interpret us telling her that Bobby had passed away before her. We made the decision to bring her to the funeral. She had no idea why people were bombarding her with condolences, and in some ways that was better for her. A slideshow played and everyone sat to watch, including Oma in her wheelchair. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole played during the slideshow. A beautiful picture of Oma dancing with Bobby at her cousin’s wedding in Indonesia captivated everyone watching. As I looked over at Oma, she was expressionless, distant, not even noticing this image dancing on the screen. Alzheimer’s made her oblivious to loss of her youngest son, taking away her memories of him, and the ability to be with him for his last moments. As humans we take pictures to prolong a memory that has passed, to keep it as long as it is meaningful to us. When it comes to dementia, sometimes photos can’t help us. Weeks after the funeral, Oma had random moments of clarity in her thoughts. She asked us multiple times where Bobby was and my mom would tell her, “he’s on the beach in Tahiti, mom,” and for the most part, I chose to believe that too.
Oma met the love of her life, a writer, in Tokyo, Japan in 1951. How Oma got from Indonesia to Tokyo is still somewhat of a mystery. My family has tried to piece together things they remembered from their childhood and conversations they overheard to try and piece this part of Oma’s life together. She never spoke of how she got from the concentration camps to Japan and must have kept it a secret for a reason. In old letters from Netty (Oma’s youngest sister) to Oma she writes telling Oma how grateful she is for the sacrifice she made for the family during their life in the Internment camps. Often my mom heard her parents fighting, and they often brought up past arguments and experiences to strengthen the quarrel. D.B. would mention Oma having had a young baby boy to a Japanese soldier and losing that boy shortly after his birth. My mom and her sister Kerrie have considered the possibility that Oma could have been a “comfort woman” during World War II. During 1942, Yasuhiro Nakasone, a lieutenant paymaster in Japan’s Imperial Navy found that creating a military brothel would lift the mood of his troops. There’s been lots of speculation happening today because Japan refuses to make it a part of their historical record. Girls and women became comfort women from any place under the rule of the Japanese. In an article written by The New York Times, they write about comfort women during World War II, saying: “Interned Dutch mothers traded their bodies in a church at a convent on Java to feed their children.” We know that Oma’s father was in the Dutch Army and therefore a very prominent target of harassment from Japanese soldiers. It’s probable that Oma joined the comfort women during the war for the protection of her family.
Oma’s life changed drastically when she met Darrell Bob Houston from Seattle, Washington. She was in her early twenties in Tokyo, Japan. He was in the Korean War and stationed in Japan. A week before Oma met D.B. she was visiting her friend Connie a half Indonesian/Dutch psychic who said “Katrina, you’re going to meet someone.” Oma was surprised, “How can I meet someone, I’m so short!” Sure enough her friend from Tokyo wanted to open a bar but wanted Oma to sign as the owner because he wasn’t allowed to, in return he’d pay her. So there she was, a week later, sitting on a bar stool at the bar called Sinar Bulan (Indonesian meaning moonlight.) A tall, olive skinned, American man greeted her in Indonesian, “Salamet Malon.” We later learned that he had asked someone how to say good evening just so he could meet her.
“What’s your name?” he pressed on.
“ Katrina Miller,” Oma didn’t know why but she blurted out a fake last name.
“That’s my mother’s name, Minnie Miller,” D.B. replied. After that she must have told him her real last name because he kept coming back to see her. Oma was smitten with this American man and was willing to move to the United States for him. The year was 1948 and during this time a GI had to get permission to marry a foreign woman. Between 1942 and 1952 over one million American soldiers were marrying foreign women from 50 different countries. They came from places such as Britain, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Also, 50,000 to 100,000 servicemen married women from the Far East and Japan. The U.S. Military was discouraging servicemen from marrying foreign women because of the impact a family could have on their duty. The military weren’t the only ones who were concerned, American women were upset with foreign women taking away their chance at being with them. Since so many soldiers were marrying foreign women, immigration laws of the U.S. prohibited the admission of foreigners to 150,000 per year. Eventually the U.S. congress passed Public law 271, The War Brides Act. The law facilitated entrance to the US for alien wives of U.S. citizens if they were in active service during World War II. Oma was granted access because of D.B. and thus became an American citizen, starting a new chapter in her life away from all she ever knew.
Darrell Bob Houston was first and foremost a writer. He wrote for The Stars and Stripes, The Guam Daily News, Seattle Weekly, Seattle P-I, Seattle Times, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, Saga Magazine, The Oregon Journal, Tacoma News Tribune, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Hermiston Herald, and The Olympian. He was known as a gonzo journalist, using first person narrative to draw the reader to his articles. He encouraged young writers to think outside the box, to polish headlines like a valuable piece of artwork. Some of his headlines were, “America Louvres Her: Mona’s the Most– To Say the Lisa,” and “Twisting Debs Get In the Sacro-Silly Act.” Tom Robbins, a fellow writer and friend at the Seattle P.I. wrote this eulogy after D.B’s death:

Darrell Bob Houston was a reporter who got around. He caromed from newspaper to newspaper like a pinball under a wizard’s control: the Tokyo Stars & Stripes, the Hermiston Herald, the Daily Olympian, the Tacoma News Tribune, the L.A. Times, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, the Guam Daily News, but most of all the P-I. He was a Vietnam War correspondent and a 1970 Alicia Patterson Fellow in Japan; his most recent job was on a daily in Anchorage. He drove all the way up the rutted Al-Can Highway, sat down at his computer terminal—and left for home the next day. During the better part of the last decade, you couldn’t find a freer lance than Houston. He once wrote that “old newspapermen don’t fade away; they become anecdotes.” Some of Houston’s anecdotes are from his own work—see his tribute to the oldtime Northwest journalism (The Weekly, November 29, 1978), or his account of a pilgrimage to Kerouac’s old firewatch cabin on Desolation Peak (The Weekly, October 18, 1978). His death last week inspired a slew of Houston anecdotes. Rick Anderson recounted a choice few in a Seattle Times column in his honor, including the incident in which Houston sold Esquire (at the apex of its glory) a big story on the late Beat and Prankster Neal Cassady—and then made them send it back rather than permitting any damn nitwitted hamfisted editing of the piece…

A brilliant and eccentric writer, D.B. wasn’t a man held down by anyone. He had two lives, a tennis loving father and a freelance writer who celebrated on 45th and 7th NE at the Blue Moon Tavern in Seattle with his friends. Together, Katrina and D.B. had five children. In order, Rio, Arisa, Leilani, Kerrie, and Bobby. My mom would fall asleep at night to the sound of his typewriter tap-tap-tapping into the night. He would set up a cot next to his Underwood typewriter to catch some sleep in between his writing, sometimes he’d even let her sleep next to him. He looked just like Ron Ely, the original Tarzan actor from 1966. Blonde hair, green eyes, tall, lean, and athletic. One of my mom’s earliest memories is from when she was four years old and she told her dad she wanted to marry him. He laughed and told her she couldn’t do that. As a kid she was like “Why? Why?” Despite D.B.’s faults as a father, he was the only one that gave the kids affection.
Katrina and D.B. had a tempestuous relationship, a normal day at home for my mom was their constant fighting. Heated exchanges happened everyday, hurtful words thrown like weapons. My mom was so young at the time she didn’t realize the impact those words had on Oma and her childhood, until now. Their marriage lasted for twenty years, off and on, but D.B. was a womanizer. If it wasn’t for that they probably would have lasted. D.B. had quite a few affairs during their marriage and my mom remembers a particular one. The whole family was staying in Tokyo for one year because D.B. had just won the coveted Alicia Patterson fellowship. Then, the fellowship granted a journalist to pursue a particular project and write for The APF Reporter for one year. D.B. wrote about Japan’s youth. It was summertime in Tokyo and the weather was unbearably hot. D.B. had been absent from home for a few days, so when he got back him and Oma fought. By this time Oma knew the warning signs, he was seeing another woman. One day D.B. took Kerrie, Leilani, and Bobby to the pool at one of the finest hotels in Tokyo, promising them lunch, and his company. The four of them were sitting by the pool when D.B. excuses himself, telling them he’ll be right back. Hours go by with no sign of him and they start to get worried. Finally, he approaches the pool with a young Japanese woman. They now register this as the end of Oma and D.B.’s marriage. The Japanese woman’s name was Yoko. D.B. paid for her college tuition, and her flights to and from Los Angeles while he worked at the Los Angeles Times. Eventually she left him for another man with more money and that left D.B. heartbroken, depressed, and suicidal. My mom remembers coming to see him after their breakup and his apartment was empty of all furniture (he left their home during this affair) and he would play “You’re so beautiful,” by Joe Cocker on and endless repeat.
By the time my mom was fourteen years old in 1969 D.B. was permanently out of the house. Oma was providing for her three children (that we’re still at home) on her own in Seattle, Washington with no help from their father. They were living in a haunted house on Capitol Hill (a really dodgy neighborhood back then) by the Volunteer Park Reservoir. It was Christmas Eve and they had no heat, no money, and the only food they had was a slab of bacon and one onion. Kerrie, Bobby, and Leilani stood over by the stove top warming their hands while Oma diced up the bacon and onion.“It smelled so good but it was all we had, ” my mom remembered. The memory of that night can still make my mom cry, thinking about how hard Oma tried. That Christmas the toys underneath their tree were from the Salvation Army, at that time they delivered presents to poor families. After eating my mom remembers standing by Oma’s bedroom door with Kerrie, hearing her crying on the phone. She was talking to her friend Leina asking if her and the kids could come stay the night. So on Christmas Eve Leina’s son drove through the snow on Capitol Hill and picked them all up. Everyday was a struggle, living on the income of just one parent
In 1984 D.B. died of melanoma. At his funeral Rio sang a Cole Porter song, “Don’t Fence Me In.” Part of the lyrics are, “Let me be myself in the evenin breeze and listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees. Send me off forever but I ask you please don’t fence me in.” To my family these lyrics depict the man that D.B. was perfectly. A man you could not fence in, could not coral, could not control. He never camouflaged who he was, never pretended anything. He was a writer, lived and felt life to the extreme, and who also happened to be a father. When my mom was young he told her “Lani B don’t just see me as a father figure but also see the man.” She knew that this man, her father, could never be held down. She knew he couldn’t be a father, at least in the most conventional ways. When I asked my mom how she felt about her father leaving home, she said only this, “When you are a kid you accept your parents the way they are, no judgements, it’s your normal, and when he left my mom and his children, I couldn’t hold it against him… I loved him dearly and I understood who he was even more.”
Decades later, Oma was on the other side of the road. Her children were now responsible for the quality of her life. The halls at Crista Shore are haunting, filled with so many people that have lost their sense of being. As I used to wander the hallways I would ask myself if I’d be the woman sitting in her wheelchair with the baby doll caressed in her arms, the woman waiting for help to lift her fork, the lady confined to her bed, or the woman with the bright eyes walking endlessly through the halls. On a particular visit we had spent the day in the Sun Room and my mom and I were wheeling her to the lunch room. I held her petite Indonesian hand with her long and healthy fingernails poking my palms while my mom wheeled her around the woman dispensing pills from a large cart to the patients. We set her over by the window with a few other women and wrapped a shawl around her shoulders because she kept shivering. “I’m going to go now, Mom,” my mom kneeled in front of Oma and kissed her cheek. As she got closer to grandma’s face, Oma’s eyes stared steadily back. “I love you.” My mom leaned forward and started to kiss her cheek and then got up from her knees, not expecting a response. “Love you,” Oma said. I saw my mom look at me for a second, surprised. I shook my head, surprised back. We looked down at her. She was staring at my mom and I swear, her eyes were so clear at that moment. Growing up Oma had never told my mom that she loved her. Here was Oma, confined to this white walled hospital-like room around complete strangers but had just spoken the three words my mom had always wanted. “I love you too, Mom,” Leilani said again, glued to the spot. It took all her perseverance to walk away that day and not look back.
During the course of Oma’s disease I saw my family fall apart. The whole that was once our family became the half circle at her funeral. What lead up to that was a series of family feuds, built up over years of resentment, and finally peaked by Oma’s continued need of care. When Oma got sick, the family was unable to reach an agreement about Oma’s living situation. My mom and Rio found Crista Senior Living in Silverdale and at first all the siblings would visit her. When it was determined that Oma had to live in assisted living, no one took the time to help Rio and my mom find her next place to live. It was like Oma was too much of a burden for some of her kids. They didn’t know how to act around Oma when she forgot their names or began to speak in a jumbled language. Even throughout Oma’s disease I shared beautiful moments with her that I would never take back. I’m happy to say I was there. I was there when I would hear her singing like she was a young girl again, sitting on a field in Sulawesi. I held her hands when she was cold. I saw her smile even on her darkest days. I told her about my life in College and what I wanted to be when I got older. I saw my mom get the tenderness she always wanted from Oma and it didn’t matter that it took until she was sick to finally get it.
Seeing the guest book at my grandma’s assisted living home only hardened my mom and Rio. I saw their pain as Oma became quiet, and her hand’s colder. Everyone handles the loss of someone differently but I knew that seeing my grandma through even the toughest days was important for my growth as a person. I almost lost my father during my junior year of high school when we found out he was ill. Kerrie almost lost her husband when he had a heart attack in Singapore. Rio’s wife Rita was struggling with Parkinson’s disease. Our lives were becoming increasingly difficult. Resentment became the core of our family and when Oma passed we were forced to be in the same room together, the same burial plot in this case. The week before Oma passed away my mom called me to tell me that Oma was being visited by hospice nurses. Hospice provides end of life care to those considered terminal, when the patient is no longer receiving curative treatment. This news was a shock for me because just a few weeks before she was doing fine. But in only two weeks she had drastically declined. She lost her ability to swallow food, became bed ridden, needed assistance toileting, becoming increasingly susceptible to pneumonia. Hospice determined her life expectancy to be only a few more days. At this time I was living over two hours and a ferry boat away from Oma’s facility and my parents had moved to Hawaii. The day I headed out to say goodbye to Oma, I was also saying goodbye to her for my mom. I kept thinking to myself,
Please let me be able to say goodbye to her.
Please don’t let her die.
Just a few more hours.
At 12 PM my mom called me to say that Oma had passed away. I replied back, “What?” as if her passing away before I got there couldn’t be true. As if she would wait to pass until I could see her. I didn’t cry immediately, I just sat in disbelief. You would think that watching someone’s progression through Alzheimer’s would ready you for the worst to come. Yet, my grandma was so beautiful and undeniably strong even throughout seven years battling the disease. I wasn’t ready to stop sitting next to her in the “Sun Room” at Crista Shores and telling her about my life.
“How late was I to see her?” I asked my mom before she hung up to call the rest of her family.
“She died at 4 am this morning. Rio only just told me a few minutes ago.” Six hours after her death I was being told. Six hours ago my grandma had passed with no word from Rio who had been at her bedside when she passed away that morning. My mom was the first to find out then she told me, Kerrie, and Arisa. I was so mad to find out so late and upset that if I had gone yesterday I could have seen her. The fact that Rio had waited so long to share the news only proves how broken our family was. Within five days after she died Rio had taken complete control of the funeral arrangements without getting any of our input. Neither my parents, my cousins, or any of Oma’s family from Indonesia could make it in time. We all gathered in a half circle around her casket that was strewn in separate stems from a bouquet of roses that Kerrie had bought before the funeral. Oma’s life was summed up on a notecard read by a man dressed in a Hawaiian t-shirt and dress slacks who kept stuttering over the words as if he had written them down a few minutes before the funeral. He played the song Over the Rainbow by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole which was the same song played at Bobby’s funeral. He played the song through his “Ihome” music device which he set behind him next to her casket. She was the kind of woman that may have led an untraditional life but she wanted a traditional funeral. Her friend had given her the plot in Bainbridge Island and she was insistent on being buried there. She wanted a Catholic funeral that included a priest to oversee the necessary rites to be administered and held at a funeral home for all her friends and family to talk about. Instead we had this man reading Oma’s life as if she had lived only for a few minutes. When he asked if anyone had anything to say we all were silent from our own discomfort.
Now a year after the funeral, I’m finally trying to encompass all that made up Katrina Rutunuwu. Every memory I experienced, or I heard matter to making her story become whole. Her battle with Alzheimer’s disease, is a battle that other people can relate too. It’s a disease that eats at every particle of memory that you built your entire life experiencing, being taken without your acceptance. At the end of the audio recordings Arisa had made, she asked Oma, “Do you have anything to say to your family that will listen to these tapes someday?”
“Just to have a happy new year and let there be peace in the family,” but there wasn’t peace in the family and there hadn’t been any for a long time.

Memory Project

Simone Blakeslee-Smith

We stand at the sink, he a few inches taller than I. He, in his typical soft sweater, adjusts his black rimmed glasses, tossing the loose curls of his mane back from his face, and piercing my gaze with his own through the reflection. I curl my head against his shoulder, trace fingers along tattoo over heart, as I process the image of what others see when they look at us together. The mirror is dirty, grungy dormitory status; the countertop is covered in too many things to take in. It smells like someone never learned how to wear socks with their shoes. I think stereotypical teenage stoner boy. I think about how my heart fools me into thinking I’m on vacation when I’m with him. I think how did I get here, to this?

His friend walks up, large nose sticking into my business. The two men talk to each other. I know that my facial expression is laugh worthy as I gaze up at him, doe-eyed. How did this happen? Then the friend says something, trying to make a joke I’m later informed, “Ah, what a sweet straight couple.” A few other lines. And I don’t know how it’s funny. My body bristles. I am porcupine. I am black cat.

I want to sink my teeth in defense, but he is oblivious, but I have to say something for me anyways. I eek back an, “Ew, heteronormativity.” I want them to understand that this will never be a straight relationship.

This man is continually understanding and supportive; back in his room he asks me what’s wrong. I get teary as I tell him that it’s hard to not be seen. That I couldn’t find his friend’s antics funny, because they touch too sensitive a place within me. I am defensive against the dismissal of my past, my identity, the complexity of all that I am. There is a fear within me of not being recognized, of not being seen. After all that’s happened, in my own life and in the history of women and queer women, I want to continue being a part of this expansion. He pets my hair and tells me I have his ear. I don’t need to fear. This is expansion. I kiss him. Every moment is expansion, redefinition, embracing…

I don’t want to be placed in another box, this one fashioned from the outside appearance of my relationship. I have been in too many already. It is high time I learned how to live outside of a box, to not rely on its walls to tell me where to exist. My sexuality and sexual identity don’t need to be defined by pre-determined square footage.

I’m using the term boxes to illustrate the seemingly defined boundaries of our expansion. Boxes can be comfortable, but they are built upon averages, majorities, “normal” things that others expect and we expect of ourselves if we are deemed one in this category. To call them out on their box-ness and to live outside their walls is rebellion; it is following one’s own heart as things change and one grows, instead of doing what one is instructed to do.

This is a fresh phenomenon in my own life, as well as in the lives of western women. In the book Gender and Sexuality, the authors1 explain that in the first half of the 20th century, 
“In short, the whole realm of the social, from social structures and cultures to identities and everyday activities, was dominated by biological explanation of the differences and inequalities between men and women, homosexuals and heterosexuals.”2 In France, during the 19th century, this idea existed as well. With the rise of darwinism, and social darwinism as a result, the sexualities of women became an important factor in determining the family’s social position. But more than that, the natural state of a moral woman, those who were wife material, was not sexual. In contrast, in Her Way the author1 states that, “Also, now that the double standard has diminished, a man has less of a whore/madonna complex about his wife, seeing her as a sexual being as well as a mother/‘good girl’,” whereas, “In the past, a man seeking a hotter sex life would be more likely to have an affair with a different kind of women, a ‘bad girl’.”2 This mirrors the rise of prostitution in the past, where women were seen as sexual beings but not good fits for wives, or were wife material and could not be sexual creatures; both expressions of sexuality could not exist within one person.

In the book Gender and Sexuality, the authors also discuss essentialism, which they define thusly: “Essentialism literally means any form of thinking that characterizes or explains aspects of human behavior and identity as part of human ‘essence’; a biologically and/or psychologically irreducible quality of the individual that is immutable and pre-social.”3 They go on to state, “Woman’s sexuality is seen as naturally passive, but also buried deep within her essential biological being, awaited arousal by a man.”4 Women are both seen as sexually passive and, in this quote, dependent upon males for sexual stimulation and awakening. This goes back to the biological inequalities between homosexuals and heterosexuals; it makes sense that lesbians who do not need a man to experience pleasure would both confound and threaten. Within this ideology, there is also little room for growth because everyone is fixed by their “natural” tendencies.

In addition, there were large shifts in the family unit structure due to industrialization in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Rahman and Jackson state, “Many aspects of gender and sexual relations that we now see as ‘traditional’ were established at this time: the relegation of women to the domestic sphere; the notion that men are sexually active and women are sexually passive; and the definition of homosexuality as a ‘perversion’.”1 When taking both the cultural changes and the essentialist views of biological explanation into account, it follows reason that views of women’s sexuality would be strongly affected.

In the 1800s, the essentialist viewpoint was that women’s biology made them unstable; every “monomania” was biologically rooted.2 PAGE # In the book Breaking the Codes, the author Ann-Louise Shapiro3 states that in 19th century France, “Alienists claimed, on the basis of both medical theory and clinical practice, that the female reproductive cycle was itself a kind of pathology that placed women chronically at risk. According to medical texts, a women’s life was divided into three phases- before, during, and after reproductive functioning- a cycle that left her in a permanent state of physical, mental, and spiritual disequilibrium in which she fluctuated between reason and unreason.”4 A.A.Tardieu, a french medical doctor in the mid-19th century, “summarized the medical consensus,” that even a normal period played a large part in the existence of madness and neuroses (p.101).1 What differentiated a woman from a man biologically in the 19th century, also differentiated her from reason.2 Women were seen as biologically designed to be crazy, to be other, to know less and be less than men. It makes sense that in a time period where women were regarded as biologically inferior, that their sexual pleasure or desire would be discounted or deemed deviant.

But, what is accepted as true evolves over time, just as notions of sexuality evolve over time. The ideas of the past that limit our sexual expression to such narrow configurations also can be disassembled, for we assembled them ourselves. This is demonstrated through many statistics comparing time periods, many of which chart changes due to women’s growing education levels and financial independence. In Her Way the author lists statistics: In 1976 the Hite Report3 found that 29% of women accounted for a positive attitude towards masturbation, which climbed to 61% by 1994;4 rates of premarital sex increased from 12% for women born before 1912 to 89% for those first married in the 90s;5 when comparing those married between ’65-’74 and those in the 90s, women who first had intercourse five or more years before marriage climbed from 2% to 56%;6 in the 90s only 15% of women hadn’t shared dating expenses with their male partners, while in 1979 31% of feminist women and 60% of non-feminist women hadn’t shared them.1 The author tends to state that women’s attitudes and behaviors are becoming more like “men’s,” or that they have more freedom to be sexually aggressive, have agency, and not necessarily equate sex with procreation or love. Women have begun to have more sexual freedom as they enter into the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Whereas in the 19th century women were locked into being biologically disordered and their sexual nature was deemed incompatible with morality, and in the early 20th century they were still influenced by these ideas that perpetuate a passive and subservient nature, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries our western society is seeing an expansion of sexual expression, sexual freedom, and sexual equality.

* * * * * * *

One day when I was in eighth grade, I was walking down the hallway by myself when a thought occurred to me. I asked myself if other girls felt the same way I did, thought about other girls the same way I did. I thought that boys were cute, but was questioning why I did not have the same intensity of feeling for them as my fellow girls had. There’s two other moments in time that I link to this one.

When I was a child we had a little blow-up, plastic ball pit for my younger sister. My best friend and I took two each and put them under our shirts to see what it would be like when we were older. We went and showed my mother, laughing as we did it; she laughed along hesitantly at this strange scene. I recall looking over at my friend and thinking how pretty she was. And how much I cared about her. And though this is a strange moment to spark this realization in my mind, I know that this was one of those little crushes that occur in childhood.

The other moment that I link with the middle school experience is from third grade. The class had a college student come in and teach an art class every week. She was beautiful. On one of the last days she was there, she was wearing white pants that were almost see through. I can’t believe that my eyes lingered where they did, that I was already awakening to attraction so early.

The interesting thing is, is that both of these memories popped into mind during the deep thought in the middle school hallway. The fact that I attributed nothing of real significance to them is even more striking. Maybe I just wasn’t ready to step out of the first box of sexual identity- heterosexuality, which was assigned to me by society from birth. I still believed that I was going to grow-up and marry a man. I let go of the questioning, pushed it out of my mind, and insisted to myself that my feelings were “normal” and didn’t mean anything. My feelings had to be normal, because there was no conceivable alternative.

In the book Gender and Sexuality, the authors mention Gagnon and Simon, who were both prominent sociologists of human sexualities, produced “a theory of ‘sexual scripts,’ which turned attention to the ways in which sexual interactions were socially shaped, much as all other interaction, through a combination of learned behavior and cultural codes.”1 Later, they go on to discuss the counter-essentialist, “scripting” approach to sexuality that Gagnon and Simon developed. The first dimension sited is the cultural. The authors state, “Cultural scenarios are the ‘cultural narratives’ constructed around sexuality that circulate within our society.”2 They supply “guides for sexual conduct.” Even though they mention that there are multiple scripts, and that new ones are arising, the strongest narrative that is prevalent in our society is that of a heterosexual life.

In the book Her Way, Kamen states that heterosexual couples are less likely to use the male-defined sexual script.1 Th.H.Van de Velde, who wrote the most widely read sexual manual of the 50s, said that married men “are naturally educators and initiators of their wives in sexual matters.”2 Kamen explains, “Her only job was to respond and smile politely.”3 Edward O. Laumann, of the 1994 University of Chicago National Health and Social Life Survey, “describe the traditional scenario as being pitifully brief and directed by men with businesslike efficiency.4 Later on, Kamen makes note that in the 40s silence pervaded the topic of teenage sex and there was a “covert culture” in the 50s.”5 This illustrates an image of the past where the sexual information that women were receiving was mostly from their husbands. In a system where women lack sexual education that is not purely dictated by males, they also lack sexual agency.

It makes sense that in a society where this was the case, political lesbianism would emerge. These people upheld that heterosexuality meant male domination, which in turn perpetuated the oppression and subordination of women.6 In the ‘70s Adrienne Rich was an influential radical feminist, who insisted that many social practices “coerced women into a subordinated femininity as part of a ‘compulsory’ heterosexuality.”7 Although I disagree with the extremeness of this position, we know that in France during the 19th century, lesbianism was seen as a threat to the societal structure and male power, because it demonstrated not only that women had sexual desire and did not need a man to satisfy it, but also gave a glimpse of female independence. When discussing bourgeois France in Gender and Sexuality, the authors state, “The corollary of the privilege of heterosexuality is the stigmatization of non-heterosexual identities.”1 The reader sees that this wave of political lesbian feminists, even if their conclusions were warped, were simply rebelling against a decidedly outdated and unequal ideology.

Although this is the case, Rahman and Jackson later state, “Significantly they [later generations of feminists] have insisted that the critiques of heterosexuality as an institution should not imply criticism of heterosexual women and that a more nuanced account of the complexity of heterosexual desires is needed”(Jackson, 1999, 2006b).2 This illustrates a changing perspective; blind heteronormativity, and consequently assumed heterosexuality, are negative, but being a heterosexual is not inherently a problem.

What’s interesting is that I was raised in a liberal home. I knew that gay people existed and that it was okay. But I was blinded to the possibility that I might be gay. It’s not what was expected of me and not what I expected of myself. I couldn’t even begin to imagine it for my life.

In the book Her Way, Kamen states, “This generational pattern proves sex researchers’ theory that our psyche takes a while to catch up with our behavior”(Lottes 1993, 660).3 Preceding this, the author discusses the people who came of age in the U.S. in the 60s and 70s; when asked about premarital sex, they said that they were against it at higher rates than the rates they participated in it.1 Even though people say that they believe one thing or are one way does not mean that their behavior will align with this statement. Sometimes it takes our conscious mind some time to catch up with the level of operation of the rest of our self.

This speaks to the box as well. In the research Kamen references, the people said one thing, which was consistent with what, over time, society reached concord of what was appropriate, yet their behavior indicated that they were starting to step outside the box of sexual expectations.

This is mirrored in my own life. I was already experiencing feelings that did not fit inside the heterosexual framework, yet I dismissed them because they did not fit into my current view of myself. Or I did until there was too much to deny anymore; eventually I was shoved out of the first sexual identity box of my life.

How did this happen, one may ask? About a year ago I watched a video of a woman’s lecture on sexual fluidity in women. She made the point that the research shows that the majority of the time, women’s shifts or realizations of sexual identity happen because of a certain person that has stepped into their life.

That exact thing happened with me. Twice. What really pushed me out of the assumed heterosexual box was a girl. This was only a year after the hallway, during freshman year of high school. I walked into my science class and there she was, a very mysterious, independent, and out woman. She was like no one I had ever met and I was quickly enthralled. I had never liked someone how I liked her before. It didn’t take me long to realize that this was what I was supposed to have been feeling for boys.

I was trained throughout my life by societal influences that what’s inside of the heterosexual box is what’s appropriate; to deviate from this was incorrect. I knew that this was a lie that had been told to me, but after so many years unassumingly living under its rule, being outside of the clear parameters of acceptable behavior was difficult and slightly shocking to my system. In the article “Redefining Queer,” Better1 sums up all of this perfectly, “We are taught through our consumption of culture that heterosexuality is expected and compulsory (Rich 1980)… Once she realized that people could also have relations with others of the same gender, she found that it did not matter what your body or genitals consisted of, that relationships could occur between any people who enjoy each other’s company.”2 I didn’t know how to go about all of this, how to integrate this new reality into myself, to dramatically shift my identity. I had never been told how this was supposed to be done; I had never been taught how to refigure one’s identity with a vital new piece of information.

So when it was time to share this discovery of the perceived truth of my sexuality with others, I was frightened. I wanted acceptance and, as many who come out are, was afraid that it would not be easy or even possible when outside of the box I had been born into. One of the most memorable experiences coming out was to my close friend Jess.

She was over at my house for a sleepover and she asked me who I liked. I was terrified to tell her, even though I doubted she would care much. I told her that I liked three people, even though that was a lie. “Who do you like?” Sometimes so superficial a question and answer for high school. But not right now. Not for me. I took a little piece of paper and wrote two boy names and one girl name. I somehow hoped that the maleness of the beginning would soften the blow of the ending. That it would distract, excuse… that I didn’t need to be ashamed because I only liked her a third… My hands shook violently and I buried my head in them and tried not to hyperventilate and in some magical way erase who I was and what I’d done and ignore the repetitive tapping and calling of my name and stay in my facade of safety. Finally, here are her eyes: they’re full of laughter and worry and such loving acceptance. I realize that she doesn’t care. That many people don’t care. That I can authentically be myself and that that’s okay.

In the article, “Recovering Empowerment,” Bay-Cheng1 describes the empowerment process and the components of empowerment. She states that empowerment is composed of the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and the behavioral; all are necessary for instituting a change within a society.2 She says, “While coping models strive to strengthen individuals’ abilities to accommodate the existing social environment, empowerment theory and practice in their fully realized states (i.e., incorporating intrapersonal, interpersonal, and behavioral domains) aim to transform the social environment to meet the needs, uphold the rights, and enable the well-being of those living within it” (Bay-Cheng p.2).3 This is important for the LGBTQ community as a whole and other communities as well. Our society has seen multiple sexual and gender related revolutions that could not have instituted lasting cultural change without combined communal efforts.

The author’s discussion of empowerment as being an ongoing process is also an important point. She states, mentioning that Lamb and Peterson 2011 also makes this point, “Casting empowerment as a process in which one engages rather than as a state to be achieved circumvents the fractious potential of measuring who is and who is not truly empowered.”1 Empowerment is something that people engage in, instead of a final destination.

During this time in my life, even though I did not know about this concept, I still continued to practice embracing this new truth even after I had realized it.  I came out as bi at first, but when I told people I basically just started saying my mantra out loud. “I like girls.” Each repetition was a hammer to the wall. It was a breakdown of the images I had of my future. It was an exclamation that I was different than what people expected. It was a liberating destruction of the life set up for me.

I would chant it in my head as I walked to school, part wanting myself to fully accept it, part wanting the phrase to become normal for me, part as a tool to claim it and empower myself. I did not need to feel shame; it was part of me and, therefore, I could experience it with pride. To fully realize this took time and work though.

By the end of my freshman year of high school, my friend Jess and I had grown to become best friends. We were sitting cross-legged on the floor of the cafeteria near one of the wide poles, open space all around us. It was before the first bell had rung and we were socializing before the start of the school day. Another friend came to join us. I was telling Jess more about Avayne, the girl who had so captured my attention. She looked at me, smiling- that look that says they know something big that you don’t know at all. “Simone, you’re so not bi. You’re a lesbian.”

I stared back, my eyebrows knitted together, and I answered with a reaffirmation that I was pretty sure about my feelings for women, but that I didn’t know how I felt about men. There’s this assumption that we grow up with, that we are going to get married and have children and follow this old heterosexual script. I had always just assumed I liked men. I never had a reason to question it. Now that I had, I was entirely unsure about the solidity of my attractions towards boys in the past. Were they workings of my imagination, illusions that I created by mirroring the speech and behavior of other girls, or were they legitimate interests? I hadn’t liked a boy in at least a year and so I figured the former conclusion more correct, but I was still unsure. This questioning was still all so new.

“Right, June? Don’t you think she’s a lesbian?” The friend nodded her head, but answered with a denial of knowledge one way or the other. Jess told me that I was again, that I should just accept it.

I responded along the lines of, “I don’t like how confining it is though. It seems so limiting. And the way it sounds- it makes me think of something that needs to be scrubbed off the wall or something.” It was a limiting title, stripping me of the freedom and ability to explore my sexuality further, yet I accepted it as my own anyways. I fell into that assumed progression, from labeling myself as bisexual to labeling myself a lesbian- or letting someone else, someone who’s judgement I trusted, label me.

I’m not blaming her for anything, especially because at the time I figured she was right, but instead of letting the question of “maybe men” hang there and not shut myself in a label box, I quickly ruled out males altogether.  I adopted this attitude of disgust at the thought of being with one sexually.  I wouldn’t say whether I even thought a guy was cute.  I did it for my own protection and security as much as trying to do it for other people’s expectations of me as a gay woman.  I ignored the moments I thought a guy was attractive.  I discounted the times I had had crushes on boys in my earlier years.  I pretended I wasn’t at all curious.  And I wasn’t for a long time.

But this identity wasn’t given to me. It was offered and I seized it with both hands. It was an opportunity to have a community, to have a place where I belonged, to be different, and to be something that was a clear identity all its own, a role that I could claim. The decision to accept this title as an identifier, to make it a key part of my person, did little to help me escape boxes, and instead simply put me in a new one. I denied any feelings or thoughts that did not fit with this label, which was the same thing that I was doing before. A new box became home.

We adapt to what is given to us. Or if not, we perish. In the 50s, as a survival mechanism to endure the highly pervasive heterosexual culture and gender norms, lesbians adopted extreme expressions of masculinity and femininity, labeled butch and femme, into both their fashion and personalities.1 Even though these roles may not have been completely true to character, we still see this acting out today. I grew up surrounded by these stereotypes of how one could determine if someone was gay. One can be called too feminine or pretty to be gay, said like it’s a waste if they are, and “femme invisibility”2 is very much prevalent as I have experienced. There is also the idea that masculine women have to be lesbians. To not be is seen as a betrayal or trickery. In the 70s, bisexuality was labeled by radical lesbian feminists as “political treason.”3 I still have heard that kind of talk today, with people saying that people are one or the other. All of this seems to be fighting the “heterosexual institution,” without acknowledging the spectrum of experiences and attraction possible within the individual. In the 50s it made sense because of the prejudice of the time, and even makes sense today as homophobia and hate crimes are still a problem, but as things start to open up it makes little sense to hold our queer community to such limiting and old-fashioned standards- and to hold ourselves to these as well.

Looking back I feel as though I accepted this new identity as a saving grace. I had a prewritten outline I could take as my own. I had people that were like me. I had memories and struggles and victories that I could adopt as part of myself, because I shared a similar experience or identity. Collective or community memory in a way. And why would I even need to do my own exploring if I knew I was gay anyways?

During the end of my sophomore year of high school, I met a girl. After finding out she liked girls too, I finally gathered up the courage to flirt with her. I told her we should hang out sometime during the summer. She smiled. I was so nervous. This girl was so different from Avayne as there was not just an opportunity for friendship and self discovery, but also real experience.

She was my first kiss. I had gone over to her house and we were watching a movie when I leaned in. She nervously kissed me back, but then asked me what we were. She expected me to quickly jump into something with her, though I had kissed her because I wanted to, and she wanted to, with little desire to define things with labels right away. But I didn’t know how to go about things yet, so I agreed to date her.

It didn’t last too long, and from my perspective now I don’t think I really liked her all that much. I was in it just because it was an option- I did it because I was exploring this new part of my life, taking a risk because I could. And there was payout- though more in an understanding of myself and my sexuality than a connection with another.

I remember that even though it didn’t feel quite right with her, being with a girl and saying that I had a girlfriend felt natural and normal. When I was experiencing it for myself and not analyzing everything, it didn’t feel at all like it was different than anyone else’s heterosexual experience. I guess that’s an important thing to know about being gay- the feelings towards one another are the same.

In the article “Redefining Queer,” the author states, “Today, the delinking of sexuality from marriage and the family works to affirm women’s sexuality, homosexuality, and elective sexuality”Castells 1997:236).1 As we move away from the old scripts of women’s sexuality and the heteronormativity which it has been solidly encased in so are the doors opened to different sexual expressions. Fortunately, I came out in a time and place in which these changes were heartily underway, yet it still took a while to realize that being gay or sexual or what have you was just as valid an orientation. Better goes on to say that Anthony Giddens2, a prominent modern sociologist, affirms that “sexuality is the property of the individual.”3 She writes, “Sexuality, previously gained through marital relations, has been transformed to being controlled by the individual through the agency of the body. It is in this new light of sexuality as a positive expression of self that desire is losing its negative connotations.”4 By removing the exclusionary link between sex and marriage/procreation the bonds around sexual expression are loosened and the individual is allowed agency over their own body and decisions, and in this same vein, I was freed to experience my gayness as a normal way of being.

In the article “A comparison of polyamorous and monoamorous persons: are there differences in indices of relationship well-being and sociosexuality?” the author Todd Morrison1 states, “With respect to promiscuity, Klesse (2005) suggests that women may be especially likely to face social punishment if they engage in polyamory, since anti-promiscuity discourse discourages female sexual autonomy.”2 In this section, the author demonstrates that a culture’s anti-promiscuity rhetoric perpetuates a situation in which women do not have full sexual autonomy. I would think this is because it still supports a double standard where it is fine for men to have multiple sexual partners, but women need to still maintain an air of chasteness, or at least keep their numbers of sexual partners low.

Just as the delinking of the definite link between sex and marriage breaks down compulsory heterosexuality, so does it lend itself to breaking down the shame of promiscuity (at least in the realm of safe, sane, consensual sex). As I discovered my gayness, so I discovered my own pleasure to a greater extent and did not let judgement rule who I took as a partner. Both culturally and personally, there is a move towards plastic sexuality, which is termed by Giddens and described as “sexuality for the sake of pleasure and not for reproductive purposes,” “sexuality is the property of the individual,” and “sexuality as a positive expression of self.”3

But I did let my own judgement rule who I took as a partner. I don’t mean that in the positive way, that I was listening to myself about who I wanted to be involved with, but instead the opposite. Even if there was developing, or even continuing, interest in men, I discounted it. That is until the summer after my senior year.

I had first kissed a boy the summer before. I met him during a Fourth of July music festival. He was nice, and when he asked me to go on a date with him sometime I said yes because I had had fun with him and there didn’t seem to be a reason to say no. When I told my close friends about it, they were confused and questioned me. I them that my body seemed to respond appropriately, but that it made my heart feel heavy. I know part of the reason was because I decided I didn’t like him very much, but most of the reason I dismissed the experience was because it did not fit with the identity that I had created for myself. I responded as if I had done something wrong.

Then a year later I met this boy at a friend’s small sleepover party. Something drew me to him and I spent a majority of my time there with him. By 9 o’clock the next night, when we were both finally going home, and he offered a movie at his place, I decided to just take the plunge and say yes. For curiosity’s sake, I told myself. Why not?

I woke up the next morning at his place feeling revolted. It had nothing to do with him, some to do with his gender, and everything to do with the fact that what had happened was so far from I had been telling myself and other’s about who I was. I realize now that I had let a sexual orientation label take up too much space in my identity, but at the time I was just so shocked at the unexpected turn of events and desires.

In the article “Relational and sexual fluidity in females partnered with male-to-female transsexual person,” the author Alegía1 states that, “As illustrated, the repondents believed they were heterosexual in their inherent preference for males as their sexual and relational partners, but also reported a need to identify their sexuality within the context of their reforming relationship. As such, they developed new language to organize their identity contextually…”1 Even though I knew that I was still very much into women, this is when I really learned the difference between sexual and romantic orientations. I decided that if I was going to label myself, it would be with “homoromantic bisexual,” which means someone who is only romantically attracted to women, but is sexually attracted to both men and women.

Written in a journal at the time:

“But now it’s been 4 years.  It’s about time I went back and readdressed that question that, left hanging in the air, I simply avoided.  I don’t know what this all means for the orientation that I have adopted, but I can tell you this: I met a boy.  I don’t like him romantically, though I do care about him as a person.  And the sex is great. And terrifying.  Left unaddressed for so long, the part of me that looks at boys is still stuck somewhere in the early teen years.  I don’t know where to touch them or what I should do with myself and I feel like a shy little virgin again.  But I’m not.  It’s a strange dynamic.  I know that I enjoy being with him physically, but the idea is scary. But now the question has been looked upon.  It’s there with it’s wide eyes and expectant gaze and I don’t know what it wants from me or to reveal to me.  Maybe this is the phase and this part of me must be explored to become more of the person I am destined to be.  Or to clarify the answer to the question so it’s not just left unanswered. Maybe I just needed time and space to explore my love for women before I turned back to examine this aspect of myself.  Maybe this will grow and flux into something that is more stationed in my life.  For now it is just another lesson in letting go of doing things for people’s approval or what I think they should look like or a strict image of who I’ve imagined myself to be- another lesson in letting go of the need to control, to label, to plan, to define…”

Bay-Cheng states, “Adolescent development in general, and sexual development in particular, necessarily involve some degree of experimentation and learning through trial-and-error (Fortenberry 2003; Steinberg 2007).2 As I reflect upon this moment over the summer, and many previous and since, I realize that I have not been bound to the old idea of compulsory heterosexuality, nor the “restrained and modest” and “sexual activity confined almost exclusively to marriage” of women of the 1950s contained therein.1 At 14, I wasn’t even deciding what career I wanted to be in, so how was I going to decide who I was going to like romantically and sexually? I’m not saying that people don’t know this at this age because some clearly do, but that we have to let ourselves and our opinions change with new information. This is reminiscent of Giddens theory of self, which Better describes, “By this he means that the self is constantly evolving through experience and self-reference. The reflexive project in the context of modern complexity is more autonomous to monitor its own experiences and development. The self, therefore, is not a static or passive recipient of experience.”2 We are not this “static” self unto which experience happens, but instead are engagers with it, and through this process of reflexive movement we evolve.

A few months ago I was hanging out with a friend and somehow we go to talking about polyamory. It literally means “multiple loves;” Sheff and Hammers’ define it as, “a form of association in which people openly maintain multiple romantic, sexual, and/or affective relationships.”3 This is a relationship style that is focused on emotional intimacy and openness between partners. This goes along with the idea of compersion, which the authors explain thusly: “While jealousy is based on the principle of scarcity, which can evoke feelings of fear of loss and competitiveness, the concept of compersion rests on an assumption of abundance, ‘in which there is no need to compete for the supposedly scarce commodity of love’.”4 Talking about this with someone who had participated in this relationship style was an important moment for me; it helped things in my own life click into place in my mind and helped me realize that this was a legitimate way to live. I thought about when I liked this one girl, but she liked both me and a boy and I asked her why she didn’t just date both of us. I thought about how it always seems that I like two people at the same time. And I thought about how I had a crush on this friend, and the fact that it had nothing to do with me liking my current partner less or not being fulfilled by that relationship; despite what him and others might think, the crush actually propelled me into loving and embracing who he is more.

Now, Polyamory makes a lot to sense to me, but I’m in a place where living this is not possible, as I’m very in love with a monogamous man, I’ve come to realize that the same mindset can be embodied even in a monogamous relationship.  Polyamory is first and foremost about the human ability to love multiple people; with this comes an appreciation for all relationships in one’s life.  Whether they be romantic, platonic, or familial, each connection with another individual is entirely unique; no person will bring out sides of one out, compliment, and challenge one in the same ways another will.  With this, it’s about challenging the idea that it’s “only true love” if two people are together forever; the length or ending of a relationship doesn’t determine the depth or realness of love experienced.  No love is like another- and really, they don’t need to compete.

Another fundamental aspect of this lifestyle is that love is not viewed as a limited resource.  The only limiting factor is time, but beside that, love for one person does not negate or lessen the love for another.  In my own experience, it seems that the more love I express to others, the more love I feel in myself, the more love I have to give, and the more love I receive.  To me, this is about having an open heart.  It’s about letting people be all that they are, and loving them for just that.  We meet who people are and let go of the demand that they need to fit a little model of what we think we need, or want, and the expectation that one person can fulfill all of our needs- that they need to in the first place.

Concerning the concept of compersion, which is basically happiness because of one’s lover’s happiness, translates into excitement over their successes and passions.  This is also a mode to operate from that is not one of jealousy.  Jealousy seems most of the time to stem from needs nor being met or insecurity; in which case, this is an idea that motivates one to either work on the former with one’s partner and to also have a solid sense of self worth.  It is knowing that other things that take one’s partners time are not detractors from oneself; it is about knowing one’s true value and working from this place of worth.

As with polyamory, all relationships are dependent upon the vital elements of communication and trust. But for me, this style of loving is very applicable to all forms of loving relationships.  It reminds me to know my worth and operate from this place of knowledge, to ask for what I need, to celebrate my partner’s joys, to honor all unique relationships in my life (whatever their form), to let myself feel what I feel, to be honest and open, to compromise… But most importantly for me, it is about choosing to love from a place of acceptance, letting every special individual in my life be who they are and loving them for exactly that.

The relationship that I’m in now started as a hook-up. But it quickly transformed into something else as the night after we first got together we went on a camping trip with four other people, during which I spent four complete days with him. A week later I stood in a common room of the dorms with this man in front of me, both hands solidly on his chest. I realized in this moment that I was already falling for him, that I was going to have to work through my own commitment issues and fear of deviating from my sexual identity to explore this new possibility. I got teary eyed as I knew that this moment heralded a major shift; I could already feel it building strong in my body, too late to stop even if I had wanted to.

There is a fear of not being seen and a fear of betrayal. Lesbians are told by uneducated men that they just need the right penis to set them straight, which is disrespectful and ignorant of the facts of sexuality. Just as one cannot be coerced into being straight, so the opposite is true. So, falling in love with a man after declaring myself a lesbian felt like a betrayal to the gay community. Aramburu Alegría states, regarding the reaction to partners who started identifying as transsexual after the relationship had begun, “For respondents who strongly identified as lesbian, it was not the transsexualism of their partners, but rather the transition from a sam-gender to an opposite-gender couple, that was a challenge.”1 (trans p.3). Just as there is similar confusion and uncertainty between the women he’s studying and myself, so fluidity is both shown within and between relationships. There is fear of erasing one’s sexual identity or betraying the community or not being seen, but maybe even in these situations, we are just seeing the “destabilization of the heterosexual/homosexual binary” that is happening culturally play out.2

I think though that one can both honor the validity of someone’s, or their own, sexual identity and still recognize that there is a varying degree of fluidity on the spectrum. Earlier in the piece the author states, “Contemporary women also demonstrate sexual fluidity, choosing to enter relationships with either same-gender or opposite-gender persons (Diamond 2003). These choices are often contextual, and dependent on the quality and nature of the relationship (Baumister 2000, Diamod, 2007).”1 I’m not betraying my community; I’m following my heart.

We’re laying in bed, his head on my chest, a fluffy blanket wrapped around us. I tenderly comb a piece of hair back from his forehead with my fingers. Tears start to well up, but they are not from sadness or anger or fear. There is so much love in my heart that it spills out of my eyes. I always told people in defense of my gayness that one does not choose who they love. This has been proven to me, as this man before me is the most unexpected surprise. If I would have stayed in my box I never would have been blessed like this.

In many ways, the breakdown of the second box mirrors that of the first. But, the depth in which I understand this journey has exponentially increased. Both boxes I left because there was too much evidence, and too much joy, opportunity, and growth offered outside, to stay. I have decided to embrace the messiness, to participate in the “refusal of both the one-dimensional gendered sexual roles offered to girls and women ( the slut, the prude, the tease, the alpha girl, the good girl) and the segregation of sexuality from other contexts- personal, relational, social, political, material- in which it is imbedded.”2 I allow myself and my sexuality to be big, to be expanding, to be complex… And I recognize that just as I am a work in progress, so too is my sexual identity a lifelong process. A woman that Better quotes in “Redefining Queer” states, “Epiphany, I can just be who I am and it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to not be who I am because of my fear of how people will perceive that. There’s no right way to be who I am. I can just be and people will like me or they won’t, but it’s not about fitting in. It’s about me making my own destiny.”1 In Her Way, the author quotes a woman she interviewed, “There is no code that you have to go by. That stuff is gone. As long as you’re you. That’s all that matters.”2

And to add my own final statement- A once decided upon identity doesn’t have to lock you in. People once expected us women to be passive, to be subservient, to be sexual on men’s and society’s terms, and slowly but surely we’re breaking that down- declaring that we will do what is right for us as individuals, including having sex when and how we want. I’m tired of boxes- stuffing myself into a little word, ignoring everything in my experience that points to a world beyond. I’m never going to be in a straight relationship, not because I’m not with a man, but because my experience has shown that I’m not straight and I don’t have to be one thing. You see, humans are complex- one way doesn’t work for everyone. To be authentic one has to listen to their own voice, which also means being willing to adapt, to discover, to redefine, to expand… I have to let myself adapt to the unfoldment of life (and of myself) to be able to truly experience its wonders. Things change, boxes run out of air, and eventually we have to let ourselves be all that we are.