I first fell in love when I was 18 and I had imagined that when I fell in love that it would be a really wonderful carefree experience. However, all I could about when I first realized I had fallen in love was, "shit!" I had fallen in love with my best friend, a member of my own sex and all I could think was, "No, no...Gay does not happen to me...Others can be gay, that's fine with me...but I am NOT gay!"

I had always lived the life that I felt was drawn for me. I dated boys, went to prom with boys, hooked up with boys and lost my virginity to a boy. This was so ingrained in my head that when I found myself feeling something for a woman, I couldn't imagine it possible. In fact, it was impossible.

So like many homos who start coming to terms with it... "no I'm not gay, I just found the right person. I fell in love with the person." I think that was a kind of coping mechanism. It was a way for me to adjust and help myself realize that maybe I wasn't going to be the norm. I continued this relationship for about 3 years and thought this was my end all be all. This was the person I was meant to spend the rest of my life with. I had given myself to her in a way that no one else could understand. I had come out to my family and friends with her, and I had traveled that vulnerable road of either being accepted or not as a homorsexual person. There was no possible way that anyone else could love me or understand me in the way that she had. I not only had first fallen in love, but it was a life altering kind of situation. It was stepping out of the norm with someone for the first time, and truly fearing rejection from the people you know and love and others who were just complete strangers.

However, some good things actually have to come to an end. I was heart broken. I had grieved that love for so long, and it took years for me to come to terms with it. Better to have loved and lost. No. Absolutely not. It was years of an emotional roller coaster, but what was really an issue was the fact that I not only had to mentally get over the fact that I had been heart broken, but I had to challenge myself to come to terms with my sexuality. I had realized that I had used my relationship with her as a crutch. Which isn't to say that I had loved her any less, but I needed to be on my own and identify as a gay person without her. Because with her, I was a girl who had fallen in love with a girl. There was no other need to identify as gay, because I didn't need to look for anyone else.

For so long I had told myself, and my family that I had fallen in love with this particular woman, and that the gender was not the issue. I had made it clear that I wasn't gay, it was just that I had found a soul mate in a person that happened to be the same gender as my own. So the end of my relationship meant that I had to be true to myself. I knew that I wanted to be with a woman and I think that the people that I had told that I wasn't really 'gay' didn't really care. I was dating a woman, and that's what mattered. Essentially I was a gay woman in their eyes, but not in my own.

The breakup was the best thing that ever happened to me. I eventually healed and found that I was ok with being alone. The biggest hurdle was the fact that I could be single and have the strength to call myself 'gay'. I wasn't a straight girl that happened to fall in love with another girl, I was a lesbian.

With everything that is going on around us, and the injustice that is happening all around us, I think the strongest way we can fight against it is being true to ourselves. When we lie to ourselves about who we are, how are we supposed to expect the people around us to accept us?

I fell in love for the first time when I was 18, and it taught me more about myself than I could ever imagine. Anyone who falls in love will feel vulnerable; because that is in essence what love is all about. But even when I was told from the beginning of my life to be true to myself, I had never really understood what that meant. I assumed it meant that I should do what I feel is right, but I never thought doing what was right would be the hardest thing I would ever do. Falling in love for the first time gave me the strength to accept myself in a way that would never have been possible without her, or without the complete cycle of love transforming into complete heartbreak. I am eternally grateful for that.

Ashley

Ha uu a (Sunrise)
By Crisosto Apache (Mescalero Apache)

I often think about how I found love in a bar, when a bar represented so many other things in my life. The loud mess of chaos, lit in the darkness. When it is cold or lonely outside, there is always refuge there and it welcomes anyone. All of my life I have heard bar stories from my relatives. As a child looking up at your relatives, everyone looks tall and happy.

My arrival in the big city about eleven years ago was small and as cliche as it sounds, only with the clothes on my back and one-hundred dollars in my pocket. The residue from bar-life can leave a person wondering aimlessly without purpose. To the point where he doesn't see disparity in front of him and the trail that it leaves like a shadow against the moonlight. Unknowingly I arrive in Colorado without any contacts, aside froma friend who lived in Boulder with his daughter.

My life and the drifting I have never seemed to mind. It was wherever I ended up. That is what I counted on. Self definition, identification and place of origin, are very important to Apache people. Our place on this earth was diminishing and I along with it. In my mind and inside my body I tossed out any feeling of concern and my relationship to the outer world because the outer world did not care about self definition, identity and place of origin according to the Apache people. As far back as I can remember I was always drifting. Recollecting places, fuzzy places with the scent of alcohol, cigarettes, porches and shouting. Places where I traveled as a child, people, faces and country unfamiliar to me. Now these places, I come to understand were real places and imagined.

My mother has a strong memory and would often tell me stories of my childhood and hers. My self-identification comes from these stories and from her voice. Her life has the same drifting pattern as mine like sand drifting over a small dune being carried by the wind. The beautiful relationship between air and space propels us elsewhere with unknowing destinations. Timeless Native vagabonds and gypsies. Our lives were similar, my mother and I as well as the lives of my siblings. We took endless trips to the convenient stores in town, emptying out our pockets of our bi-weekly paychecks and monthly stipends. At the time that was the life to live. Every place that I resided I reminded myself of home. My reservation is what is left of a culture that was almost wiped out of existence. I come from a long line of warriors and realized recently what my calling in life was. I also realized that this path which has been laid before me will not be an easy road for I have lived much of my early life in selfishness. Now I have an obligation to my people and other Native people, which to help them tell their stories.

Upon arriving to Denver I was not looking for love but had thought I had found it not realizing love was a two way street. The man I thought was the love of my life only turned out to be a mirage, a figment of my imagination. We did the domestic thing for awhile because that's what couples are supposed to do according to the western tradition. An identification and fulfillment of the male and female roles was what we were supposed to emulate. This ideology would never work with those guidelines in the western world, mostly because we could not figure out who was going to be the man and who was going to be the lady. These constrictions can leave a relationship in turmoil because they are ideals that are strictly black and white and very linear. Our relationship was doomed to failure. I had not found love.

I had given up on the idea of love and tried on the suit of lust for size. It seemed more ideal for the life I was born with. Growing up in and out of the western world made me forget where I was from and who I was. It is like melting butter. Everyone knows how good it tastes in everything but the process that it has to take to incorporate it's succulent nature is insoluble. You cannot separate its origin from the end result and the processes it takes to mature. I am not calling myself butter by any means because I am not as good.

It wasn't until I was convinced to attend stripper night at one of the local gay bars that had run into what is to be my destiny. It wasn't that exciting because the evening I choose to go was not in fact stripper night but kareoke night. I was very confused. The bar was filled with half-tanked people who thought they were singing sensations that evening. Who would have guessed that night would last ten years?

I was having a conversation with my mother and she was explaining to me the importance of Sunrise and how much power it has for Apache people. It is our place of origin and desitnation into the next world. It has a place of honor, regeneration and remembrance. It is important everyday to face the east and ask Haishu nagukaande, the Sunrise People, for strength. It was then that my self-identification became apparent. I was no longer a part of the Western world as a gay American Indian and was reborn and reintroduced into my Apache culture as nde isdzan, (Two Spirit). Through this journey I was also glad that my family held onto the tradition of acceptance of "Two Spirit" people and that they were also accepting of my relationship with my non-Native partner. This relationship has felt right from the beginning and I knew so when I took my partner down to my reservation for our ceremonial. He was accepted by my relatives and was able to help out with the preparation of our meals. Feeding the public is a high honor in my culture and the family who prepares the food was honored as well. He was shown some of the traditional aspect of food preparation and blessings. Because my tribe is matrilineal everything is passed through the women. Because we were Two Spirit we were allowed to help out in the cooking arbor. Sharing my tradition with my partner has become a huge part of my life and it makes me happy to share that aspect of my life without our indifferences.

It is difficult to live in the Western world far away from your family, far away from your traditions and culture. To see another Native in the city is delightful but to meet another Apache, no matter what band or region, beyond delight. Gaining strength and holding on to your Native identity in the Western world but it is even more difficult to hold onto your identifying tribe, in my case Apache, is even more difficult. When I hear the Apache language or Apache songs I melt. When I do not hear it I am closed. Every day I walk through the Western world I am reminded of who I am. Sometimes it is good sometimes it is bad. When it is bad I need strength and can't wait for sunrise, so that I can commune with my ancestors and ask for strength and daily guidance. They speak to me and remind me that "Niya", "I am here" and "Guuzhu gu Nagu iinda i", "Life is good".

Crisosto

Just keep loving
By: Just Me
Me: Mom I...I'm bisexual
Mom: It's okay....your sister was anorexic. I still love you.

I was 17 when I came out to my parents but I had known for years. All of my friends knew that I loved the ladies but kissed boys because it was easier, well I guess I mean they were easier. Women are beautiful, mysterious, sexy, complicated, and the only gender I could actually see myself falling in love with.

There wasn't a single moment that I fell in love with her but more of a continual growing magnetic urge to be around her. Two problems though; she was my boss and she was married...to a man.

It wasn't supposed to happen, it shouldn't have happened and neither of us asked for it to happen. But it did. She needed a shoulder to talk to. Not cry on she isn't a crier like I am. There were things going on in her life that nobody seemed to notice or care about. Her friends never seemed to notice that she was sad. Just because someone is obnoxiously outgoing and confident doesn't mean they are happy. How did her friends not see what she was really feeling? I guess that is how we first connected.

Then it turned sexual. Just a peck on the lips when she dropped me off at home after I had too many beers to drive but not enough to make a move myself. She kissed me and I thought, 'huh, odd.' That was all and I shut the passenger door and went inside. Then came the flirting.

Flirting is so dangerous and exciting and in this case, the point of no return. I couldn't help but flirt back when she looked at me or push into her when she walked by. After a night of bar drinking she decided to accompany me home while I walked my bike. We extended the twenty minute walk into a three hour very exciting make-out-on-top-of-cars midnight stroll. Our connection was sexual and hidden but I always knew she would become my forever. I know you won't believe it and that is totally fine, but I do have morals I just couldn't listen to one of them for a little bit of time. They say you can't control who you love and I believe that because I lived through it. I lost friends, broke people's trust and everybody told me I ruined a marriage. Guilt washed over me constantly but the love washed over me endlessly more. I breathed it in and out when something hurt too much and waited patiently for the final outcome. We say our anniversary is SF PRIDE 2009 because that is when we could finally live the life we were meant to share together.

The Gay Ending

Anonymous

This is arguably one of the most difficult writing assignments I have ever encountered: to write a non-fiction personal account of love, with a happy/positive ending.

Staring at the screen. Staring at the screen.

How can I be a writer if I can't write? It isn't that I lack things to say. I feel like I have so many things to say I could explode at times. Especially since I don't say them. Out Loud. In fact I probably say 5% of the things inside of me that I need to say Out Loud. I probably have too much to say I know I have too much to feel. So much that it all cancels itself out because it is overwhelming and then I feel nothing and say nothing and write nothing. This right now is nothing but actually it is something. When I feel nothing I feel something and that something is a weird blank sadness. A dull pain a little bit of sting behind my eyes like I could start to cry but I am hanging in there holding on. It is a nothing that feels frustrated and anxious and torn and goes a million miles a minute and then a full brain glaze over. My brain becomes a giant doughnut. A disgusting jelly doughnut. Which then reminds me of how fat I feel/am. Which is a distraction from the weird blank sadness.

What do you do when you feel you have loved your greatest love of your life and lost that love? When you think that is it for you. That was your Person and you lost your Person and now you have an entire life ahead of you without that Person. What do you do? When almost two years later you can sit in a public coffee shop on the most beautiful day in a most beautiful city, with time that is all yours but it feels as though the weight of this loss of this Person is crushing your chest. When you feel that the years left in your life stretch endlessly ahead of you and at any point the best you can be is 50% because you lost that other 50% which wasn't even 50%. That Person was 100%. When you literally think about that Person every 10 seconds and in that same moment you have to remind yourself that this person is--for all intents and purposes--dead. Your Person is dead. When you love your Person so much you would rather they actually be dead then out living in the world somewhere else loving someone else. When merely thinking their name, picturing their face, causes your heart to start pounding, causes such crippling anxiety that the only cure is drugging yourself into a deep sleep, drugging yourself into a deep drunk, drugging yourself into a deep fucking. And when you do all these things on repeat until your brain is a glazed doughnut again you are back to where you started. And you are back to the knowledge that your Person is dead but not really.

My Person. My Person. She was not perfect. But I liked her and loved her and hated her and loathed her and liked her and loved her just the way she was and is and was. I loved her skin. I loved her weird knobby knees. I loved her eyes that held a million secrets and her strong hands and her hard heart. I loved her throat. I loved her voice and her laugh which was more of a series of sharp shouts. I loved her stupid mind. I don't know anymore if she, my Person, loved me. Really loved me. I try not to think about it. I try to remind myself that the Person she was and is and was is gone. Is dead.

And then what? And then what?

And then you feel angry for a tiny little bit because you think of all the broken promises. You think of all the things that were supposed to be a certain way but are not that way and you think about all the things that were supposed to be right now and they aren't right now and won't be ever. And then you don't just have the weight on your chest, or the fluttering in your heartbeat, or the stinging behind your eyes, or the glazed doughnut in your brain. You have them all at once in concert and you think you are going to throw up and cry and scream in concert. And you feel like nothing is right. And all you want is to hear your Person's voice. For 60 seconds. On the phone. That wouldn't be enough but that would be enough. And you feel as these feelings and things all of it in a flash every few seconds, minutes, hours, every day. And you can have all of these things these feelings sitting in a public coffee shop on the most beautiful day in a most beautiful city, with time that is all yours. When I feel nothing I feel something and that something is a weird blank sadness.

Staring at the screen. Staring at the screen.

What is the happy ending? How can I make this positive?

What do you do when you feel you have loved your greatest love of your life and have lost that love? When you think that is it for you? That was your Person and you lost your Person and now you have an entire life ahead of you without that Person. What do you do? What is your Happy Ending? Here is your Happy Ending. You have loved. You have loved a great love. You know love. You know real big crush crush crushing fucking love. You know pain. You know exquisite, overwhelming out of this world love and pain.

I would do it all over again even to know a single moment of that love and this pain.

Anna

When I met her, I was talking to another girl. I was at a Super Bowl party a couple of years ago and she kept coming up to me because she thought my name sounded like a TV show, which annoyed me because she wouldn't let it go. I still remember everything about her from that night. She told me she had never been to Tracks and I wondered how that was possible and she told me she had just moved here from Utah. My intentions at this point were innocent. We all decided to go to Tracks and I was going with the girl whom I was talking with but as soon as we got there, Ashlynn and I ended up in the bathroom stall alone together. I admit, not my best moment, but not in the least do I regret it.

After that night we were inseperable. I fell hard and fast for Ashlynn. We started dating and we would do ridiculous things together like "40s Disney Nights". We would get 40s and watch Disney movies all night. We liked the same ridiculous things. I knew she loved me as much as I did her.

After a few months she moved in with me and my son and then we moved into our own place downtown. It was very soon after this when I got very sick and I was denying that I was sick at all. I wouldn't go into the hospital and I wouldn't get treated. I was denying all of it. It was her that found me a doctor that I would actually go see. That doctor is the one that diagnosed me and started treating me and it was because of her that I started getting treated and am probably still alive.

It is an illness that affects her just as much as it affects me. And it's an illness that will never go away. She took over everything. She never complained. She did everything. There were days where I couldn't go to work, or pick up my son from school. One day she left work early to pick up my son from school for me. It was extremely hard, it's still just as hard. But she never left my side. She was amazing.

After about a year of me being really sick I realized what I was really doing to her and one day without a reason or an explanation, I just left. She was devastated. I never really knew if I was making the right decision or not but I knew I couldn't have her doing this anymore. I knew she needed to be taking care of herself. I started dating other girls right away. I dated a lot honestly. All of them ready and willing to take care of me. But I wouldn't allow it and I was hospitalized three times in a single year. Ashlynn and I remained close over this year and everytime I was in need she was who I turned to. Every hospital stay she was there with me and would bring me Happy Meals-my only request. I never lost my love for her. I just knew I wasn't supposed to be with her. She got into a serious relationship with another girl and that only reaffirmed my feelings.

Today it's been a year, we're both single and we're at a place now where I'm relatively healthy but I still seek treatment for my illness. We're still talking and I'm not sure if it's going to go anywhere. But we're seeing if we can still have good times after everything we've been through.

What's been so important for me is that she has stood by me through everything. Illness, leaving her and me not always being there. When I left her I started dating other girls and I know I hurt her really bad. Part of me was trying to hurt her because she gave up everything to take care of me and I didn't want her to give up her life anymore. Through all of this she is still a part of my life. I don't know what will happen between us in the future but our relationship over the years has shown me that true love can overcome great obstacles. I know that she will be a part of my life even if we don't end up together, in a positive way.

Anonymous

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