dinsdag 7 juni 2016

A Love Letter to Queer

Dear queer,

It is hard to know how to do it.
I have written several love letters in my life. All the previous ones were about/to a person. One person, with whom i was in a kind of relationship. Most of those ended, and i think this is mainly because you have always been there.
Can you help me? You are the one that got me here in the first place. But now that i am here...
It’s hard to know how to do it.
How can you do something without knowing how?

Can you help me laugh about those movies that they made, and i tried to live?
Can you help me defy the romantic ideal about love and sex?
Can you help me get rid of my own expectations?
Can you help me let go of the tragic of disney, consumerist decadence, and my parents?
Can you help me write my own lovestory, which is about multiple forms of love, friendship and intimacy? (i don’t think you can do all this)

I am really really scared of you, and i feel so safe with you at the same time. You have been so disappointing and so satisfying. You have made me feel at home, thank you for that. I am sorry I got annoyed and bored that one time in Berlin, and wanted to leave a while later...even you can not prevent this from happening. I am still with you though, cause you are the only one who can handle and restrain my fear of commitment, or even more: my fear of separation.
But.. it is so hard to know how to do it. You keep asking me what i want, it freaks me out. I don’t know what i want. I need your help. And I need your intimacy.

Maybe you don’t want me, i am not good enough for you, i don’t belong to you. These insecurities make me doubt my devotion to you sometimes. Do i fit you, queer? Am i not too cisgendered, too white, too much into boys -and dick- as well?

I can be vulnerable with you. Other people often make me feel vulnerability is weakness. But even though you make me feel my vulnerability makes me beautiful and strong -make my body, my complex, never perfect body, beautiful and strong-
It is hard to know how to do it.

I walked through the streets of Berlin, looking for you. I found you in a lot of places, safe spaces as they call them. It is not a given thing for me to feel safe in public spaces, and with you i did. But i also found that you are not there when i am not: that you are a part of me, and that i am the one that should ask for you to appear. You are something strange, something other, something different, not only in society and other people, but mostly: in me. You make me feel alone and isolated, but then you tell me to get up and put lots of glitter on and go dancing. We go dancing together, we are the queer genderclowns.
You tell me i am not like the others, and sometimes i hate you for that. But once i start looking for you in other people, i feel all the more comforted and loved. You make me feel like i do belong, there is hope, i can have sex, i am allowed to enjoy my body, but i can also be in pain and say no, i can wear all the crazy shit i can think of, i do not have to care about what people think, i don’t have to be woman, or girl, but i don’t have to be man either. I can be a true clown with you and you are not scared of my needs.

I can find you anywhere. I mean this spiritually, your energy is everywhere, but also as in most cities. Most cities have a part of you, a place and community where you are the common ground.
Dear queer, there’s only two 2 things i think you need to work on:
  • Rotterdam, and a sense of humour.

Let’s work on that together.

Love,

Manon