The Price of Remembering

There is a price attached to remembering, this I am sure of. And in that price, after it is paid, (though let us not confuse price for debt) lies gratitude. For all those who chose freedom by returning to the sacred ways of being that our people once knew before we were asked, violently, to part with self. Make no mistake, though-- any ask is violent because that is the nature of trying to deny another of wholeness.

I think I would like to stop calling it "coming out." Because that isn't an honest account of what I did. I moved in a truth more ancient than most like to admit. I was free; I paid the price, in my own way, for being me. (I still do) But I was unbinding ligatures put on me by those who had done their best to forget. I am speaking of the non-living now: forgetting is a death sentence.

So those who were dead asked me to die with them and my refusal came in the form of excavation. I found what had been by blood, water, and love and I declared myself queer. They shook with fear because I had opened a chasm they tried to ignore between the living and those not committed to breath. They were scared because they couldn't confront a love they couldn't fathom. Their love didn't have the strength to survive what they put us through. (Yes, there's an us and them).

I moved into the ranks of those that, through trial, had resisted the corrections attempted upon them through brutalities difficult to name. I did not discover anything worthy of correction in me (not for lack of searching and being searched) because I was not afflicted by anything other than love. Which I know now as blessing.