On Expectations

On Expectations

 The first time I started questioning my sexuality was when I was 13. I remember that my best friend had found a porn channel in the TV box set of his grandfather. I remember the rush of adrenaline rushing through my bloodstream for doing something as transgressive and exciting. But I remember that watching those naked women flaunting their bodies wasn't as exciting as I thought it would and should have been. Yes, they were naked - but what about it? Yes, their breasts were exposed for us - but what about them? I also remember looking at my friends and seeing a different excitement on them. I think this is the first moment that I can pinpoint in my timeline where I started questioning my sexuality.

 Then I think about moments before that one and I try to pinpoint when did I "become gay". I remember when I was about 6 years old, playing with a Harry Potter figure and an Action Man figure and making them kiss each other. I also remember the picture of a naked man in an anatomy book that my dad gave me when I turned 8 or 9 that I was fascinated with. I also remember that the dad from The Incredibles was probably my first crush - I was pretty obsessed with him, but I also remember keeping that mostly to myself, maybe because I felt that wouldn't be taken very passively by others. I think about all these memories that I look at now with a different light, these moments in my timeline, and I question myself: How didn't I realize earlier? I have always been gay after all, so how did I only start to realize that fact when I was 13 in that room in the attic of my best friend's grandparents' house?

  I also think about what is the thing that we say to a boy and a girl when they become friendly towards each other. “Oh, look who has a new girlfriend!!!” or “Oh, look who has a new boyfriend!!!”, with a slightly naughty tone. We immediately start to impose this heterosexual relationship on children when all they are doing is being friends who happen to be of different sexes. I think that happened to me. At least I remember this girl that adults immediately started saying she was my girlfriend and so I accepted that as a fact. And so I think that, in my little juvenile mind, I thought that whenever I liked hanging out with a girl it was because I was in love with her or had some kind of crush on her. There are at least three girls in that prepubescent period that I thought I had crushes on. Therefore, I didn’t question my sexuality because in those cases I was going according to what was being expected of me. Whenever my friends and adults asked me what girl I had a crush on (note this: the question asked was “what girl do you have a crush on?” not “who do you have a crush on?”) I answered with the name of one of those girls because I genuinely believed that I had a crush on them since I liked hanging out with them. I guess because of that I didn’t question the attraction that I had towards that naked man in the anatomy book or towards making Harry Potter and Action Man kiss each other. I think I didn’t question it because those things didn’t exist to me in what was expected of me and, therefore, I didn’t take those things seriously. Or at least I think this is what happened. I was aware that some of my mom’s friends were gay, but I also don’t think I entirely comprehended what that entailed or meant. And maybe I didn’t expect to be like them because that wasn’t expected of me – even though I would say that both my parents are very liberal people.

 And I think that made it all the more confusing for me to handle. From that moment in that attic, I spent a good three years or maybe more questioning myself (maybe this is still a part of that process). I mean, from that point onwards I knew for sure that I wasn’t straight. I think that was the only certainty I had in my life. But I guess that I didn’t really have the knowledge to understand what I was feeling because that hadn’t been what had been expected of me. What was expected of me was something that I couldn’t feel, and I think that is probably one of the most distressing things that I ever felt.

 I’m not saying that adolescence was only confusing and distressing for me. It’s confusing for everyone. And I don’t know if what I went through was an injustice because that’s not what I’m trying to say here. That would be saying that I am a victim, and that’s something that I am not. What I’m pointing out is the role of expectations in our development. More specifically the expectations imposed on us by adults.

 Growing up the only thing that I saw was heterosexuality and a heterosexual lifestyle: in my life, in movies, in books, in ads, in everywhere. It was all there was. Therefore, I took that for granted – that that was going to be my life and everyone’s life and that there was nothing else. And that, in a way, disarmed me from comprehending my feelings and my sexuality. Because it was not only confusing, it was also a shock. For the longest time, I put those emotions away and tried to forget them as if they were disgusting ugly things. And I think that may be what I have already talked about when I talked about internalized hatred.

 I guess, what I’m trying to get at in here is that we as adults must and need to rethink the expectations that we impose on our children. Maybe, instead of imposing heterosexual relationships on our children, we could let them understand themselves while we lead them on that pursuit by teaching them about different kinds of sexual lifestyles. Maybe, instead of imposing romance on friendships between boys and girls, we could let those friendships flourish on their own. And maybe we should strive to understand our children better instead of imposing our expectations of what we think they should be on them. Maybe that is the true way to get rid of the illness that affects our society that is internalized hatred that I have talked about in my previous article.

 I don’t know. These are just thoughts and maybe they are nothing more than that: the musings of a 20-year-old gay man with too much time on his hands.