el día 29 de marzo de 2018
I just had 1 cookie. And as I feared, it was fucking amazing! It took me back to a lot of happy places and moments in my life. Nonetheless, I stopped after 1. There are 5 other delicious ass cookies on the stove calling my name, but I won’t answer them. Because I know that as great as they are, the sensation they give me is temporary. It will last all of 1 minute for each cookie. On the other hand, the consequences are much more real and long-lasting. For example, I usually notice that after about cookie 5, my skin will react-negatively. And the breakout could last up to 7 days. Totally not worth 1 minute of bliss. However, here’s the danger. Eating that 1 cookie transported me somewhere else in my mind- food can do that for me. There are such happy memories that I associate with food, but I gotta figure out how to get to them without cookies.Without sweets. Without fried foods. Without harming myself. So, that’s my homework for the next few weeks-identifying vehicles other than sweets and fried foods that can take me to those happy spaces and places. I know there are other ways, I just gotta find them.
On another note, life has really taken off for me. I have the class I’ll be teaching ag Hunter (which I’m fucking psyched about) and the chance to contribute to two different books. By the way, I got my feedback on my first draft for the book on curriculum studies and all the reviewer said was: YES! I’m going to take that as a good sign, and I still have 30 more days to revise it. ! Oh, and the other piece on loving LGBTQ youth in the classroom I’m super excited about. When i started this doctoral journey, I was approached to join a 3-year research project on LGBTQ issues. However, at that time, I wasn’t ready. It would have given me so much funding i would not have had to work. BUT I just didn’t feel ready to do work in the LGBTQ community. I was still healing; my mind was still floating around somewhere in Oklahoma, the bible belt. I wasn’t free. I worried about being dubbed as the gay scholar- I don’t know why I saw that as undesirable, but i did. I didnt wanna be that person. I didnt wanna be typecast. Well, i didnt wanna be typecast as the gay scholar, I had no problem being the angry black scholar. Anyway, starting last year I said that I would focus my scholarship, in addition to race, on LGBTQ issues because I loved myself, a gay black man, and I wanted to share that self love with other LGBTQ community members in hopes that they could learn to love themselves, too. We gotta heal. We gotta start loving ourselves. We are worth it. Even though the world works hard and getting us to believe otherwise. They’re all wrong. The world is wrong. WE are not inferior. Personally, I draw strength from my sexual identity. I shared with my therapist (and in another journal post) that I Feel being gay has freed me. I can be my own person. I don’t have to conform to heteronormative views dripping in toxic masculinity. . This will be healing for me and so many more who will be able to see themselves in my story