What the inside of the closet looks like

I get what it feels like to be gay and excluded. Before you laugh me out of the room, I know, I’m a totally privileged middle class to-all-appearances-hetero white American woman, but at the same time there's another side to my story. I have a darker seam, a sadness born of experience and a caution bred of the same. And I have raised a freak flag a mile high by painting my house purple. Yet I can’t really come out as what I am.

The problem is this: If my honey and I ever want to adopt again, we have to be so upright and squeaky clean. For the most part, I am a great mom, but if I say out loud that I do not abide by the same rules that most people have no trouble with whatsoever, every time the folks with a choice would pick for a different mom for a child who needs a home and family. But I want to leave that option open, so I can’t totally come out. So I fly my purple house flag (which just cheers me to no end when we drive up – you wouldn’t believe how many colors of purple it can be in all of the different kinds of light that hit it). I indulge my cravings for musical thrill rides. I still go out at night.

But it’s like being gay and not being able to say so in every situation. Or telling your doctor you have a history of some disease and having that come back and bite you in the ass later by making you uninsurable – something that you never would have anticipated back when you first told your doctor in the spirit of being thorough and honest about your medical history. So I can’t say it now. I can’t preach what I practice. It’s just not ok. Because I see a good chance that some day we will want to adopt again. For I would hate to miss the opportunity to share the love that we have the potential to add to in the world over this.

But I do feel one of my jobs here is to be myself as truly as possible, so I'll find a way through all of this.

Blown away

OK, do you want to know what news really rocked my world yesterday? It is this: Gomez quit smoking the jumpin’ jive leaf. They no longer imbibe.

I have two projects I need to be working on, besides the list of house and garden projects. One is the proposal for the fan film. The other is the Madonna project. The Madonna book outline needs fleshing out. I could spend a couple of hours a day at the library. I’d make it today if I left now – and get to work out. Some themes central to reinvention that I can think about and research today:
Change
Social mobility
Sexual roles
Social roles
Self-image
Independence
Rebellion
Identity and discovery, both of self and at a group level
Empowerment – to be you no matter what? to say what you mean, the way you want to say it

I also need to start figuring out how to find the people I will interview. Check out Pamela des Barres’ book. And Madonna’s (& I don't mean the children's books).

(Way to avoid the topic, girl.)