Pride

I am not sure there is much in life that I have been proud of; even if I’ve worked at something, like finishing my education say, I can’t say I was proud. If anything I was glad to have gotten it done and over with. Glad that it was no longer an unfinished task looming over my head, waiting to shame me in some kind of way.

But proud? Proud always makes me feel like it is just a segue to The Next Step. So I usually bypass it and head straight for The Next Step.

So the idea of Gay Pride Parades have been lost on me. The idea of being proud of being gay or lesbian and parading about it, didn’t make sense, in my mind.

Until this year. Well not really but I decided that I needed to finally go.

I am courageous about a lot of things, except for being myself. There is something infinitely sacred and profound about it that I will not have put up for ridicule. Though I have been ridiculed for being weird and ‘special’ and ‘difficult’. These are the thoughts that pop into my head when I think about dating again or loving again (which is probably why doing both feels so impossible, but I digress). So my deciding to go to Pride, was a really big dealy huge deal. Because it meant that I was finally putting a part of my sacred, profound self out there… to breathe.

So I dressed in comfy clothes, ate (and packed some food to go) and I just went. I stood at the edge of my fears and thoughts about what Pride meant in my mind and I leapt, feet first, without looking down.

This is where I landed: