I wrote this just before we headed out on our trip to get André,  but then became so busy that I let it slip by, unpublished. Truth be told, it feels a bit scary to leave the security of our home behind and then be all naked when I post. What if my truth offends someone we might need to layover with? What if they will not take us in once they know this about me? … it will not be the first time it has happened. 

And so once again I am faced with that deep down “What if I am not liked and thus not supported?” … it is truly my most paralyzing crutch.

Therefore it is also my greatest gift. And I will be brave enough to open it.

 … plus it’s pretty safe in this moment, the guy that owns this place we are staying tonight is not even home this weekend. 😆 so here goes …

I am not straight.

I have known this for a long time, just as I have also known Jesus has no issue with my direct experience with God. Jesus told me so. But just as with that. I have not known how to talk about it. … I still don’t really… not out here, in this specific space that feels so full of who I used to try to be. But I do know that once the door has been pushed open, the light rushes in and so … there is no turning back now …

Telling the truth. My only compass.

So, this is the truth. I am not straight. Turns out, there is a word for what I am. Pansexual.

Now, I do not like labels, they feel like suffocating boxes of identity that only divide us up in this artificial way. But our culture has given me this label and if I do not claim another one, surely this world will continue to assume that I am straight. 

I realize this may seem confusing, I mean, I am madly in love with my partner. I blog about it … and tell him about it all the time. And he happens to have male private parts and I happen to have female private parts. … so in that sense, others could (would and DO) define me as “straight” and perhaps would choose not to believe I am anything but that, even if I tell the truth.

So, give me a chance to explain…

Pansexuality is sexual, romantic, or emotional attraction towards people regardless of their sex or gender identity.

I totally am this.

A few real life examples …

I remember being in a bar years ago. Way before my children and my husband and my sobriety … I was not even 21, but I prided myself on my ability to paint my eyes and flutter my lashes as I was waved into the bars, not charged, not carded, drinks on the house … it made me feel strong and grown up and free to do anything I pleased … but apparently not completely anything, because I totally tucked my tail between my thong as my friend called me out on eyeing up the hot chick that had just strutted her own self into the bar not far behind me …

My friend that called me out was quite the unique character himself … a male friend, not a boyfriend, and older than me by at least 10 years.

He told me he was an ordained preacher and wore it like a badge of safety. “Don’t you see I am so safe, preachers are so safe you know. I will protect you at the bar little girl. You just stick with me, and by the way, you can call me Preacher, or Daddy” … I went with Preacher.

So, Peacher saw me … when I saw her …

I was SO embarrassed. I denied it with every ounce of me and that was all it took for him to know, totally know, that he was totally right … he had me … and so he dug in. Telling me all about how I had looked at her. He said he knew that look and he knew I thought she was hot and that I wanted her. I squirmed and said no way, he was crazy and that was ridiculous and … all the while knowing Preacher was right.

And that was not the only time it happened, that I felt that way towards another female. But the fire always had to burn out inside. I was way to embarrassed to act on it,  too much of a southern girl, holding tight to my GRITS identity … you know Girls Raised In The South. I even had the tee shirt.

And then .. it gets better … the third part of Pansexual, to be attracted to someone that does not identify as male or female… yep, I have felt that too. Totally felt that. More than once. But I will tell you about just once … There was this certain someone, born with female parts, and they had taken certain hormones to appear more male on the outside, to match what they already felt on the inside. They went by “they” and they were super athletic, with a strong divine masculine flow, yet held in this cradle of the divine feminine of compassion – Yes, it was kind of sexy as hell.

I am totally attracted to the authentic divine masculine … in fact, I find gender neutral people that identify as “They” are often a much closer authentic representation of the divine masculine, than many that go by “He” … except that is, for my partner, who does happen to be male. But seriously, he could have any body and I would be all over it. 

It really is not because he is a man. I mean its convenient. Surely it was simpler to conceive our children and yes, back when we began dating I was far too afraid to fess up to the full gamut of how I felt inside… so back then, I doubt our souls could have found each other, had he not been male and me female…. or maybe we would have found one another, maybe we would have been brave enough to go for it … both of us with penises or both of us with vaginas … or maybe one of us would have switched something around and oh how would that have changed our life completely. The unspeakable challenges we would have faced, especially living in NC. … 

I gave horseback riding lessons in college. A friend of mine did too and she was openly a lesbian. I remember a mutual client of ours telling me how she was afraid for her girls to take lessons from my gay friend. Her daughters were impressionable and young and what if they thought this was ok?… and no, I did not defend her. I was too afraid. 

I still am afraid. 

I think there are many layers to our collective discomfort with gayness, or homosexuality or pansexuality or whatever other label might get tossed in the mix. … you know, all those that are not straight up man on woman sex.

I think part of it is simply our discomfort with sexuality altogether…. I mean it is a pretty crazy thing, a stone cold sober human can enter a trance like state when under the influence of nothing but hormones created in our very own bodies. That is crazy and it can be totally scary … because in many bodies sex becomes an addiction and people abuse people and horrible realities are created.

I hear that fear, loud and clear as a fb friend posts that there is no way she is letting her little girl in an ‘all genders welcome’ bathroom…. I hear that and I feel that and I freak out too …When I tune into what they are actually thinking. The thought of some mentally disturbed man, pretending to be a woman so he can pray upon her little girl. … and sadly, horrible things like that happen all the time. So surely one can find justification for their fears about such acceptance.

But truth is, these beings that are truly in this circle of ‘not just straight’ … well, I find them to be the safest places I have ever been. The most loving. The most accepting. The most non-judgemental. The most … inwardly intimate.

And in fact, I think there in lies the true lie. … We are afraid of our own inner truth. Our own inner intimacy with one another. And more so, with ourselves. To open the door into our own closet is a scary place to go. To let the light shine in on our own shadows is the ultimate inner rearrangement…. and so many times we just cannot go there. So many times I have not been able to just go there. Tippy toeing around my own heart, so afraid of getting thrown in the boiling water with my friend, the lesbian. The wierd one, the queer one. The one the lady was afraid for her daughters to take lessons from.

It is easy for me to hide. It is not so easy for my friend. But even I can only hide from the outside world. I cannot hide from what is inside.

Ironically … or perhaps it is not ironic at all … my present moment truth is: My very best friend is totally, by any worldly definition, totally queer. She is a woman and she is in love with a woman. They live together as partners. … She has been my best friend since she magically appeared into my reality, like some wild alien fairy from some much higher evolved planet. And I dearly love her and her partner too. They are two of the people I am closest to in my life … they are magical, divine, angel beings of light and it simply seems so silly for me to care one bit about how they love one another… other than to care deeply that they love one another, because I love them more than love itself. 

So. I feel a personal connection to this massive movement in our collective now. This pull and push to become more accepting of others, even when “They” appear to be different from what we percieve as “US”. … I am not sure what could be more natural, more divine, more worthy of complete acceptance than love is love is love.

Pansexuality is sexual, romantic, or emotional attraction towards people regardless of their sex or gender identity. 

Maybe you feel you are Pansexual too. Maybe you do not. And that’s ok too. In fact, that is kind of the point.

Love is love is love and it is ok to be, to live, to feel the way you do.

♡ Mary