Thursday, February 5, 2009

THE CITADEL OF THE SOUL

Inside each of us there seems to be a secret part of our lives that keeps us at distance from others, even from the people we love best. It is place where we experience our most poignant fears. The fear of not being loved by people close to us because of our sexuality. The fear of not being sexually adequate or fulfilled . The fear that life is not what it promised to be.

But believe it or not, this same secret place where we hide our fears is the also where we keep our most private and fragile hopes on the basis of our sexuality.. In a sense if we tell this aspect of lives and then fail to achieve our dreams and hopes , then we have no comfortable private fantasy into which we can retreat when things are not going on well. As a result many of us try to play it safe and never try to actualize our dreams on the basis of our sexuality or even dare tell them to another soul apart from those who share the same sexuality with us. We keep the fears of letting others know our sexuality , our secret longings and our flickering hesistation buried deep inside us.

But like a lightening, in the middle of the night there sometimes come a time when we realize that we are going to one day die- that we may never do the things we have dreamed of. Several months ago this sudden awareness occurred. I realized that irrespective of my sexuality I was no different from other people and that whether I liked it or not I was one day going to die. But it also occurred to me that dying without fulfilling my dreams as a homosexual would mean a lot if I rather die fulfilling my dreams as a vain heterosexual person.. This happened to be one of the boldest decision that I have ever taken. Coming out as a homosexual, an African and most of all someone with dreams.

Folding my clothes that laid scattered on my bed while at the same thinking of how to tell my mother this innate difference of mine that do not make me different from other people, I pondered on my feelings as a homosexual.After this day I finally realized that I have got decision to make about how I am going to leave the rest of my life.Life it as a homosexual.I said if I have any dreams to fulfill I better get at them.Life's is going to be very quickly and there may not be much of it left.

So I began to think about hoe people like might do when we realize that is life is going by and that we are afraid to try the dreams that we have.Realistically, how do we risk changing our lives in mid course and coming to grips with our hopes, fears admist our sexuality.But this are the inner problems we as homosexual face.So it seems imperative that to effectively reach out to our community we need learn from each other stories and also learn to express our sexuality in relation to the real questions as to why we are living.What's the basic storyline of our lives and where are we in it as homosexuals as we pull open a doorway and look into the citadel of our soul-at what we are as homosexuals.

How do we live together,love and help each other find meaning to life as homosexual.Ultimately,how do we give to other people irrespective of sexuality the life we ourselves want as homosexuals.