black and white.

holly and i bought a stark white photo mat for our wedding. our friends and some family wrote messages to us in stark black--permanent marker witnesses to our vows. the mat rests on our desk, next to our bed. some days i'll sit and read it. i'll sit and read it over and over.

somedays i'll see only black. i'll see the tender, the rough scrawls, the love i imagine God cohabitates in. my iris will register blessing and faithfulness and the woundedness of my sexuality will start to bleed away. but usually, yes, i'll see the white. my eyes will start to sting, even from the tears i won't allow myself to cry anymore. i'll see the empty spaces and i'll be reminded of the empty chairs, empty rooms, empty promises, empty hearts. it's then my sexuality bleeds back in, festering the anger and self-pity and depression that always is a right, but never rights anything anyways.

and i know that the place i want to get to someday is the place where i see both the black and the white. because while it's true that obsessing over the white means living in the dark, i think obsessing over the black can be just as unhealthy. i start denying the white still hurts.

someday i'll write poetry and affirmation in the white empty spaces. i'll write to myself the words i've waited my whole life for other people to write. i'll free myself of a notion i have been smothered by, the notion i can never accept my sexuality until they do.

someday i'm not going to write 'someday' anymore. i just don't know when that someday will be.