I have no pride.
It’s Pride Week here. For me it’s the worst week of the year. An opened wound. I wake with chest pains, panic attacks. Always the same. No. The more I try to get involved the worse I feel.
I have been out for nearly twenty years, but I always feel out of place and alone during Pride.
And each year is more difficult. I have no pride.
I used to believe that it would get better. Then I believed that it didn’t matter. But it hasn’t gotten better. And it does matter.
Things have changed. I have changed.
Yet I’m not sure if the cost has not been too high.
I no longer know where I belong, my body and I.
Remember, Body
Body, remember not just how much you were loved,
not just the beds where you have lain,
but also those longings that so openly
glistened for you in the eyes,
and trembled in the voice—and some
chance obstacle arose and thwarted them.
Now that it’s all finally in the past.
it almost seems as if you gave yourself to
those longings, too—remember how
they glistened, in the eyes that looked at you,
how they trembled in the voice, for you;
remember, body.
–C.P. Cavafy (tr. Daniel Mendelsohn)
roughghosts 