new project time!

Currently, I am waiting for my mom so that we can go and pick out my brother's birthday cake together. I am sitting in my room at home, unpacked, cleaned, and more or less settled back in. In a matter of days my life has changed and shifted gears so swiftly that I am left wondering if I am still even on the same bike.

I have been thinking a lot lately about Rochester and about how I have been living in Rochester for my whole life. Only, a couple years ago I would have said I cannot wait to leave but I have developed a new respect for it. There is something very interesting about existing in the same place but having the opportunity to evolve within it. My thinking has developed and changed drastically while I have existed in the same community. This gives me hope for the changes that I wish to see in my family's thinking about me.

Very recently, my mom sent me a very upsetting email explicating all the reasons I needed to get 'cured' and changed. She asked me to seek psychological or medical aid. Needless to say, this was heartbreaking and infuriating. Today, interestingly enough, in my Disabilities in Schools class, we discussed the social construct of disability. Norman Kunc spoke in a movie we watched and said something like, "People keep asking me why I do not want to get cured, what they don't understand is that I have grown up the way I am and I construct and form my identity as such, curing me would make me have to start from the ground up and it wouldn't really be me anyway." This resonates deeply with me. I must shamefully admit that I would have wondered why he didn't seek a cure myself before listening to his astute and poignant answer. I can also identify with this and I see this paralleled in my own life. I agree, I do not want to be cured and I do not want to be merely tolerated. If I can come to this understanding, then perhaps with time, so can my family, and maybe after my family, my community. I have recently got it in my head that I simply cannot be alone in how I feel. I think I might be stupid enough to not be able to contain my feelings but I am almost certain beyond a doubt that within my own Islamic community exist others like me. I know why they don't speak out since it has taken me so long to do so. I am tired of this secrecy shit. I want the kids and people in my community to know there is a safe place to speak about who they are. Even the parts that conflict with Islam. My new goal is to try to figure out how to make this happen, in fact, this is going to be one of my new projects on my overcoming the terrifying blog. If I can change how I think, and I consider myself to be highly stubborn, then I think so can others. I want change.