Omar Khadr and the current state of Canada

I've stayed out of politics for a while. It was honestly just too much, and I wanted to focus on myself for a while. However with the Canadian Government giving Omar Khadr a 10.5 million dollar settlement, I can't keep quiet anymore. I am disgusted with a lot surrounding this. Mainly how many right leaning people are reacting. There's a lot of hate and a lot of misinformation and misunderstandings. For those of you who don't know, Omar Khadr is a Canadian citizen whose father was associated with Al-Qaeda. He spent most of his childhood going back and forth between Canada and Pakistan. When he was 15, he was at the sight of a firefight between American forces and Taliban. It was believed that he was involved in the firefight and that he was directly responsible for killing an American soldier. There is no definitive proof that this happened--only that he was there, got wounded by shrapnel, and was shot in the back twice by American troops. He was treated for his injuries and taken to Guantanamo Bay. He was held there for ten years. During that time he was "questioned" (we all know how they questioned people there), and was told that if he confessed he would be allowed to serve his sentence in Canada. He pleaded guilty under duress. Later, the Supreme Court of Canada would rule that Omar's treatment in Guantanamo was a severe violation of his basic human rights. In 2012, he was brought back to Canada, where he served another three years in prison until he was released on bail. At that time, the ruling Conservative Party issued an appeal to the Supreme Court to revoke his bail. It was not until 2016, that the ruling Liberal Party dropped the appeal. With the fact that Omar was 15, and that his confession was obtained through immoral methods, the Liberal Party of Canada issued an apology, and gave a settlement of $10.5 million. It should be noted that this amount is half of what he had been after in his civil suit against the Canadian government.

Do I agree with Prime Minister Trudeau in this regard? Yes. Wholeheartedly. He was a kid, and he was tortured by both Canadian officials and American ones. There is video of one of his interrogations, and Guantanamo Bay officials have admitted to using sleep deprivation on him. Omar Khadr went through hell. And since his release on bail, he has been labelled a terrorist by the people of his country. Because Canada is his country. He was born here. He is as Canadian as I am. I for one stand with him. I stand with my Prime Minister. And I will definitely stand against the bullies who are trying to destroy this beautiful country.

I look around and I see all these people (white people, of course) getting upset at the strides the Liberal Government is making towards equality. I see all these people getting upset at the push towards a greener Canada. I see all these people getting upset at the push towards sustainability. And I don't get it. Do you not want equality? Are you all quietly racist and comfortable in your privilege? Do you want to destroy the environment? Do you not want future generations to have a good life? Are you that fucking selfish? The ignorance that flows from these people's mouths is astounding. Just open your eyes and put aside your selfishness for one second! Look at the suffering of those around you! Look passed your white walls and white communities and see the real world.

I have family that want the Conservative party to come back to power. The same party that tried to reverse same-sex marriage. The same party that got us involved in conflicts we didn't need to be a part of. The same party that lead to a financial crisis. The same party that wanted Canadians to report Muslims to the police. The same party that currently wants to emulate the Trump administration and run a government based off of fear. Right now our country is taking in the hurt and the disenfranchised, and the Conservatives want that to stop. They want to bring in Canada first policies. Policies that go against everything that it means to be Canadian. I remember what our country stands for, and I am proud of our current government for everything that it is doing to make Canada into the country the rest of the world thinks we are.

I believe in Canada. This loving and accepting Canada. Fuck those who want a whites first Canada. That's not us.

Disjointed masks

Being a writer is hard when you're scared to write. I mean, it's hard for a lot of reasons, but when you're too scared to even touch a keyboard, it's really hard. That's where I'm at right now. Most of me feels like I'm in a good place mentally, but whenever I go to write, I freeze. Maybe I'm not in as good of a place as I thought. Mostly I feel okay, but there have been a few moments where I've definitely been not okay.

(I've been staring at this for a good ten minutes now, with no clue of how to continue, and, really, no want to do so)

Fuck, maybe I'm not meant to do what I want to do. Maybe I'm not meant to be a writer. Maybe I'm just meant to be a failure, forever fucking up and hurting the ones I care about. Maybe I'm not meant to be me, even though I have no idea who that person could be. Fuck.

Maybe I'm just lost inside my own headspace. That's never a good place for me to visit alone; it always breaks me. Maybe it stems from always being told that I wasn't good enough. Always it would be: "That person did better than you. Why can't you do better?" "You're so lazy." "What's your problem?" "Why can't you be like them?". Because I'm not them. I'm barely me. Never good enough. I'm never good enough. To this day, I fight (and lose to) the demons inside of me, itching to feel some modicum of self-worth. Every time that I lose, I feel more and more worthless. Slowly, that feeling of worthlessness came to be my defining feature. I'm never good enough. Even in my own mind, I'm never good enough. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will crush my soul and break my spirit.

The broken person, especially the broken man, has become romanticized in our culture. The dark, brooding guy sitting in the corner nursing a drink. The sullen and silent man. Being 'broken' isn't something romantic. Trust me, it is super hard being romantic while you're second guessing every decision you've ever made, and low-key hating yourself for even trying to make a connection with another human. Hell, I second guess myself when I'm just talking to a friend about the fricking weather. Single file, people of all genders, and please stay calm while waiting your turn. I promise, I have enough insecurities and tears for all of you.

This is really disjointed. And this transitions? Heckin' terrible.

Who am I? They say that a person who has struggled with depression their entire lives (from childhood to present) can struggle with self-identity forever. It's hard to know who one is, when one changes on a regular basis. I wrote a poem once about all the masks I've worn, and how I have lost my true face in the dreck left behind. Maybe I threw that mask, my true face, out. Maybe I haven't gotten to it. Maybe I've never had it. Or maybe, and this is the scary one, maybe this mess of a fucked up human is my true face. How horrible would that be? I don't like this person very much. They're kinda terrible at...everything.

Well, this was much more depressing than I had planned. Guess that's what happens when you're scared to write. You start spouting truths that you don't wanna deal with.

I need a drink

Of water. It's super hot out.  

Being proud

June is nearly over, and with that Pride month comes to an end. I've only written one thing on it so far, and there are various reasons for that which I won't really get into. Evan Edinger recently released a video about Pride month talking about how he isn't proud of his sexuality because it isn't something that he's accomplished, much like how he isn't proud of his height. And while I understand what he's trying to say and do, I kinda disagree. People in the queer community are often the targets of hate and discrimination, much like all minorities, and we must stand up in the face of that hate. And the easiest way to stand up to hate, is to be proud of who you are. So, to Evan, I say this: we need to be proud of who we are, even if we're being proud of something we were born with.

There are a lot of times that I'm scared of being myself, but Pride always gives me a relatively safe space to be myself. I am proud of who I am, but life is a continuous journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance, and I haven't fully accepted all that I am yet. As a non-binary person, I'm not 100% certain how I want to express that, so it's not something that I showcase in my daily life, and possibly it's not something that those close to me even remember or think about. I know I've asked on my twitter for people to use gender neutral pronouns when referencing me, but I have no way of knowing if anyone actually does. It's not like I hear them talking about me to other people, so unless people outright tell me, I have no clue and I'm too 'scared' to ask. By scared, I just mean that I don't want to annoy people by asking them if they're using my preferred pronouns. Which is fucked up. It's my gender, I should be comfortable with asking people to use my pronouns, unless subconsciously I'm not comfortable with my own gender yet. But that's a whole other story for another day.

Pride is a time to be proud of who we are as the queer community. To be proud of everything that we have accomplished, and everything we have survived. It is my personal belief that we, as members of the queer community, should be proud of our sexualities and genders. We have to be, so that future generations can look at us, see all that we've overcame, and see that we can still smile.

Remember, none of us are ever alone. We are a community. We are a family. And we are proud.

happy places

go to your happy place

calm down

focus on the good

words used to--what?

happy places are happy thoughts

happy dreams and images

lies we perpetuate to give empty guidance 

empty rooms filled with empty li--promises

if i had a happy place wouldn't i stay?

things without meaning said with meaning 

still things without meaning

lost in thought

lost in translation

lost in asinine people

where once happy places may stood

now barren thoughts collide 

happy places don't exist

only happy thoughts

happy memories

happy people

going to a falsehood doesn't fix

it only delays 

happy places don't exist

those that make us happy do

to them should we go

not to lies, but to the eyes

that give us meaning and hope

let them fill us up

let them give us life

let them let us live again. 

nightmares

Nightmares. Dark dreams that elevate our base fears into things we don't want to imagine. Friends and family leaving, or worse. Being left totally alone. Failing. Most times the worst nightmares don't involve ghosts or monsters, instead they strip everything we have away. They leave us bare and alone with our personal demons. We can learn from our nightmares, but who would want to focus in on something so dark? Most of my nightmares involve my closest friends leaving me. In the dreams, they see my true face and they leave, and I am left alone with myself. I suppose that sounds terribly sad that my darkest nightmares involve me being left with myself, and not something more graphic and violent. I relate too much with characters that hate themselves, from the Doctor to Jeff Winger, I see myself in those people. From the extremes they go to to never be alone, to the deep, soul-searching questions they are constantly asking themselves and those around them.

The Doctor is constantly told by his companions to not be alone because they know he'll lose himself if that happens. A poignant moment from one of Peter Capaldi's first episodes had him asking Clara, with emotion soaking through his words, if he was a good man. Jeff Winger, from Community, when meeting his birth father, breaks down and admits that he's always on his phone just so he doesn't have to look his friends in the eyes. He doesn't want his friends to see how broken he is on the inside. And these are the characters I relate to. Often when I tell people that I relate to the Doctor, people assume I have a hero complex, and sometimes I wish that were true. Instead, I relate to the Doctor because we have the same nightmares: being alone and having only ourselves for company.

Nightmares are honest once you dig into them. Maybe that's what's scariest about them. We never like to admit our fears to anyone, let alone to ourselves. That's why we tell people we're scared of spiders or mice. We aren't truly scared of spiders or mice, we might not like being around them, but those aren't the things that keep us awake at night. I keep myself awake at night. Thoughts continuously swirling around my mind, thoughts that I think to share but am stopped by the fear of people leaving me. I am constantly surprised that my friends don't leave me, especially during a deep depression. I barely want to spend time with myself, why would anyone else want to spend time with me? Obviously, people do want to spend time with me; crazy people, but people nonetheless.

Death is also a common nightmare; to clarify, the death of someone close. Many times, when I awake drenched by sweat in the middle of the night, it is because of a nightmare like this. The other nightmares don't wake me up--they mirror my waking thoughts too much for that. However, these nightmares jolt me into consciousness, and cause me to scramble for my phone so that I can remind myself that it was just a nightmare. Falling back to sleep after these is always hard. They aren't dreams that one wants to return to.

I wish to never have a nightmare again. I wish to be confident that I will sleep peacefully for the rest of my life, but that's not how life works. Nightmares are honest, and they can teach us. But they fucking suck. As I write this, I am haunted by the specters of nightmares past. Fleeting images of terrible things, feelings of terror and loss and heartbreak. Of being alone. Tears forming in the corners of my eyes as I try to not remember. A deep weight on my chest, pressing the air out of my lungs.

Nightmares show us the deepest and darkest corners of our souls. Places we wish to never see. Things we wish to forget. Perhaps when we learn to accept all of ourselves, we will no longer have nightmares.

Maybe. 

#NationalBestFriendsDay

Every day is hashtag national something day, which makes it impossible to celebrate all of them, but I choose to celebrate this one. A best friend is something special. During the course of one's life, one may have several best friends, a group of best friends, or only one best friend, but each are equally important. Myself, I've had numerous people that I have considered to be my best friend. Each of these individuals brought something to the table, and each helped me learn something about myself, or helped me through a dark period. Yet none of them were truly my best friend. There was still something missing from my life. Many of those people are no longer in my life at all, and, sad to say, I do not miss their presence. Which will be super awkward if any of them are reading this blog...

But all of that changed when I met you, Beth. Through the course of the short time we've known each other, you've filled that part of my soul that was missing, to be really dramatic. As the super inquisitive couple we sat with at a wedding reception wanted to know, we met through a mutual friend. We gamed online together, and exchanged snaps back forth, and even stayed up until 5 am on xbox just talking. It was probably then that we passed from being friends to being best friends, and perhaps that's when you figured it out, but it took me a while longer, I'm sad to say. It wasn't until that night that you said aloud the words "you're my best friend" that everything clicked for me. I am, as you regularly tell me, a dumbass, after all. But, as you said those fateful words, a rush of emotions and realizations flooded through me: all this time, from the moment we first met, you had been my best and dearest friend. The fact that I got happy just hearing your voice, that seeing you made me smile, and that being with you made me forget all of my problems made sense! I know that I am much more sappy than you, and slightly (hah) more emotional, and to be honest I forget where I was going with this sentence.

We may not have the most conventional friendship, and a lot of the people around us may think we're dating, but we know exactly what we are, and it makes us happy. And that's what matters. We have a world to explore together, lives to share, and every morning I wake up thankful for having met you. God, this is sappy, even for me (he says, knowing no one will believe that).

To everyone reading this, be thankful for your best friends every day. Tell them that you love them, because if you don't actually love them, are they really your best friend? 

A thought on Pride month

It's the seventh day of Pride month, and this is the first time I've mentioned it anywhere. It's not that I'm not proud, and I am planning on participating in it, I just haven't been in the right headspace. Every year during Pride month asexuality is seemingly disregarded by... well, everyone. And that gets so tiring. So many people still believe that the A stands for allies, and so many more don't think asexuality is even real. We, as aces, are constantly being told we're broken, or that we haven't met the right person yet. An asexual friend of mine was just dumped because she didn't want to have sex as often as her partner thought she should, and I wish that that was a rare occurrence, but it is so common. Instead of celebrating asexuality, the month of June usually just highlights the ignorance around it. 

Pride month is supposed to be about people of all genders and sexualities, but it has basically been co-opted by gay men. When you see images celebrating pride, they're happy gay couples or liberated gay men. Occasionally there will be a picture of a lesbian, but mostly pride is for gay men. I mean, the rest of society is for straight men, so why shouldn't pride be for the gay men? 

Obvious snark aside, many people in the queer community feel this way, and it's always a discussion this time of year. Last year, a middle-aged gay man wrote an article where he said all sexualities should just use the term "gay" because it would be easier for him. Listen buddy, that's not how any of this works, okay? I'm not gay, I'm asexual. Do I sometimes like people of my own gender? Sure, but I also like people of other genders, but never in a sexual way. Ergo, I am not gay. Guess I can't use that term. I'm asexual, and I'm sick of the queer community trying to erase me. It's already hard enough to accept being asexual in our hyper-sexual society without the rest of the queer community denying us. 

The pride events I usually go to are in the largest city in my province. A city of roughly 260 000. The first pride I went to there had zero asexual representation. The following year had several asexual people march in the parade, and the year after had a few more. It felt really good to see that representation grow. It felt like validation. Like I wasn't alone, and like I wasn't broken. The sad truth is that I still feel broken at times. I feel like I'm not enough, and that I never will be. I watch romantic movies or tv shows and every romance portrayed involves sex, and sexual attraction. Growing up seeing that, it's easy to understand why so many aces feel broken. Even most queer spaces have an emphasis on sexual relationships (bars and clubs), leaving many aces with nowhere to feel safe. No one's opened up a queer coffee shop (although they should, I would spend all my money there) for people to just hang out at, but every good size city has at least one gay bar. Again, because gay men are the most important part of the queer community. Gotta make sure they're happy, fuck everybody else (even the ones that don't like fucking). 

I want to celebrate Pride month. I want to be able to go to pride events and see asexual people both represented and accepted. I want that every day, but it especially hurts during pride. I'm asexual, and I'm proud of that. Always will be. No matter what.