We’re here, and we’re … messy

Today, September 23, is Piranshahr Bi Visibility Day. Anybody who knows me knows that I’m not really one for days, weeks, months, parades, or whatever it is that simply celebrates a part of what one naturally is. In fact, until Saturday, I hadn’t even heard of Bi Visibility Day. (Apparently it’s been around since 1999. That was the same year I started really coming out to friends, so I’m going to go ahead and assume it was set up in celebration of me.)

All silliness aside – while I may roll my eyes at the idea of days dedicated to making oneself visible, I’m all too well-acquainted with the need behind such things. I know I often quote our “Maybe Baby” group leader when she said that, in becoming a parent, we’d be more out than we could ever imagine, but not a day goes by that the saying doesn’t strike home. For me, though, it almost feels doubly so. We live and work in environments that are extremely open and accepting and have, as of yet, not run into much negativity in regards to our family structure. But on the flip side, for me, that leads right into other assumptions. Never in my life have I felt the need to come out as bi to more people more often than since we had our daughter.

It seems silly a lot of the time, I confess. It’s not like people care. Not the people I care about caring, anyway. But it’s important; I know it is. For all that our family is well protected by our community, there are countless other people who don’t have that freedom, and who aren’t able to be out, whether it be as bi or something else.

Not all that long ago, I wrote a post about feeling invisible as a bisexual person at Pride. And that post – that one, little, whiny post about feeling invisible, and the funny look that I got from the girl at the booth giving out “I <3 Nice Jewish [Girls/Boys]” stickers when I asked for one of each – got me my very first cranky anonymous message. It wasn’t nasty – I can’t even give it that. But it was certainly cranky, and sent with the intent of calling me out on saying nothing more than my own experience; that I, personally, felt that I was invisible and excluded as a bisexual person at a Pride Festival.

And so the point of my post was made for me, in the few words of an anonymous message.

We are out there, and in droves. But so very often, we are overlooked by the masses, because on the surface, we fit into these neat little boxes of what people think we should be. And so very often, if we try to wave our hands; to say Hey, we’re here, and we don’t fit into a neat little box!, people get upset. They want their boxes neat and tidy, and sexuality doesn’t work that way. Love doesn’t work that way. Life doesn’t work that way.

So for now, I’m going to wave my hands in the air, and remind people that I’m here. And I’m messy. And I like it that way.