ForsakenDAemon.net

Various people have been complaining that I haven’t blogged in a long time, which is true. But, to be perfectly honest, I haven’t had the time, motivation or content to really blog properly, so I thought I’d save you the effort of reading something malformed and pointless.

One of the major topics that’s been occupying my mind recently is the idea of Pride. Not pride with a lowercase ‘p’ so much, more the politically charged concept that seems to be so important to so many people.

The question, really, is simple: do I have Pride?

Not pride, lowercase ‘p’, that apparently pedestrian state of being in which I am satisfied and comfortable with who I am and what I have achieved, but Pride, capital ‘P’, a vibrant, exciting, all-encompassing feeling of self-righteous joy and wonder at the awesomeness of myself.

Well, the answer is simple. Do I have that kind of Pride? Well, if you define it like that, then no, I don’t. I don’t feel like anything about myself is particularly awesome (although I don’t dislike it), particularly not my sexuality (which is where this definition of Pride seems to be applied most often).

That said, I’m not ready to disavow the term quite yet. While I may not feel the sense of “wonder and awesomeness” that I seem to see among some others professing the term, there is something that I have that connects me to these people.

Yes, we share something about who we date, who we love, and who we fuck, but that’s not it. Yes, we share a decent-sized chunk of the world who think that we are evil or disgusting, but that’s not it either. Yes, we’ve all had people turn their noses up at us or abuse us or call us names because of the precise nature of our expressions of love, but that’s not it.

I think the thing I share most with these people is community. The thing that brought us together was Who, What, When, Where and How we loved, but what keeps us together is something far more ephemeral, far less definable. Far less definite, if I’m truly honest.

What holds me to the community is the people. The wonderful, fantastic, fun, exciting, ultimately human people who are no better or worse than any other – if maybe a little more honest about it.

And in the end, I realise I do have Pride, that all-encompassing joy and self-righteous swelling of the heart. But it’s not for me, it’s not for my life or my sexuality.

It’s for my community, whoever, wherever, however they may be.