I Dream Dreams

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr.,  a great man who was one of the spearheads of the Civil Rights Movement and gave his life for that movement, I have been given a chance this month to dream my own dreams. I have seen the great movings of progress in our nation once again and I've seen the efforts to stifle that movement, keeping the progress stagnant; I have seen great movements for the progress to move backward. I have seen heads held high with pride and heads hidden in fear and shame. I have seen pain and have seen joy. Through it all, I have seen dreamers continually dreaming. So, I too have dreams.

I have a dream that one day marriage will not be determined by which sex you marry, but by the love you share. I have a dream that love be demonstrated from coast to coast through simple and big acts. I have a dream that my children and future generations will be able to show the world that who they love is not something of which to be ashamed. I have a dream that with their partners' hands in theirs, they can walk with heads held high and show the world how deep their love is.

I have a dream that people will identify one another as human beings and not place each other in identifiable boxes that separate each of us, rather than unify us. I have a dream that we can each share the aspects of ourselves rather than hide in the dark closets we have built for ourselves. I have a dream that with heads held high, people can be proud of who they are and not hide in shame and fear.

I have a dream that each child can walk to school without fear of violence and without fear of being bullied. Schools should be places for learning, not fearing and hiding. I have a dream that students feel like they have a place to go where their opinions matter and they are accepted for who they are and not in what box they have been identified. I have a dream that fear does not play a part in their lives.

I have a dream that the men and women who serve this country will continue to protect us, but that they will come home safe from a war that seems so futile. I dream a dream of peace and life free from corruption. I dream a dream of love over hate; love becoming the ruler of our minds and hearts. I dream of safe schools and zero tolerance for violence and bullying. I dream of peace and love. I continue dreaming dreams.

Mirror, Mirror

"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" said the Queen from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. To which, the Magic Mirror responds that the Queen is the fairest in the land. What if each of us had a mirror that told us we were the most beautiful and fair, ignoring obvious flaws i.e. fat, moles, glasses and any other physical flaw that is seen as ugly or undesirable? Hopefully,  we would leave our houses feeling beautiful and proud.

In Junior High, I was a victim of bullying. I struggled everyday with other kids calling me fag, faggot, queer, fudge packer, cocksucker, etc. You name it and they called me anything that equated with being gay or being a sissy. The students hurled the barrage of cruel and demeaning names. Most of the time, I didn't have any idea what they were talking about. Through all of the name calling and bullying, I suffered and suffered.

While the bullying was mostly verbal and psychological, the emotional toll, those years took on me, has stayed with me and the wounds fester. The memories are a constant scab I continually pick at and make them bleed. No matter how much council I seek, I find the memories too strong and painful to always overcome.

What I wouldn't give to have my own Magic Mirror to tell me how fair and beautiful I am. Perhaps, the daily positive verbalization would help to destroy the negative memories that are always inside my head telling me that because I am gay, I am a second class citizen and deserve nothing this world has to offer me or that I deserve to be called names. If I had the Magic Mirror, the religious me would stop saying, "You're going to go to hell if you kill yourself and you're going to go to hell for being gay, so you might as well get it over with and kill yourself."

Bullying is a modern-day warfare tactic that is not waged with guns and bombs, but with words that could kill by bringing the bullied to take their own lives. It is a plague that emotionally and psychologically damages and destroys. It is amazing how many types of bullying there are today. Schoolyard bullying was the only bullying that I experienced, but today, I fear for the youth because of all the social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.) that allow kids to bully from wherever they are. Zero tolerance in schools and on the social networking sites needs to be implemented, so that people understand that it is not okay to make others feel like they are unimportant and that life is not worth living. Stop the hate. Stop the violence. Stop the bullying.