~in answer to owly~
I grew up in the days of Peter, Paul, and Mary's "Puff the Magic Dragon" and the folksong "Five Thousand Miles." As a hippie wanna-be, it was predictable that I would gravitate towards Bob Dylan music. As a child of divorce, domestic violence, alcoholism, and extreme prejuidice, I rebelled into their opposites. I wanted safety and stability and I could find neither growing up in my mother's household. I tried religion. I went through many christian churches. I found them lacking in a certain edginess that was part of my personality. I found the drug users and I used too. Even then, I was afraid of addiction. I thought alcoholics drank wine at home so I drank beer out. I identified with the counter-culture but I was too stoned to move. I found friends and party buddies that I could not bring home to my mom or to my dad. Many of them could not bring me to meet their parents either.
When I found that I had to get clean or go on living in the chains of addiction, I got clean. In getting and staying clean, that the certain edginess in my personality-- true radical stuff-- was still there. It was not part of my mask or my public personna. It was real. Today I claim that part of me and I celebrate it. I have come out of the bondage of active addiction into the freedom of me. My friends became other radicals involved in systems change.
I learned through much of my life that when others judged me, I always came up lacking in their eyes. Today I am learning that when I judge others, they come up lacking in my eyes. My quickness to judge others was learned behavior leftover from my childhood fears of those who are "different" and "the other" as taught to me by the adults around me. I find that it is another layer of uprooting prejuidice and bigotry from my own life.
And who are my friends? My friends are the radicals, the people I could never bring home to mom or to dad when I was younger, the sexual outlaws, the extralegals, people who are not protected by the laws of american society yet are expected to pay taxes and shut up and not be seen or heard. Passing is painful and at too great a personal cost. I have been involved in protests [Now protests are called "actions." I protest this.] with ACT-UP and with QUEER NATION. I have gone out en masse with my transgendered brothers and sisters in order to force those around us to acknowledge that we exist. I am willing to be mistaken for 'one of them' in the name of building community. I have spoken up when I hear "those jokes." I have stopped laughing. I am no longer willing to live the lie.
I am a bisexual woman. I am not a monosexual.
I am a pagan witch. I am not a christian.
I am a survivor of traumatic brain injury. I am not brain dead.
The song "The Times They Are A-Changin' " written by Bob Dylan spoke to my true nature way back when. It still does today.
-sapphoq
THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN' by Bob Dylan (c) 1963, renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.
http://bobdylan.com/songs/times.html
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