The Vanillas, Atypical, and Non-scene Queer People (why still I don’t fit in?)
It’s only a couple of days before one of the world’s most celebrated annual pride festivals, a.k.a Sydney Mardi Gras. I’m excited to take a peek at that, but then again, I will not participate. I did attend the London Gay Pride in 2017, and it was fun to watch. Although, the idea of representation is not really working for me because I don’t really feel represented.
I question myself,” Why?”
Is it because I’m not white? Not as expressive? Or what? I’m not complaining as I also don’t know the answer to what could be better for me. Why don’t I like the glitters or rainbows? or the loudness of the parade? or the festival itself? Maybe it’s not because I don’t want them; it’s just that I don’t relate deeply to them. I am still very grateful that they exist. I think they are very important. However, it doesn’t really fit in with other features of me.
Despite my status as a musician, I don’t listen to much music on day to day basis. People around me know that I enjoy the silence, especially walking around the mountains and lakes. It takes much effort for me to go to clubs that I haven’t been in since 2018. I do enjoy music gigs, but I also need a lot of downtime to unwind. The reason I became a musician is nothing less but to express what I feel needed to be expressed. But then again still, the glamour of the entertainment industry does not sit well within me. And I’m pretty sure a lot of other artists feel the same way. How do we find the balance between capitalism and our artistic pursuits? This leads me to the same question about the pride parade, is it a freedom of speech, or is it just another negative capitalistic approach in disguise?
Community is a complicated word for me. I thought at first you need to sign up to be a member of a community. Apparently, you’re a member if your identity is crossed with certain features. So, I guess, I’m part of the queer community, had been and always been. I’m also part of the musicians’ community, artists’ community, Indonesian community, Chinese Indonesian community, polyglot community, backpackers community, expat community, neurodiverse community, non-binary community, ex-engineer community, non religious ex-catholic community, dumplings lover community, and the list is on and on and on.
Wait what?? What if the core belief of one community is against the other? So which one do I actually part of?
Well, maybe I’m just very empathetic. I could relate to almost any kind of community. Then I realised in that case, it made me very complex, and the complexity of my “relatableness” became a problem of its own (and so should everyone be, I think). Frankly, I never feel like I am exclusively a member of any community. I never really feel like I have friends or families (maybe I do have one now or two). I don’t feel like I belong to any kind of race or nation. Because in order to be one, I need to compromise again and assimilate again and abandon my identity as Kevin. I don’t know how much you know about Indonesia but being bombed and hunted were enough for me in the past. It’s better today, I would like to think so. I don’t want to relive them anymore obviously. Currently, I have been disowning my sense of belonging as a price of my own freedom. I don’t want to hide anymore. I don’t want to compromise anymore. The severity of my physical disorders led me to my inability to compromise anymore. If I tolerate something that should be tolerated, my muscles spasm is activating. Therefore, I don’t want to compromise. I don’t want to pretend. If it’s time to die, then it is time to die. That is how I live my life. This means compromising myself just to be a part of another community doesn’t really work for me. However, I do still struggle to find a way to coexist within society. To contribute. To somehow still feel sane enough to be alive.
Today, I want to talk about being a member of the queer community specifically. I still feel that other queers are very much normal compared to me. I still feel alienated most of the time. Always. And I’m not talking about the whiteness of queer community because apparently, within the Asians ourselves. I find it difficult to relate. I am not a western-born, but I also don’t relate to many cultures of my origin. As the most frequent first questions I got from them was,” Where do you come from?” Then they start to put me in the box of typical Indonesians. And sometimes they tell me,” you look like a sub-bottom. Aren’t you one?” If you know what that means ;’). While I am so proud of my origin, I barely have the typical traits of what makes Indonesian Indonesians. In fact, I don’t know if I have the attributes of what makes human humans besides my emotions and my feelings. But I guess people judge me too quickly because of how I look, and I cannot change how I look. Or where I came from.
So then people told me,” Kevin, if it doesn’t work all the time, maybe it is your problem. You are the problem.” Well maybe. Maybe you’re right. I am the problem. And I have accepted that. I left. I left my circle. And I left all the time. But then I still couldn’t find it. So maybe it’s not me. Like in my songwriting “Home”, I really don’t know anymore, where should I go, where should I be. I’ve been searching. And I’ve done my best all the time.
What if other people is the problem. Being problematic, or being weird is just a matter of perspective. For example, if you’re smart and surrounded by dumb people, they might think that you’re dumb, because they don’t have the capacity to assess you properly.
Wasn’t it always like that in the beginning? Something looks like a problem, and then we solve it. And maybe I’m a representation of a problem that we have at the moment. And if it is a problem, it might not be my fault because Kevin doesn’t really exist if you think about it. I only exist as the culmination of consciousness of all the people and experiences that I encountered in my life.
If you remember, homosexuals were considered a mental health disorder. Plus, some other mental health disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar were considered very dangerous and therefore needed to be put in a psychiatric ward. Doctors made a horrendous effort to “fix” them. Whether putting them in conversion therapy, aversion therapy, shock therapy, electric chair, lobotomy, extreme psychoactive, and a lot of other sadistic attempts. Still, until today, doctors and psychologists haven’t learned much from their failed attempts. They still can be too arrogant with their beliefs. Instead of approaching humans in a humanistic way, A lot of their attempts are very much based on a clinical flowchart instead of a human-centric approach.
I want to say that the western-centric effort to heal people has not been the best. And I wish I could say that the eastern approach is better. “We” approach things from within the soul and less clinical. But then again, they are not the best either. In fact, they could be worse, because they never did enough documentation and standardisation. They were never supported with enough empirical data. And likely to be superstitious about things. This could be good as it opens the potential to more possibilities in this world as science might not be the only thing that can explain the world. But again, it could also be another level of bold idiocy as we always have seen with multiple beliefs in false gods. Both are equally problematic.
In the past few years, I’ve been diagnosed or suspected of a lot of issues. While in the past being a queer is also a mental health disorder (still considered that way by some family members and most Indonesians), I am also diagnosed by some practitioners that I might have bipolar, schizoaffective, high function neurodiverse, ADHD, and bla bla bla. Eventually, I settled at peace when I met one certified therapist (without the background of pure psychology/medicine degree) that I was just having a complex trauma/CPTSD. I might have a slightly higher intelligence which causes people to misdiagnose me as autistic. This led me to more profound research my roots as I explained in my previous article how collective traumas are passed across generations.
In any sense, I find that mental health disorders are how privileged people judge other people with less privilege. In the beginning, the idea of privileged was very narrow for me. I thought it was just about the financial advantage. Whilst it is accurate, I started to learn the idea of dominance, particularly race. And not just about whiteness, but anyone that is a majority in their society (e.g. Indonesian in Indonesia, although we might have learned this from the white Dutch people ;) ). In this case, I find that psychologists and doctors are very privileged people, mostly with financial advantage, neurotypical, probably non-queer, obedient, and typically stable nuclear family. Therefore they never had to take many risks in their lives. And then these people try to judge the significantly marginalised people. Of course, you will find people like me sick. Of course, you see me as a problem, as deranged.
Yes, you find me problematic. Because I break your bubble, I break the norm of what a perfect life should be. I should just suck it. “Why can’t you be like everybody else?”
Anyway, these articles are mainly questions. Collection of my thoughts. I’m not stating. I don’t know the answer.
In my view, instead of just breaking the scientific boundaries, maybe we should learn more about ourselves. We should realise that the life of people like me is beyond the comprehension of medical doctors, psychologists, and primarily other neurotypicals.
Instead of saying,” Make me understand you!” Try to use a better action word. “How do I make you more comfortable?”
“How do I listen?”
To listen.
To listen.
To listen.
Maybe the solution to most problems in the world is to listen.
To listen.
If we take a pause, take a breath. And listen to the voices around us, within us — the voices of humans, voices of other beings, voices of the nature. Maybe we can eventually solve the climate change (whether you believe it or not), the injustice, the mental health disorders. And maybe cancer.
But then again, whom am I asking for this?
I am a force of life that nobody could relate to. Despite my attempts trying to be heard, I still fail tremendously to grasp the essence of how to be a human.
But at least I tried.
And I will try to listen.
