Leap of F****

I woke up today in a pretty reflective mood. To be honest, I am sick and tired of all this reflection, and just want to turn my brain off and just be. However,  I am a pretty brooding and contemplative person, and I can’t possibly deny myself that. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself after all. So, I write with the hopes of organizing these thoughts in my head, and trying to make sense of it all.

I can’t help but contemplate where I came from, and where I am going. I think of ten or fifteen years ago, and trace my progress all the way to sitting here writing this post. I took some pretty drastic leaps to get to where I am today. For a person who does not believe in a higher power, I think I took some pretty dramatic leaps of faith. Actually, I don’t think I had anything but hope, and the desire to accomplish something, or get myself to a certain place to guide me through the past fifteen years of my life. It’s brilliant that any of my grand plans worked, even though they didn’t go off without a hitch like I wanted them to.

In 1995, I was attending a private high school called Thebes (yes, it’s a pretty cliché name) on the outskirts of Cairo. It was built against rolling sand dunes, with no air conditioning, and nowhere to go if a student wanted to skip class and bum around. It was either class, or the blazoning hot sun, and the autocratic teachers that despised being there just like the students did.

It was a typical day just like any other. As I was leaving class for recess, I noticed a flier on the wall about going to the United States. I had never traveled out of Egypt before, and my only knowledge of the U.S. was gained through watching movies and the ever popular soap operas that played on TV. I grew up watching Falcon Crest, Knots Landing, and I am ashamed to admit, the Bold and the Beautiful too. The flier was for a program by the American Field Service (AFS), and advertized living with an American host family for an academic year while attending high school. Intrigued, and pretty excited about the possibility, I took the flier home and showed it to my father. As he always does in his doubtful and condescending way, my father told me to apply and see what happens.

I passed the English test, as well as the interview, and called my father on his promise to seriously consider sending me on the program. I found out that he didn’t think I really had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting accepted, and now had to eat his words. He met with the program administrators, and before we both knew it, he shelled out the $6000 program fee, and the idea became a reality. If I think about it, I must have been crazy or desperate at the time. Or, it could have been just one more step in the journey to find my place in life, and belong somewhere. I had never left Egypt, never traveled without my family except on a fieldtrip with school to Luxor in southern Egypt, and I didn’t even have a passport. 

The closer the program start date approached, the more I got nervous. I had no idea where I was placed in the US, or who my host family was. At the beginning of August the program called to ask if I was OK being placed with a divorced man with no children. Faced with an imminent start date, I said yes, and made the journey to Chicago with nothing but hope to guide me. It was a pretty drastic leap of faith.

The divorced guy turned out to me a complete asshole, and I did not last in his home for more than two weeks. My room was his office, and I slept on the sleeper sofa. He thought Egyptians slept on the floor in tents in the desert, and expected me to clean after his blind cat that pooped all over his condo. I was upset, and I was scared that leaving his home would mean I had to go back to Egypt in a proverbial flight of shame. But that did not happen! I complained to my program counselor, and expressed my disappointment and anger at my placement with a person I did not think should be hosting me, or anyone else for that matter.

A few days later I was moved to the home of a family that had hosted ten students before me. It was a temporary placement until the program found me a permanent home. As it turned out, I stayed in that home for the duration of the program. The elder couple sitting in the kitchen with a way-too-large table piled high with books would become my Mom and Dad for the next 15 years…well past the end date of my program.  They were the best thing that had ever happened to me, and they would continue to influence me for the second half of my life.

Fast forward to 2001, when once again I had to take a leap of faith that would change my life forever. I had just graduated collage with a BA in Political Science, and feeling around in the dark trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. At the same time, the police took it upon themselves to crack down on gays in Egypt, and prosecute them like murderers and terrorists. Friends and other acquaintances were arrested, thrown in jail, their names and addresses published in the papers, their lives destroyed, and their families disowned them. Gay men in Egypt lived day to day, looking over their shoulders, and wondering if they were going to be next. Teenage gay men chatting online were baited by undercover policemen, and arrested. Lives were destroyed, and families were decimated.

I remember calling my Mom and Dad on the phone to tell them what was happening in Cairo. I had come out to them three years earlier and they were more supportive than my biological family was (my father sent me to reparative therapy). A few days later, I received a FedEx envelope containing a plane ticket to Chicago. It was an invitation to take a leap of faith; to take a gamble and see what the future may hold. I sold some of my belongings, packed my suitcase, and came to Chicago with $500 in my pocket, and no plan. But, I had an incredible, loving, and supportive family that watched out over me, and guided me in my new path. I ended up seeking political asylum, and never returning to Egypt again.

Eleven years later, I am sitting here, reflecting on taking drastic leaps of faith that, while were not easy, I believe changed my life for the better. The truth is, we take leaps of faith every day, some larger than others. We have no way of knowing if the leaps we take will change our lives for the better, or bring us closer to happiness. Yet, we take these leaps, and live in the hopes that being true to our selves….going with our guts…or, if you will, a belief in a higher power, be it Jesus, Allah, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Shiva will guide us and help us through. Faith is not a four letter word, yet sometimes we treat it as such. I can’t help but think that if I had not taken a leap of faith 15 years ago, I would have been dead by my own hands, or those of the police in Egypt. I can’t help but think that had I not taken a leap of faith, the amazing family I met in 1995 would have never come into my life, and I would have been much poorer for it. They influenced my life in ways that I could never have fathomed.

As I sit at yet another canyon in my life, I have nothing but faith guiding me. Faith in the idea that if I am true and honest with myself, then I am on the right path…wherever it pay lead!!

On Loss and Belonging!!

I’ve been thinking about the concept of “belonging” for some time now. It is a thought that comes to mind several times a year actually, but this time it has visited me for longer than usual, and is overstaying it’s welcome like a an enormous, and gluttonous relative, staying on my couch, consuming my food.

I have always struggled to belong, whether it was to a community, to a family, or to a group of friends. The thought of belonging recently visited me as I made my weekly treks back and forth, to and from Chicago to visit my boyfriend. This has been the routine for the past several months, and while I have become accustomed to my semi-gypsy lifestyle, and living out of a suitcase for the weekend, it has been compounded by the feelings of loss—of the familiar warm of the 9 year relationship that just ended, and the increased feeling of loss of family; my natural family, my American family that has struggled to keep it’s cohesion after Mom died (at least from where I am standing), and the loss of my “in-laws” whom I considered my family for the past 9 years even though we only saw each other over the holidays, and exchanged gifts that ended up in their garage, re-gifted, or in the bottom of my closet.

Two weeks ago, while sleeping on the bus on the way to Iowa for my weekly trek, I received a call from my mother. It has been a while since we talked (I believe it must have been a month or so), and my mother started the conversation playfully admonishing me for not calling her. She wasn’t completely being playful of course. One thing my mother is really good at is covering passive aggression with humor. Sometimes she just downright drops the passivity, and just uses humor and laughter to cover her aggression and disappointment. At 62 years old, I can understand her disappointment in the fact that I do not call her often. It is bad enough that I have been disappointing her for the past I-don’t-know however many years since I had the capacity to disappoint. But I just had to up n’go 11 odd years ago, and never return.

We talked about all that is happening in Egypt, and the upcoming elections. She had been on my case about getting the newly issued government ID card, and I have been blowing her off for the past several years. She asked me what I thought of what was going on, and I expressed my views, but also said I had no intention of voting. The government had recently allowed Egyptians living abroad to vote in local elections—the first such action to ever take place. So, Egyptians abroad have all been gung-ho about voting, except me. I then said something I had never vocalized ever before; I told my mother, it is not my fight. Even as I type these words right now, tears are welling up in my eyes. It is how I feel, and I am incredibly sad about it.

Growing up in Egypt, I had often fantasized about this moment in Egyptian history. A vivid

memory I have is of sitting in a car, heading east on Cairo’s 6^th of October Bridge, passing by the Cairo Museum of Antiquities, and having this random thought or fantasy about overthrowing Mubarak, and leading the country through the path to democracy. I couldn’t have been more than 12 at the time. After living a year in the United States when I was 16, and returning to Cairo for college, I even fantasized about toppling the Mubarak regime, and adopting a U.S. style constitution that would allow Egyptians the same freedoms and liberties afforded to my now adopted country.

It is now not my fight, and it makes me sad. I have lived in Chicago now for close to 11 years. I haven’t been back to Egypt since. I saw my family only once since leaving, and that was 6 years ago, in Paris for five days. It was one of the most bizarre and stressful five days I have experienced with my family, and it ruined my Parisian experience (I still need a Paris do-over!). After living an open life in Chicago for five years, I spent five days back in the closet, and I hated every moment of it. I loved seeing my mother, sister, my then one year old nephew, and it was good to see my father. But I longed to go back home…to Chicago, where I can be myself again, with my American family, and my boyfriend of two years.

A lot has happened since that week in Paris. Yet, it seems that a lot of things have not changed. My mother asked me what was new in my life, and I could not tell her. When I talked to my mother on the phone, I often think of Anne Bancroft in Torch Song Trilogy. The scene in the cemetery after Arnold buried his partner. She yells, “you cheated me out of your life, then blame me for not being there!” That is how I often define my relationship with my mother.  What is new in my life? How about, I am on a bus, heading to see my boyfriend, who I have been seeing for the past few months, and I love him so much it hurts. I have recently ended my relationship with my boyfriend of 9 years; the man I own property with, and have loved and taken care of, and thought I would grow old and decrepit with. How about, I need a hug Mama, and I feel lost, and I don’t know what to do, and I could really use some solid motherly advice, and to hear you say everything is going to be OK? How about, telling me I am doing the right thing…or challenge me to think about my actions?

But that is neither here nor there, and I just solider on. I feel like a complete stranger sometimes; and recently, a lot of the time, even though I have made this place my home. Over the past four years, my then boyfriend and I bought a beautiful two bedroom condo together, and have spent our time, money, and energy making it into a stylish and welcoming home. I look around now, and despite the warm and welcoming Douglas-Fir adorned with warm Christmas lights, and natural ornaments that we made together, it feels like a shell of its old glory. We still live together, and have separate bedrooms now. The mere act of separating rooms, while necessary, is a constant reminder of the failure of what was supposed to be a lifetime together. I spent almost 9 of the 11 years living here defining myself as part of this relationship. It was by no means a perfect partnership, and we, like everyone else, have had our ups and our down. We have had our issues, and we have struggled with infidelities, insecurities, love, and pain.  At the end of the day, he was my family, and my home. His family was also my family, and as we wade through the breakup, I can’t help but mourn the loss of my place in that family. I haven’t seen them in two years or so, but their presence in the background of my life was…reassuring! They relied on me, and still do it seems, to give them the skinny on what is happening in my ex’s life, since he is terrible at communicating with them. He is terrible at communicating, period. As we live together, I feel like I have to struggle with this lack of communication, since, as he put it, he doesn’t have the obligation to work on his communication now that we are not in a relationship any more. In a way, I feel like I am living in wake...that I am constantly in visitation mode of the open casket that is our dead relationship; and I am administering CPR to a corpse.

As I prepare to purchase my weekend bus ticket, I can’t help but think that I am living in purgatory on so many levels. I leave the home that I have built, to go be with my boyfriend, who also has left the home he has built, and is living in a home he doesn’t particularly like. I leave that at the end of the weekend, to go back to the home I have here, and to my job, which despite being good at it, is not that interesting; and I spend the days counting down to being back on the bus. The highlight of it all is being with my boyfriend. I feel home with him, despite our recent struggles, and the obstacles we have to overcome to be together. But, I then have to leave him at the end of the weekend, and come back to the home that is a shadow of what it used to be.

There are a lot of muddled thoughts in this post. I talk about Egypt, family, and boyfriends. I am conscious of the fact that I haven’t fully developed each thought completely. It is overwhelming to think of it all; but these thoughts rush through my mind on a daily basis. I struggle with the feelings of belonging and of loss…I lost a big part of me when I came to the realization that the struggles in Egypt are not mine anymore. I struggle with the feelings of belonging and loss when I wake up in the morning at home, faced with the relationship that I ended. I struggle with the feelings of belonging and loss when I get on the bus at the end of the weekend. I long to end this tenure in purgatory, and to find my path home where I belong.