Today I was feeling anxious and generally crappy, but couldn’t have told you why until I logged into facebook. The first two things I read were:

1) name1 likes name2’s status:name2 is picking up her wedding dress today!!!

2) name3 posted a link: Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth: An epidemic of homelessness discusses the reasons why so many LGBT youth are homeless and the risks they face in shelters and on the street.

Obviously I am neither a blushing bride nor an abused, homeless transgendered youth. But I feel a strong identification with both, and I think that I will never be settled in one camp.

I think I will always want a comfortable house and a respectable job and a stable long-term relationship and may even one day find I want kids. I want to have granite countertops and a spa shower and get my nails done and travel for fun in airplanes. I want to write books and articles about ideas, help girls with eating disorders and spoil my pets.

I will also always want to live in a queer commune on the fringes of our fucked-up consumer culture, grow my own food, fight tooth and nail for civil rights, human rights and save the whales. I want to be a doctor in refugee camps or deliver vaccines by motorcycle to remote African villages.

I fear that whichever way I end up going, I will hate myself for not choosing the other.

I realize that a lot of these things are not mutually exclusive, but that doesn’t really help as much as it should.