In Your Skin
(on self-acceptance)
By: Majid K. *
I like the quote “Nobody can make you inferior without your consent”. We feel pressured with family and friends to be a certain way. We feel inferior because nobody accepts us. Okay, so you might be thinking what I should do to get to that feeling of self-acceptance. Well, let’s start with trying to figure out why you’re not accepting yourself. Is it because your friends and family are not accepting it? Is it because you are not comfortable in your own skin? I like the quote:” you have to love yourself before you can love someone else” loving yourself is an important part of self acceptance. Nobody can do that for you. You see it’s not easy at first. Everyone goes through this stage. You have to be strong and build your self-esteem and confidence.
Self-accepting is the first step in realizing that you are gay. You become more comfortable in your own skin and happy with whom you are. If you reached this step then you would not care about what people think or say. You can do whatever you want that makes the person walk into a positive direction, that’s what I mean, a person who is proud of who he is, has confidence in who he is, is the person to be confident in his work, studies, relationships and everything else you deal with.
The problem in most Middle Eastern and Arab-based countries is that social pressure prevents us, from accepting ourselves. It becomes a lifelong process that takes years or months. People might say your gay because you have a devil in you or whatever crazy assumptions, but is it really that important to find out why you are homosexual? I understand the stage of knowing and reading scientific studies or religion researches, but at the end no one asks why heterosexuals are heterosexual.
Like I said before, you have to build your self-esteem so you can be strong and be able to block those individuals that think your supposed to live a certain way.
In our society we are not allowed to talk about our sexuality making it harder to answer all the Q’s in heads, referencing self acceptance with the people we trust, and decreasing the process of building a strong self-esteem when it comes to our own sexuality. Focusing on the positive aspects of being gay as opposed to focusing on the discrimination, fears, and 0-scaled myths about homosexuality in a society where such thing is buried along with other taboo subs, subs that could be necessary for a self-knowing generation. This is not to pretend that such discrimination does not have any effect on lesbians and gay men. It makes us feel like we have no self-worth which is why staying positive is important, and for a sad fact, is the only option. Another way of dealing with self-acceptance is reading on such matters, books, news and searching the web for similar articles to mine, which increase your knowledge on what is available and suitable for your status and culture-wise. Knowing about yourself and people who face similar issues open up your mind to think, and evolve into a new you, a person who understands how his mind works. The word “normalizing” won’t occur your direction if people like you and me started appeal to our eyes, which is my second point exactly. Resources out there for overcoming a fear that holds you back is the gay community which can provide natural support system; they have all experienced at least some of the steps in the process of coming out and self acceptance. Sharing experiences about being gay can decrease feelings of isolation and can be an important benefit of coming out. Within the gay community there are a number of helpful resources, making friends will help you open up, adjusting to a new life and as I said, overcoming bearing feelings.
One way to get support and encouragement is talking to a gay friend or people who you can relate to. Jordan isn’t as it used to be and finding support these days isn’t that hard anymore. The importance of grounding gay supporting groups had reached its moment to be formed which can help many people with hard situations like acceptance in family and friends, and moral and emotional support. It would be a big step if we found our way in to forming a support group.
Remember being gay is not all that you are, it's a part of many things you are! You need to realize that your sexuality is part of a circle, not the whole circle. Working around that circle will develop to its best form if you use the right terms of living and loving. Now is love and support from the gay community out there enough? Is your sexuality the reason that holds you back from being an active human in this life? Those are questions you should look for their A’s. You ask yourself once and you find many answers in different forms and could be the wrong ones. You’ll learn how move on, and you’ll learn you have one skin to wear and you’ll learn that one question have many answers that fits the Q.
* name has been changed