Sweetie Pie's Bakery

Kaleidoscope

What are you legitimately supposed to do with misery? It's not like other emotions. Like happiness, for example; when you're happy you can show the world, dace around town, grin and compliment total strangers, give up your seat on the subway to someone just as able-bodied as yourself. You may look a little unstable, but it's acceptable. When you feel sad you can hide away; indulge yourself with self-pity. Hide from the world and only allow certain people in; the ones you know will offer snacks and cuddles, love and sympathy.

But there isn't just happy and sad.

There's shame. Guilt. Remorse. Sure, when you feel guilty you can make amends. When you're ashamed you can shy away, or gloss over it. When you're remorseful you can apologize. But let's face it, life isn't black and white. You can't always alter whole situations and circumstances with one simple act. And I'm pretty sure that as I get older, the entire spectrum of emotion just blurs into dull greys, more so with each passing year.

I was always taught to be so sure of what was right and wrong. And I was so dedicated to that that it practically ostracized me from school society. Where Sam took the beliefs in his stride, I bore them like a weight on my back. He was successful enough to avoid any grief for his actions; perfect enough. I don't begrudge him that, in retrospect, despite the occasional overwhelming wave of jealousy at the time. But he was never that committed to these beliefs in the first place. Not enough to care. He only just lived within the boundaries, never quite pushing our parents far enough to force a reaction, whilst still maintaining his status within the school. I never even tried. For me, it was easier to live within the boundaries if I never even strayed too close to the edge. Not that I was ever offered much temptation anyway. Being a serial loner, book-worm and possible closeted-lesbian doesn't exactly attract the party crowd when you're fifteen. But I still knew right from wrong, good from bad, heaven from hell, righteous from sinful. And I would still have stuck to it, even if temptation had been offered. "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination"...guess I shot that scripture in the face.

If Santana could hear me now, I wonder what she'd say. Of course she'd say that love is love, give me the argument about how the bible says you can't eat lobster, plant crops in the same field or give someone a proud look and all of that. But I think secretly she'd understand. Her family is less strict with religion, true, and so much more accepting than mine, but I think she would still understand this, this...feeling. Of being a sinner. Sick. I think she could understand feeling wrong, feeling immoral, sinful. But would she understand all the rest? Could she empathize and relate, to the point where she could physically feel her stomach twist, if I told her how I feel? I doubt it. And I'm thankful for that.

She couldn't understand this feeling if she tried. Not that I'd ever want her to feel this, or understand this feeling. Because you can apologize to rid yourself of guilt; try to make it right. But you can't apologize away a sense of guilt and shame so large that it's al-consuming. You can't go to confession and purge yourself of a remorse so strong it feels like it's rotting away inside of you like a disease. You can't hide away from a shame that plants itself as a doubt in your mind, twisting your thoughts into unintelligible waste. It's like a bug in the system, a virus crawling under the skin, with no solution, no way of ridding the host of the parasite. Maybe that's a little dramatic, but the bile that rises in my throat when I think of who I am would beg to differ. I wish I could hate my parents for thrusting me into a mindset full of denial and condemnation, but all I can feel is remorse. Disgrace at having put them through, in their eyes, the parental failure of having me for a daughter.

Santana will never feel the guilt, set so irretrievably deep inside of me that it rots in my core, causing a stench so engulfing that it fills my lungs like smoke. It constricts my throat and compresses my chest as I gasp for air in the occasional moments when I allow myself to dwell on the situation. When I can barely resist screwing my face and screaming at the top of my lungs at the unjustness of it all, thinking of how it's just my fucking bad luck to be different, and to feel so wrong.

Knowing that my closest ally will never truly feel this, a guilt so strong it feels like a disease, makes me feel more alone than ever. But Jess or Brittany would understand even less. Up until the last few weeks, Rachel and Sam have never had to feel guilty over anything in their lives. Begrudging your friends their happiness does not make for a positive friendship dynamic. And in a city full of people, how is it possible to feel this alone?

My voice a beacon in the night. My words will be your light, to carry you to me.

In a city of complete loneliness, one building is home. Home is where the heart is, and my heart has always firmly belonged in an attic. More specifically, a bright red chair. A chair with a worn patch on the left arm, a deep delve in the seat, and a large gash in the fabric of the back, stitched with thick green thread and hidden by a wall. But I could sit in this chair for decades, stare at my favourite view for months, and read familiar well-thumbed books for days, but this will only ever feel like hallway home. Because the other half of my heart has been left forlornly in that city. Desperately waiting for me to return to a life I can't handle yet.

Because home isn't always a place. It's a person, a feeling, the moments that make your heart stop. It's the jolt of an elevator, a breath on your neck in front of the TV, an ear against your chest in the darkness at night. It's the quirk of a bemused eyebrow, your feet leaving the ground as you're lifted to be carried home, the knowing glance that can say a thousand thoughts in less than a second. It's the polite smile of a stranger, in the doorway of a bakery, on a September afternoon. Being alone doesn't always mean you're lonely, but for me right now, being apart means nothing but.

I need Santana here now. I need home. I need her here to remind me that I am more than who I want, more than what my parents are ashamed of, more than my guilt. And knowing that she truly believes that is a beacon of light in an otherwise dark and lonely city. But sadly I realized too late, that home, and the most important part of me, is not in a chair but in a heart.

There isn't just happy and sad. Life isn't black and white. But a heart in its home can be a kaleidoscope of colour.