My class today (Experiments in Poetic Form, for those of you playing the home game) was pretty darn successful.

First, I met up with Joey and Laurie to do a mini writing workshop. We met in a café down the street and had lunch, then passed out our poems and discussed them. I wrote a couple of poems yesterday, in my Keats class, and I was able to workshop those. (Laurie and Joey were divided on whether the line "my thumb might fit / in the hollow of your throat" is erotic or aggressive. Your vote?)

Then we went to class. The professor passed back a few old poems and papers. All the comments on mine were positive, especially on last week's poem (an old poem) which she called "Quite accomplished." Today, we had to write a pantoum, and I read mine. Everyone seemed very impressed, even though I broke one of the rules.

For those of you who don't know, a pantoum is a fun little form. It's a poem written in quatrains. The second and fourth lines of one stanza become the first and third lines of the next. For the last stanza, the first and third lines of the first stanza are supposed to be reversed, and inserted as the second and fourth lines of the last stanza. I didn't do the reversing, but here is my poem:

Coming of Age

Single white female seeks liberation
achieved in the courage to look at my genitals
in a hand mirror held between my thighs
which is prohibited here.

Achieved in the courage to look at my genitals,
I look up at the moon
(which is prohibited here)
I think I see your face there.

I look up at the moon,
a single white female who seeks liberation.
I think I see your face there:
in a hand mirror held between my thighs.

I was talking to my friends at school today, one of whom had written a poem about someone dying of cancer. "Once you know someone who has died of cancer," I said, "you're never quite the same again. My grandmother died of cancer a year ago..."

And then I stopped and realized what I had just said. A year ago? My grandmother died two months ago. Only two months.

Then I look back at my journal entries in amazement. Three months ago, I was talking about how much I loved Matt. Two months ago, my grandmother died, and Matt broke up with me. A month ago, I moved. It hasn't even been six months since I went to the Mediterranean, for gods sake, and that was forever ago.

A million years in the space of a heartbeat. That's what my life feels like.

Speaking of perceptions, saying "I am bisexual" has produced a rather strange internal reaction. Every time someone that I know has said they're gay, or bi, or whatever, I don't blink an eyelash. Honest to god. I think it's perfectly fine, healthy, normal and wonderful. I do my best to empower and support, and make sure they know that it's no big deal.

No big deal. That's honestly how I have always felt about it. Until it was me. Ever since I have come out of my tiny little barely-even-a-closet, I've been (metaphorically) looking around with big eyes, unblinking, waiting for the heavens to open up and someone to be shocked, or renounce me or something. Why do I expect this for myself when I have never expected it for anyone else?

I didn't know I needed support, but to those of you who have given it, thank you. I haven't always understood the magnitude of being a person of the non-heterosexual persuasion. I guess we've all learned something here today.

Okay, so I just spent quite a while talking to a friend of mine, and now I'm thinking that labels in general are just a bad idea. I don't know if I can express this properly (it is, after all, three in the morning), but part of the problem with society in general is that people are so quick to want to slap a label on you.

For instance, when Anne Heche started dating Ellen Degeneres, she started being referred to as a lesbian. Well, as far as I am aware, Ellen is the one and only woman Anne has ever been with. Is she a lesbian? Is she bisexual? If she goes back to men now, is she a heterosexual who was just going through a phase? And does it really matter?

I have come to the conclusion, I think, that it doesn't matter. The people who love me... well, they love me no matter what I say I am, or how I choose to define myself. And whoever I choose to love... well, I don't necessarily have to change my whole self concept in order to be allowed to love them.

Maybe I shouldn't care if Abby says she's a lesbian now and then changes her mind. Maybe I shouldn't be so quick to say, "Yes, I need this label of 'bisexual' to define me now." Maybe it's not the act of courage I thought it might be. Maybe life is just one big ongoing process of self discovery and experimentation and change and evolution and growth.

I am glad it's all down here, though, so that you can share in my ongoing process. The Incredible Evolving Mo, right before your eyes.

So I guess I'm not "bisexual" after all. I'm just me.

Somehow, the tangible reality of people reading their journal entries, talking about their journals, gossiping about other people’s journals... well, it’s downright bizarre.