On March 8 the world celebrates the many blessings and impacts of women in society - past, present and future. But what of Lesbian girls? Are we to be celebrated and heralded as well, or shall we remain as the scapegoats of international religious and prejudicial bigotry? Are girls who love each other still outcasts in today's modern mainstream societal circles, or has society now shed all of their negative views and assumptions of what lesbian love really is as it relates to gender equality?
I will never forget the day that I first discovered my crush for another girl who, at my 10 years old, was more than twice my age. Her name was Ms Marty and she was the physical education teacher for after school recreation. Every day I would stay after school and would rarely join the boys for soccer, or kick ball, or any other "boy sports", but rather, most often I wanted to play "girl games" like hop scotch and jacks and jump rope.
I so loved Ms Marty because she made me feel like I was her most favorite girl in the world, like there was no one else that mattered to her at that moment in time when she shared her undivided attention with just me. She would get down on my level, eye to eye, while reaching for my hand, then look at me and ask how my day was that day, while never failing to remind me of how pretty I was. I would many times reach my arms as far as they would go around her waste and hug on to her while looking up with the biggest smile as she pulled the back of my head up against her. Have you ever felt so much love for, and from, someone that you felt like you were related to them?
One day after school, as I always did, I ran up to the dutch door to get my items signed out to me to play with from Ms Marty, but to my amazement, someone else was there that I had never seen before. I asked, "Where is Ms. Marty?", the man said, "She is no longer going to be here". Startled, I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Ms Marty is getting married and has moved away." My heart stopped beating inside my chest. My feelings went numb and I couldn't move. Ms Marty would not go away and leave me, I knew she wouldn't. She loved me and I loved her. I was her favorite girl. Wasn't I her favorite girl? Tears began to start streaming down my face as the reality of what the man had said started to set in. I began to run, and I ran, and I ran, and I ran. With tears failing to slow, I ran in my house and into my room and onto my bed and threw myself down face first and cried more in uncontrollable non-stop fashion. "Ms Marty please don't leave me!" I kept saying out loud to myself over and over and over again as the tears saturated my pillow. "Please don';t leave me Ms Marty!", I could be heard saying as my mother ran in wondering what the commotion was all about. "What's the matter honey?!", she said, in her concerned voice to her little girl.
In a shaken and broken hyperventilated voice, I said, "Mamma, Ms Marty has left me and she's not coming back the man at school said!" I was telling her in between sobs of labored breathing with snot now running down my nose. "She can't leave me mamma, she just can't!". I said and repeated again. Sweetie, it's going to be all right, she said, as she grabbed the back of my head and pulled it into her breasts, snotty nose and all, as the tears continued to flow. "But I was her favorite girl mamma, I know I was, she told me so! ...were my words muffled against her chest, "And she left me and never told me she was leaving!!" "Why did she leave me mamma, why?!!"
Mamma told me that maybe she didn't want to tell any of us because it hurt her as well to have to go away from all the children that she loved so much. For days I cried until finally I had no more tears left to cry. Yes, just a childhood infatuation for me, true love from a girl that showed a little blonde haired Swedish girl so much love and affection. And it was Ms Marty that taught me what real love was all about. From that day forward, I now knew real love when I saw it.
All the way through this story of Ms Marty I have cried while writing and reliving that tragic event for a 10 year old infatuated girl who's world fell in on her so many years ago for the love of another girl.
But behind every cloud the sun is still shining. I still love her today for who she was to me and everything she taught me about true love.
And that same true love can, and is, being experienced by millions of girls around the world, today as we celebrate International Women's Day. But not just International Women's Day, but every day, as we celebrate the acceptance of many of those same women and girls in love with their gender and with each other.
Isn't that the way it should be? As I draw inspiration from that same infatuated innocent little girls heart I now ask the question...is the same true love still there in the world waiting to find it's way to another girls heart and then another and then another? And that same little girl's answer is...YES, IT IS!!
Please join with me and all lesbian girls in love today and every day as we celebrate the true love, LESBIAN LOVE, THAT SHOULD NEVER BE FORBIDDEN!!
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