music, books, love and kindness

 

I swear books "fall" into my lap just when I need them the most. Feeling a bit down one day last week after earlier overhearing an acquaintance use a very harsh anti-gay word, I stumbled onto Love Devours:Tales Of Monstrous Affection by Sarah Diemer and immediately downloaded it to my iBooks app.

 

Authors such as Ms. Dimer actually have the power to save lives

...and I am perfectly serious here, saying something anyone who grew up knowing he or she was gay and not having a soul to talk about it with will understand.

 

The most vital part of Love Devours is the introduction where Ms. Diemer writes:

 

I was born a monster.
 

That’s what the protesters at the Pride Parade told me, anyway, bellowing into a megaphone while they held up a sign that announced "all gays go to hell."

 

I was born gay. This is considered, by many, to be monstrous, which is, of course, the opposite of truth. But from the very beginning, I knew I was strange, different, so it’s no surprise, of course, that I turned to the monsters of myth, of legend, of fairy tale, devouring their stories as their stories devoured me.

 

Explaining quite eloquently a bit more why monsters so appeal to her Ms. Diemer adds:

 

This book is for every girl and boy who has ever been called a monster. Every woman and man deemed monstrous for being different.

 You are wild. You are strong. You are fierce and free.

 

If there had been books like this around when I was younger, I might have had a whole different way of seeing things and not believed through most of my teens and early 20s I was doomed to eternity in Hell, no matter that I desperately tried to ignore who I was inside.

For authors like Sarah Diemer I am grateful, especially because there are kids living in today's world (gay friendly society or not) who still desperately need to hear what she has to say.