"Place" - by Bri Burning, International Person of Leather

 Next to be featured from Language of Love Issue #1 is Bri Burning, International Person of Leather 2020. 

Place” - By Bri Burning (she/her, they/them)

As I sit here after my two-hour virtual statistics class, I realize that I did not think that I would be where I am today. About a year ago, the world started to change due to the global pandemic. Many of us did not know how drastically our lives would change and for some, that change has been unbearable and life threatening. I did not know that I would lose my job to Covid-19 and that my future would shift due to this major change in the world and how we move through it. Yet, here I am behind a screen for more hours a day than I would like to admit. 

As I reflect, it feels like I have been on an adventure to find my place for all 29 years of my life. I grew up in a divorced home, one half religious and the other half secular. I knew from the age of five how to put on different masks to please whomever I was with. Even at that young age, I desired to find my place within my home, with my family. Being a queer kid and not knowing how to express yourself or knowing if you will be accepted was one of the tightest ropes I had tried to balance on, because the dominant society made it very clear that I was not welcome there as my authentic self. From the outside it may have looked different. I learned how to speak the lingo and act as the others did, so I did not have to face the pain of knowing that I did not belong. I remember the moment when I ripped the mask off that I had been wearing for seventeen years and faced my biggest fear: rejection. That was the day my biological father disowned me for being queer and kinky. 

When we discover kink, BDSM or Leather for the first time, the range of emotions are vast. For me, it was like coming home and having the option to spread my wings instead of cutting them off. At the age of eighteen, I felt both terrified and a sparkle of hope when I walked into my first dungeon. Over the next ten years, I continued to find my place and then be challenged with my fear of rejection repeatedly. Was I queer enough? Leather enough? Non-binary enough? Was my femme presentation too much? Was I too much? I was left with these questions from others. 

The desire to find my place in the world I had discovered, which felt like home, had slowly started to unravel me. You see, I had not processed or healed from that place of rejection. Therapy has done me wonders and has also allowed me to heal those places within me. Today, sitting behind this screen, I still wonder where my place will be tomorrow, in ten years, and in fifty. The longing to belong is one of human nature, part of our design. If I have learned one thing over this past year, it’s that I am a sparkly being that floats to where it is needed most and sometimes that place is the unknown. In a time of the unknown, I find comfort that my place is in the here and now. We can exist, change and grow and find the many places that add to our light.

Also coming this week, an interview with Francisco Perales, about his work with homeless veterans in the time of Covid, an in-depth interview of Eli Vega, who has a very unique perspective, being both a long-hauler and someone who was re-infected with Covid, and the Language of Love's artistic manifesto. Thank you for your support. To read other articles from Issue #1, please visit the following:

FB page for Mr. Long Beach Leather 2019: https://www.facebook.com/mrlbl2019

New Horizons For Fifty on FB: https://www.facebook.com/NewHorizonsForFifty

Thank you very much for your support!!!