Growing up gay
Click to viewThere have been a frighteningly high number of suicides of gay teens as of late, and I'm finding it distressing, to say the least. Here we're supposedly in a more tolerant time, yet gays are still finding their lives made miserable enough to find death a better option. It's distressing in part because it's so familiar. High school reunions and the like are unthinkable for me because I was miserable through a good chunk of that time, to the point where ending it all seemed like a far better option than what I had.
I couldn't ever hide being gay -- anyone who knows me can hear my voice or see my mannerisms and it's fairly evident, and I remember envying those who weren't so obvious because my obviousness made me an easy target of harrassment. Now mind you, I didn't even come out or even DO anything with another man until I was 18, but that didn't stop me from, for example, being dubbed "Regina Fagstrom" by the assholes I went to school with, who would throw me into dumpsters and whip full cans of juice at my head while claiming that I had AIDS. My stuff would routinely go missing from gym lockers and one man caught in the act defended himself by saying, "He's gonna want to look at my dick and I don't want him near me."
I remember a certain amount of desperation when I realized that yes, I AM gay, and I couldn't picture living life as a gay man, if it meant enduring the shit I did then. I remember a certain amount of desperation as I flipped through my brother's porn mags, thinking, "... well maybe you're not really gay. I mean, you haven't DONE anything, so how COULD you be? This is what you need to be drawn to," as though flipping through Penthouse would extinguish my same-sex feelings. I remember feeling that the taunts meant that I was somehow less of a man, somehow less of a person, and by ACCEPTING my homosexuality that I WAS less of a man and less of a person.
While the last few years haven't been perfect, I'm content now in who I am, and can accept and enjoy what I am and, more importantly, who I'm with. It's heartbreaking that these kids never even got a chance to reach that point...