Trigger Warning: This post contains information relating to self-harm and suicide which may be triggering to those who have experiences with these subjects.
_______________________________________________________________________________
I vividly remember the conversations that followed coming out for the first time. My eyes felt raw, my skin felt open, and everything inside of me shook and ached. I remember hugs from my mom and dad, closed-door conversations where I sat and quietly cried to them. I remember the slow, heavy words that came out of my mouth, words dripping with tears, words caked with the pain of so much silence.
The worlds of hurt I had held inside of me for years slowly poured out, caught by the love and acceptance of my parents who taught me the true meaning of unconditional love, kindness, and self-worth.
From then on (and in times past) the love I received from my parents acted as a net of comfort that kept me from falling permanently into depression and anxiety even in the most difficult of moments.
Each and every day, I know how lucky I am to have this. I am so lucky to have parents who love me.
In the days following my coming out, however, an odd fear began to cultivate inside of me. I began to fear anger. I was not and am not an angry person. Throughout my whole life, anger always just sort of turned into sadness. Or, I could just understand why someone did what they did and move on quickly. I forgive easily. I love unconditionally. I try to see all perspectives before approaching anything. But, even then, I knew that there would come a day when I would be able to feel all of the anger that one develops from oppression and discrimination, from seeing and feeling so much wrongdoing against oneself and others.
I haven't felt this anger until last Sunday, when 49 people died at the LGBTQ club, Pulse, in Orlando.
The 49 victims, their stories... When I think about them I feel a knot in my throat so big I can’t swallow. My heart sinks every time I think about Eddie Justice or every time I watch that video of the mother who can’t find her son. ‘Is he alive?,’ she wonders, she cries. So much confusion and fear. She made him, she loves him, she can’t bear the thought of him being gone. Yet...
They were lovers, friends, families… all stricken down with bullets or grief or trauma. Laughing in one moment, death raining down minutes later in a place they thought they were so safe.
And, no. I'm not Orlando and I thank god I'm not. I thank god I'm alive. I thank god that I was not in a club with bullets and blood and screaming and a maniac who didn't care that they were all people, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, parents, lovers, friends, god damned humans.
The amount of empathy and pain I feel for you, Orlando, is beyond words. I can only express my deep sorrow to the families, friends, and partners who lost someone they loved so much. I know that your pain is so heavy. I know that the world feels so very dark right now. You are so much in my thoughts every moment. I don't know what to do to make it better.
I write this letter now to try to articulate my thoughts, to process what happened, or to send out a message that I hope resonates with someone out there. In reflecting on all of it, I reflect on my past, and the things that can lead to the violence that occurred last Sunday.
A heavy pot of grief and anger boils inside of me, as I’m sure it does many of you, too. There are so many things involved in what happened that I don't know how to process. So many things I don't want to process or even think about. It's all so complicated. It's all so tied together.
And we hear it all everyday...
We hear:
Pulse
ISIS
Donald Trump
Build the wall
GOP won't recognize LGBT death
Gun control
Assault-style rifle
Terrorism
Religious freedom bills
Islamophobia
Make American Great Again
Homophobia
Transphobia
no perverts in bathrooms
Racism
Police Brutality
Don't Shoot
He was innocent
or
she was innocent
he is guilty
rape
alcohol
bicycles
war
poverty
but they do nothing
or
why
don't
people
care?
why
don't
we
do
anything?
I think of my momma and how she read me sweet stories when I was little, when I could never imagine that the world would be so complicated.
and I think: Momma, I can't stand it. I can't understand it. Who forgot to teach their son how to love? Who forgot to show this person kindness? Why don't people listen to one another like you taught me to listen?
And I am filled with anger. Because even now, after the death of 49 people, so many of them still don't listen. It's all just one big fight about guns and ISIS and Donald Trump and Islamophobia and homophobia and policies and politics and the list goes on. It feels like no one is listening to one another. Sometimes, I get afraid of the future. I fear the day when I will one day have to try to explain to my children how or why people commit acts of hatred against one another, how or why people can be so vile, how or why people can be so...inhumane.
When I was small, I had a "Save the World" themed birthday party and it was so simple. There was a cake with blue and green frosting made to look like earth and I imagined that all of the people on that earth loved each other. And when things were hard, people loved each other harder, and that was it.
But, Momma, all of those ideas feel far away.
Those 49 people were so beautiful. They just wanted to be free and alive, just like I want to be free and alive. They just wanted to laugh and dance and love and be themselves in a world that told them they shouldn't.
But they had that safe space. They had that place to be.
And someone took that away.
And now,
I can't stop thinking about all of the times in my life when I have thought about death.
I can't stop thinking about all of the times in my life when I felt targeted and hurt.
I think of the days before my big drive to California with you and the arguments I had with Daddy about the stickers on the back of my car.
I think of the morning we would depart to California, how he woke up before me so that he could scratch the very obvious LGBTQ equality stickers off of my car, so that we would be safe on our journey driving across the south.
Because he knew people could be violent. Because he knew that some people would want to hurt me. Because even though he accepted me with all of his heart, other people didn’t.
I remember quietly staring at the scratched off bits of stickers in his hands, staring at his face that said he was sorry, an unspoken reminder that my daddy was afraid for me. Because he knew what people could do.
And, Daddy, I knew, too. I hope you know that I understood and love you.
Pulse reminds me that it’s always been life and death.
It was life and death so many years ago, when I laid in bed at night, clenching my fists, crying and crying and crying because no one knew me, and “God hated me,” and I loved but shouldn’t love and oh how I wanted to change and there was a knife on my shelf and I could just
I think of the times I placed the knife against my skin,
the times I stopped and put it back on the shelf,
but more importantly
the times I didn’t
the times I pulled the knife across, slowly and fiercely, with a self-hatred that grew in me,
a self-hatred fed by:
“gays deserve death”
“perverts”
that goddamned lonely closet
and the times that I watched my blood seep out,
blood that made me so sad,
blood that I hated because it was my blood and it came from inside of me
blood that confused me
because it was red like everyone else’s blood
and confused me
because my heart could beat, too, like everyone else’s heart
and confused me
because I thought I was gentle and good and kind
but
the world told me I was not.
It told me:
Gays are perverts,
pedophiles,
abominations, and
God hates fags, and
fags brought Katrina to New Orleans and
I don’t think people realize, even now, that when I look inside of myself I see that I am built by all of these things.
I am built by the
“I don’t want her and her partner around my children at Christmas”
the “I love the sinner but hate the sin”
the “It’s sick and wrong. You’re supposed to fight it”
the "They're out to get your children"
the "I wish the guy had killed more of them"
I am built by
the hands that were too scared to hold mine back and
the stares from others even when we weren’t scared
I am built by
the years of self-hatred and loneliness
the thoughts of suicide
the social norms that told me I shouldn’t exist
the ever present concern of violence
My love for others has been invalidated throughout my life.
My identity has been invalidated throughout my life.
I have been told I should not be alive.
I have been told I am not equal.
I have been told that I do not matter as much as you.
People need to understand that we are conditioned by our environments. It's not just about policy. It's about sentiment, words, and actions. Words can hurt so much. Words can break people down. They can move people to do things. Wonderful things, terrible things.
Even though I have the most accepting family in the world, the sentiment and words of others still got to me.
Like the time I threw up at my friend's house in junior high school because I had thoughts of kissing her. I remembered the horrible things she and her family said about gay people. I became so afraid of those thoughts and feelings that that I couldn't keep it inside anymore and
everything came out of my stomach and
I told her I was just sick. I was fine.
Just give me a minute.
or like the time the parents in Alabama escorted their children out of the hot tub when they realized my girlfriend and I were in there together, too, holding hands, loving and happy.
I still remember that specific moment in the hot tub more than the moment later that night
when we laid on the beach, under the stars, listening to the ocean,
when she held me and told me she loved me.
And it's not just actions that make a difference, it’s sentiment, too.
I can't tell you how many hands have been pulled from mine,
scared lovers who didn't want others to know they liked women, didn't want to be judged or known.
We'd be holding hands or something, and, suddenly, someone else would enter the room.
Even if I finally felt comfortable in my own skin, she didn't, because others still made her feel wrong about it,
and what if her parents found out? and what if they didn't love her anymore?
It's heartbreaking to think about what that kind of sentiment can do to someone, even someone who is trying so hard to be themselves and love someone else freely.
Because I don't understand why anyone would think it was wrong.
I just cared about the depth in her eyes
or the way she felt in my arms
or how bright the world felt when I was with her
or her sweet voice and all of the beautiful things she said
and how much I loved her.
Since the attack in Orlando, I have been trying to find the words to articulate why this all cuts so deep.
This was an attack against the LGBTQ community, my community. This was an attack in which someone felt enough justification in their negative sentiments towards the LGBTQ community that they committed a massive act of violence that killed 49 of us.
In many ways, I can’t help but feel that what happened in Orlando was an extension of the hatred that exists in America just below the surface of violence.
Anti-LGBTQ bills, lack of protection in schools, jobs, bathrooms, healthcare facilities, etc.
The little things people say everyday to LGBTQ people when they are uncomfortable and/or intolerant.
Exclusion justified by religion. The very idea that same-sex love or different gender identities are abominations, gross, or morally wrong.
These ideas and actions, like those I have articulated earlier in this letter, all connect and build.
They build the fabric of justified violence. They build a fabric of hurt and isolation and oppression.
We have to notice this. We have to see this pattern in society. And, above all things, we have to address it.
Not even a day after the Orlando massacre, American people said that more people should have been killed at Pulse. Let that sink in. People, some who act as leaders in churches, said that more individuals should have been killed in the largest mass murder in U.S. history.
I can’t comprehend that kind of thinking.
This sentiment—this sentiment that anyone at all is less than, unworthy, or deserving of death—has to stop. Throughout my life, I have been kept hopeful by the idea that the world is good. The simple idea that we we all want the same basic things in life. We all just want to be happy. We all just want things to work out for us, to have the things we need for ourselves and the people we love, to survive in whatever capacity we might survive.
We as a society have to start taking a more active role in loving one another. We have to take a greater stand in caring for each other, to see one another as beautiful and important and worthy.
We have to take greater action in trying to understand someone's unique experiences, thoughts, and feelings.
We can't build walls.
We have to stop judging one another.
And hating one another.
And fighting.
I hope you hear the urgency. Our world depends on this.
Hope, love, kindness: these are not fluffy ideas that have no true effect.
These are ideas that matter. Ideas that make a difference in moving us forward.
Ideas that bring us together in the worst moments.
Help to cultivate a culture of kindness and humanity, not a culture of animosity, discomfort, and division. This is true for all sides, even when it’s difficult. Share your love for others, embrace community, and humanize everyone. One of the worst mistakes I believe we can make as individuals and as a society is to dehumanize another person. Even if you disagree with someone else’s perspective, try to empathize, understand, and have an actual in-person conversation about it. You’d be surprised by what it can do. Talk directly to others, hear their stories, see the soul in the skin. My LGBTQ folks who are hurting, allow those who have wronged you to grow and learn, as many people just don’t get it yet. They will.
After such great tragedy and in such divided times, we have to start being intentional about the kindness and level of good we create in the world. It’s important. It’s necessary. It’s everything.
Our future depends on how we deal with this great loss and what meaning we choose to take from it. What we do now and next makes all of the difference.
"And for that brief moment,
I heard the whole earth groaning
like there was something that it needed me to do."
–Wild Sweet Oranges
The worlds of hurt I had held inside of me for years slowly poured out, caught by the love and acceptance of my parents who taught me the true meaning of unconditional love, kindness, and self-worth.
From then on (and in times past) the love I received from my parents acted as a net of comfort that kept me from falling permanently into depression and anxiety even in the most difficult of moments.
Each and every day, I know how lucky I am to have this. I am so lucky to have parents who love me.
In the days following my coming out, however, an odd fear began to cultivate inside of me. I began to fear anger. I was not and am not an angry person. Throughout my whole life, anger always just sort of turned into sadness. Or, I could just understand why someone did what they did and move on quickly. I forgive easily. I love unconditionally. I try to see all perspectives before approaching anything. But, even then, I knew that there would come a day when I would be able to feel all of the anger that one develops from oppression and discrimination, from seeing and feeling so much wrongdoing against oneself and others.
I haven't felt this anger until last Sunday, when 49 people died at the LGBTQ club, Pulse, in Orlando.
The 49 victims, their stories... When I think about them I feel a knot in my throat so big I can’t swallow. My heart sinks every time I think about Eddie Justice or every time I watch that video of the mother who can’t find her son. ‘Is he alive?,’ she wonders, she cries. So much confusion and fear. She made him, she loves him, she can’t bear the thought of him being gone. Yet...
They were lovers, friends, families… all stricken down with bullets or grief or trauma. Laughing in one moment, death raining down minutes later in a place they thought they were so safe.
And, no. I'm not Orlando and I thank god I'm not. I thank god I'm alive. I thank god that I was not in a club with bullets and blood and screaming and a maniac who didn't care that they were all people, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, parents, lovers, friends, god damned humans.
The amount of empathy and pain I feel for you, Orlando, is beyond words. I can only express my deep sorrow to the families, friends, and partners who lost someone they loved so much. I know that your pain is so heavy. I know that the world feels so very dark right now. You are so much in my thoughts every moment. I don't know what to do to make it better.
I write this letter now to try to articulate my thoughts, to process what happened, or to send out a message that I hope resonates with someone out there. In reflecting on all of it, I reflect on my past, and the things that can lead to the violence that occurred last Sunday.
A heavy pot of grief and anger boils inside of me, as I’m sure it does many of you, too. There are so many things involved in what happened that I don't know how to process. So many things I don't want to process or even think about. It's all so complicated. It's all so tied together.
And we hear it all everyday...
We hear:
Pulse
ISIS
Donald Trump
Build the wall
GOP won't recognize LGBT death
Gun control
Assault-style rifle
Terrorism
Religious freedom bills
Islamophobia
Make American Great Again
Homophobia
Transphobia
no perverts in bathrooms
Racism
Police Brutality
Don't Shoot
He was innocent
or
she was innocent
he is guilty
rape
alcohol
bicycles
war
poverty
but they do nothing
or
why
don't
people
care?
why
don't
we
do
anything?
I think of my momma and how she read me sweet stories when I was little, when I could never imagine that the world would be so complicated.
and I think: Momma, I can't stand it. I can't understand it. Who forgot to teach their son how to love? Who forgot to show this person kindness? Why don't people listen to one another like you taught me to listen?
And I am filled with anger. Because even now, after the death of 49 people, so many of them still don't listen. It's all just one big fight about guns and ISIS and Donald Trump and Islamophobia and homophobia and policies and politics and the list goes on. It feels like no one is listening to one another. Sometimes, I get afraid of the future. I fear the day when I will one day have to try to explain to my children how or why people commit acts of hatred against one another, how or why people can be so vile, how or why people can be so...inhumane.
When I was small, I had a "Save the World" themed birthday party and it was so simple. There was a cake with blue and green frosting made to look like earth and I imagined that all of the people on that earth loved each other. And when things were hard, people loved each other harder, and that was it.
But, Momma, all of those ideas feel far away.
Those 49 people were so beautiful. They just wanted to be free and alive, just like I want to be free and alive. They just wanted to laugh and dance and love and be themselves in a world that told them they shouldn't.
But they had that safe space. They had that place to be.
And someone took that away.
And now,
I can't stop thinking about all of the times in my life when I have thought about death.
I can't stop thinking about all of the times in my life when I felt targeted and hurt.
I think of the days before my big drive to California with you and the arguments I had with Daddy about the stickers on the back of my car.
I think of the morning we would depart to California, how he woke up before me so that he could scratch the very obvious LGBTQ equality stickers off of my car, so that we would be safe on our journey driving across the south.
Because he knew people could be violent. Because he knew that some people would want to hurt me. Because even though he accepted me with all of his heart, other people didn’t.
I remember quietly staring at the scratched off bits of stickers in his hands, staring at his face that said he was sorry, an unspoken reminder that my daddy was afraid for me. Because he knew what people could do.
And, Daddy, I knew, too. I hope you know that I understood and love you.
Pulse reminds me that it’s always been life and death.
It was life and death so many years ago, when I laid in bed at night, clenching my fists, crying and crying and crying because no one knew me, and “God hated me,” and I loved but shouldn’t love and oh how I wanted to change and there was a knife on my shelf and I could just
I think of the times I placed the knife against my skin,
the times I stopped and put it back on the shelf,
but more importantly
the times I didn’t
the times I pulled the knife across, slowly and fiercely, with a self-hatred that grew in me,
a self-hatred fed by:
“gays deserve death”
“perverts”
that goddamned lonely closet
and the times that I watched my blood seep out,
blood that made me so sad,
blood that I hated because it was my blood and it came from inside of me
blood that confused me
because it was red like everyone else’s blood
and confused me
because my heart could beat, too, like everyone else’s heart
and confused me
because I thought I was gentle and good and kind
but
the world told me I was not.
It told me:
Gays are perverts,
pedophiles,
abominations, and
God hates fags, and
fags brought Katrina to New Orleans and
I don’t think people realize, even now, that when I look inside of myself I see that I am built by all of these things.
I am built by the
“I don’t want her and her partner around my children at Christmas”
the “I love the sinner but hate the sin”
the “It’s sick and wrong. You’re supposed to fight it”
the "They're out to get your children"
the "I wish the guy had killed more of them"
I am built by
the hands that were too scared to hold mine back and
the stares from others even when we weren’t scared
I am built by
the years of self-hatred and loneliness
the thoughts of suicide
the social norms that told me I shouldn’t exist
the ever present concern of violence
My love for others has been invalidated throughout my life.
My identity has been invalidated throughout my life.
I have been told I should not be alive.
I have been told I am not equal.
I have been told that I do not matter as much as you.
People need to understand that we are conditioned by our environments. It's not just about policy. It's about sentiment, words, and actions. Words can hurt so much. Words can break people down. They can move people to do things. Wonderful things, terrible things.
Even though I have the most accepting family in the world, the sentiment and words of others still got to me.
Like the time I threw up at my friend's house in junior high school because I had thoughts of kissing her. I remembered the horrible things she and her family said about gay people. I became so afraid of those thoughts and feelings that that I couldn't keep it inside anymore and
everything came out of my stomach and
I told her I was just sick. I was fine.
Just give me a minute.
or like the time the parents in Alabama escorted their children out of the hot tub when they realized my girlfriend and I were in there together, too, holding hands, loving and happy.
I still remember that specific moment in the hot tub more than the moment later that night
when we laid on the beach, under the stars, listening to the ocean,
when she held me and told me she loved me.
And it's not just actions that make a difference, it’s sentiment, too.
I can't tell you how many hands have been pulled from mine,
scared lovers who didn't want others to know they liked women, didn't want to be judged or known.
We'd be holding hands or something, and, suddenly, someone else would enter the room.
Even if I finally felt comfortable in my own skin, she didn't, because others still made her feel wrong about it,
and what if her parents found out? and what if they didn't love her anymore?
It's heartbreaking to think about what that kind of sentiment can do to someone, even someone who is trying so hard to be themselves and love someone else freely.
Because I don't understand why anyone would think it was wrong.
I just cared about the depth in her eyes
or the way she felt in my arms
or how bright the world felt when I was with her
or her sweet voice and all of the beautiful things she said
and how much I loved her.
Since the attack in Orlando, I have been trying to find the words to articulate why this all cuts so deep.
This was an attack against the LGBTQ community, my community. This was an attack in which someone felt enough justification in their negative sentiments towards the LGBTQ community that they committed a massive act of violence that killed 49 of us.
In many ways, I can’t help but feel that what happened in Orlando was an extension of the hatred that exists in America just below the surface of violence.
Anti-LGBTQ bills, lack of protection in schools, jobs, bathrooms, healthcare facilities, etc.
The little things people say everyday to LGBTQ people when they are uncomfortable and/or intolerant.
Exclusion justified by religion. The very idea that same-sex love or different gender identities are abominations, gross, or morally wrong.
These ideas and actions, like those I have articulated earlier in this letter, all connect and build.
They build the fabric of justified violence. They build a fabric of hurt and isolation and oppression.
We have to notice this. We have to see this pattern in society. And, above all things, we have to address it.
Not even a day after the Orlando massacre, American people said that more people should have been killed at Pulse. Let that sink in. People, some who act as leaders in churches, said that more individuals should have been killed in the largest mass murder in U.S. history.
I can’t comprehend that kind of thinking.
This sentiment—this sentiment that anyone at all is less than, unworthy, or deserving of death—has to stop. Throughout my life, I have been kept hopeful by the idea that the world is good. The simple idea that we we all want the same basic things in life. We all just want to be happy. We all just want things to work out for us, to have the things we need for ourselves and the people we love, to survive in whatever capacity we might survive.
We as a society have to start taking a more active role in loving one another. We have to take a greater stand in caring for each other, to see one another as beautiful and important and worthy.
We have to take greater action in trying to understand someone's unique experiences, thoughts, and feelings.
We can't build walls.
We have to stop judging one another.
And hating one another.
And fighting.
I hope you hear the urgency. Our world depends on this.
Hope, love, kindness: these are not fluffy ideas that have no true effect.
These are ideas that matter. Ideas that make a difference in moving us forward.
Ideas that bring us together in the worst moments.
Help to cultivate a culture of kindness and humanity, not a culture of animosity, discomfort, and division. This is true for all sides, even when it’s difficult. Share your love for others, embrace community, and humanize everyone. One of the worst mistakes I believe we can make as individuals and as a society is to dehumanize another person. Even if you disagree with someone else’s perspective, try to empathize, understand, and have an actual in-person conversation about it. You’d be surprised by what it can do. Talk directly to others, hear their stories, see the soul in the skin. My LGBTQ folks who are hurting, allow those who have wronged you to grow and learn, as many people just don’t get it yet. They will.
After such great tragedy and in such divided times, we have to start being intentional about the kindness and level of good we create in the world. It’s important. It’s necessary. It’s everything.
Our future depends on how we deal with this great loss and what meaning we choose to take from it. What we do now and next makes all of the difference.
"And for that brief moment,
I heard the whole earth groaning
like there was something that it needed me to do."
–Wild Sweet Oranges
