This is for all the young people, especially the young dykes and gay boys, the bi-girls and trans kids, who find it hard to see the bright side of things when they are being relentlessly harassed at school. Here are two adults telling you seriously: it gets better. You just have to survive the crap and you'll get there. If you don't believe that for yourself, trust your elders, because we know. Life is good, eventually. Your job is to get there. Don't give in. Don't give up.
(Thanks, Dianne.)
I was lucky--I was never bullied. But I still felt the awful disparity between what I knew I wanted from life and what the world was willing to allow, between who I was and who I was expected to be. I was at a Catholic convent school and I liked girls. A lot. I dealt with this by doing my best to ignore it until I was sixteen--and beyond the reach of prosecution--and by drinking. A lot. But then I turned sixteen and, woo hoo!
I talk about it here:
Yep, this particular episode ended badly--because all first love affairs do. It's not a queer thing, it's a human thing. And though it feels like the end of the world, it's just the end of a love affair. I found another (and another, and...) And now I've been with Kelley 22 years.
Life is good. It really is. And it keeps getting better.
