He looks directly into your eyes when he tells you his secret. Your feet are dangling in the nearly scorching hot tub, eyes glued to his face, your finger nervously scratching against the cold cement of the pool as you listen to him weave the story of his hidden life with the life you know, his words interlaced amid embarrassed pauses and tardy apologies. Stale chlorine and leftover cigarette smoke fill the room and you’ve got the distinct feeling that you’re in some sort of really bad soap opera, or at least a reality television show prank. There is simply no way that your best friend of four years is telling you that he is gay as you perch awkwardly on the side of a grungy hotel hot tub at midnight on a Sunday in the middle of San Antonio freaking Texas. “It’s just something I’ve known forever,” he tells you, still looking straight up into your frozen face. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to push it out of my mind, to pretend that it’s not who I am, but it is. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” he emphasizes the last bit and grabs your hand for effect. You both notice at the same time that your finger is bleeding; raw from the monotone scratching it’s made against the hard cement of the concrete below you for at least an hour now. You examine it and realize that you don’t feel the pain. You’re numb, maybe. You dip the open sore into the murky water and watch as the blood forms thin ripples around your finger; thick scarlet circles threading into each other wildly, never dissipating. He is talking now about all his experiences, the freedom of finally getting to be himself, of how his coming out over the past few months has made him actually feel whole; you’re not really listening, though, because you can’t. How cruel is the world that you can’t feel your swollen and throbbing finger, but every word he says is piercing through you with a force that actually leaves you struggling to breathe normally? You prefer the pain of your finger. He slows his story as you nod at the right times and offer an encouraging smile when you can, and you know you’ve never seen him this peaceful before in your life. You study him and try to remember how it felt when you didn't know him as anything more than a kid at swim practice. You try to remember how it felt to be around him before you had bonded together, grown together, laughed together through years of middle school and now high school. Like maybe if none of that had happened then none of this would be happening now. And now he’s pausing long enough to allow you a few words, but the only ones your brain can muster are speckled with cliché phrases like, “support you no matter what”, “so proud of you”, “this must be difficult” and you know this has to be some kind of messed up soap opera for real now. The truth is you’re not ready for this, not yet. You need time to process, time to understand, and time to accept. You can’t do any of that right now. You are so happy for him, and you are so proud of him (I am, I am), but you’re also completely unprepared for this.
I wrote the above narrative a couple of days after the incident being described occurred. I was just sixteen years old, incredibly naive, and confused by my friend’s admission that he was gay. I didn’t know what to do so I decided to write about it in my diary. The actual diary entry spans six whole pages of words – some coherent and organized like the paragraph above, others were simply random words, poetic rants, and nonsense. It’s hard for me to go back and read what I wrote during that time not only because I hate to remind myself of my ignorance back then but because it’s hard to remember a time when I was so intensely uncomfortable with myself. I did not like or accept my friend’s confession, and deep down I just could not understand why this was the case. All I knew was that the actual act of sitting down, taking a deep breath, and putting my words to paper was the only thing that made those feelings subside.
Looking back, I am embarrassed at my unwillingness originally to accept that my friend was gay. I have given a lot of thought to why I resisted for so long and I have concluded that much of it is due to my upbringing. I was raised in a Christian church and attended a Christian school from elementary school all the way through 8th grade. There I was taught that not only was homosexuality was a sin, but anyone who supported or accepted the homosexual life was essentially condemning themselves to hell. Though I have a family who does not believe this, my parents never exactly went out of their way to teach me their beliefs on the subject. I struggled for a long time to reconcile what I was taught about homosexuality and what I was supposed to believe as a Christian. I read articles online, watched the news, and talked with friends who had differing opinions on the subject. I got caught up in the debate of whether homosexuality was a choice or a God-given trait - and even considering the latter put my entire view of Christianity in jeopardy. My dad always used to tell me that Jesus’ main mission statement was to teach humanity the concept of love, compassion, and forgiveness. How, then, could I obey what I had been taught as God’s so-called belief about homosexuality being a sin doing as Jesus wanted us to do – love? All of it ended up making my head spin and left me feeling more confused and angry than ever.
Then one day I began to ask myself the questions that really mattered. Why should I condemn my friend simply because of his sexual orientation? Why should I treat him with any less respect than I would a heterosexual friend? That’s when I realized something that changed the way I look at almost everything controversial in this world. I realized that just because my friend was gay (of course, he had been all along, but it was as if he was newly gay to me at the time) didn’t mean he was going to change. I took my thoughts of my own selfish head, stopped considering my own personal beliefs, and began to realize what was going on in the world around me regarding homosexuality. I came to the conclusion that it is simply unconscionable to treat a gay person with any less respect than you would a straight person. I came to the conclusion that it was not right to deny a gay person any rights that you would give a straight person. I came to the conclusion that when it came to homosexuality, I didn’t have to have all the answers to make the right decision. I came to the conclusion that I loved my friend no matter what and I would make it my own personal decision to support him.
Of course, this realization took time. Truth be told, my exploration of my beliefs in this area is still not complete. A lot of what has aided me in my quest, however, is what I have learned this year at the University of Texas. Before I began this Plan II World Literature class, I had never been so challenged to put my beliefs in front of people. Leadership – one of the core values of this university and this course – had evaded me prior to taking this class, especially when it came to expressing my own personal beliefs regarding religion, compassion, and the rights of humans and animals. Our almost daily blogs where we were forced to pick a stance and support it – often regarding very hot-button subjects – helped me find the courage to address within myself and to you as a class that I do support homosexuality and want to use my newly acquired leadership skills to take a stance in supporting it. However, I worry that the emphasis this course has placed on STATING MY UNEQUIVOCAL OPINION has made me too self-assured, at times, in my own beliefs. I always want to keep in mind that there is more than one way to look at things and this class sometimes instills in me the opposite - that whatever I believe in enough to write a blog about must be true. I need to be careful of this hindrance to my ability to lead clearly and fairly.
Another class that has aided me this year was my freshman TC: Emerging Selves. The class studied the autobiographical impulse in women’s writing and I not only learned to improve my writing skills greatly, but I got to research incredible women who were all pioneers of literature and feminism. It might sound corny, but many of those incredibly strong women have become my role models. Of course, it didn’t help that my incredible teacher taught me new and interesting styles of writing and story-telling that I had never before considered. My teacher and the incredible female authors I studied each taught me that the power of writing – the power of words alone – is a mighty force.
So, what now? I have been through quite a journey to be sure. What began as a teenager’s desire to please her family and school while still treating a friend with kindness has transformed into something I am passionate about. I know the struggles that my friend went through and is still going through and though he is thankfully surrounded by loving people who support him no matter what, I know that many gay youth are not so lucky. I would like to explore opportunities while still here at UT to help gay youth understand that they are loved. Possible ways to do this would be helping out with university suicide hotlines and perhaps even just standing around near the FAC handing out flyers informing gay youth that it is OKAY to be homosexual – and even to be proud of it!
No comments:
Post a Comment