Skip to main content

Why #2

 My earliest memory is feeling different from my peers at school, especially my male peers. I was only in 4th or 5th grade.

 

While my other male peers were into sports and doing other “macho” cliche guy stuff like baseball (I did have a short baseball stint until the end of farm team) it wasn’t for me. I enjoyed spending more of my time in the library or visiting older relatives with my mom. 

 

My teachers would compliment me on my beautiful handwriting, but I was often teased by my peers for “writing like a girl”. I don’t remember ever sticking up for myself, but I was often in the principal’s office for acting out or talking too much in class.

 

I struggled through my elementary and middle school years, wondering how I would be received by my family, my friends, my peers, and my community when I came out as gay.

 

During my junior year of high school, I finally confided in a so-called friend after a school dance and was immediately outed. Sent into a panic, I had to rush to be the first to tell my family before the news got back to them, which it often did at other times while growing up. 

 

Because I had an older cousin who was gay and well accepted in our family, deep down I had suspected they would be accepting of me too. And they were. And in the end many people weren’t even shocked. 

 

I joined Equity Buckfield because I support the idea that kids shouldn’t have to live in fear or wait until late in life to come out as who they really are. 


.


.


.


#equitybuckfield #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtq[half rainbow emoji] #lgbtqia #lgbtpride #lgbtcommuity #lgbtsupporter

#equity #equityandinclusion #allyship #ally

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why #1

  My (white) father was in the Air Force and stationed in Alaska. He had the good fortune to be invited to go whale hunting with the Inupiaq in Kotzebue. As they came back to shore, my father saw my beautiful mother standing by the water and fell in love. They married and traveled around the world thanks to dad's job in the Air Force. My family finally settled in Maine. We still moved throughout Maine in my younger years, making it difficult to make connections. At one school I was called a "n*gger" by a fellow student and went home to ask my sister what it meant. At another school, I had no friends and usually spent recess sitting by myself. I was always aware that I was different. In addition to being half Inupiaq, I was also coming to terms with being gay. Eventually, we moved to a tourist town where we stayed until my high school graduation. I was one of maybe ten people of color in my school. Lovingly, my friends would call me "Lil' Eskimo." I felt like...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why #7

  “I’m here as a Christian, as a parent, as a former conservative Republican, and as a community member who loves my small town. My faith instructs me to love my neighbor as myself. My love for my town compels me to recognize its faults and try to make it better. My experience as a parent reminds me daily that every human being is someone’s child.  Since becoming a parent, I have watched crying children be intentionally ripped from their parents’ arms at the southern border; learned of the horrific suicide rates of transgender teens; and watched George Floyd beg for his mother as he took his final breaths. I started to realize the ways in which my own ignorance was contributing to these horrors. I began to imagine what it would feel like to be a mother at the southern border, or the mother of a transgender child, or the mother of a Black man murdered at the hands of the police. I committed to listen. I was raised colorblind and taught that Pride flags were unnecessary celebrat...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why #4

  ******TRIGGER WARNING: Physical and emotional abuse, violent language/slurs********** If you walked by me in the halls of my high school in 1999/2000 you probably wouldn’t know I was there. And trust me, I was hard to miss: Neon green Mohawk, bright red shoes and black shirt and shorts. Against the maroon and white bricks and lockers, I was definitely a sore thumb. Those who did notice me were the popular kids. The football players. The cheerleaders. Wasn’t I the lucky one? They even gave me cool nicknames: Faggot, loser, fatty, chunk, and....you get the idea.  That year I remember talking to a teacher about how I felt; a far stretch for a shy kid like myself. That teacher told me “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” So I did. I joined the football team.  Excited, I suited up for my first practice ready to take on the world. But what I had done was take the target that was always on my back and replaced it with a name and number. I was abused, beaten, and humiliated. The ...
Post a Comment
Read more