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Hello everyone.
As you know...Recently, Jay and I did our contribution to the "It Gets Better Project" with him, myself, and the kids...
and when we made that video..
It left me with some things that I really wanted to say, that I didn't get to say.
So I've wrote a letter and I'm dedicating this letter to those who have recently passed away, which...the list..
This is for Justin Aaberg...fifteen years old...of Anoka, Minnesota
Billy Lucas...fifteen years old...of Greensburg, Indiana
Asher Brown...thirteen years old...of Harris, Texas.
Seth Walsh...thirteen years old...of Tehachapi, California
Tyler Clementi..eighteen years old...Ridgewood, New Jersey
and Raymond Chase..nineteen years old..Providence, Rhode Island
and for all the other gay teens out there who never made a blog, or the news, or the list.
Because we know that this is the short list. This is the people that we get to hear about. It's not everybody. It may not even be ten percent of everybody.
I also wrote this letter to dedicate it to those who are coming out later in life, because those feelings that...
..hit us so hard in high school, can still hit us when we're thirty, forty, fifty years old.
And I wrote it also for myself. For...
..in my teen years when I was struggling and feeling just as alone.
So...this is my love letter to anybody who's coming out.
Dear hurting soul,
You don't know me...but I know you.
I may not know your name, or where you live, or what your favorite color is...but I know you.
That's because I've been you.
I know that you have been suffering in silence and alone for so long that you don't believe that anybody could possibly understand the way you feel...
but I promise you from the bottom of my heart that, that is not true.
You might be staring at the stars over your home and wondering why God made you this way.
You may be sitting in the dark, as I used to do, and blaming it all on the devil and wondering why your not strong enough to fight off that temptation....
trust me you haven't failed anybody.
.Maybe your cheeks are burning with shame as you try to ignore the guys sitting behind you in class who are laughing..
you can feel everyone's eyes on you and know that it's you they are laughing at.
You hear them say ***, ***, or ***...***..
...and wonder if they know about you, or if they're just getting lucky.
No matter which...every time seems to remind you that you don't belong.
So you bury it down deep inside...but there's so much of it in there now that it threatens to drown you.
You hear the pastor on Sunday talk about how homosexuals are sinners who have turned their back on God...
and instead chosen a life of *** perversion...
That they have no place in heaven...
and you silently die inside yourself and ask...
Is that me?...It can't be me. It's impossible. I won't let it be me.
Maybe your Dad makes comments about...
how all *** should die and that he'll never let his kids become one.
Your mom shakes her head and says she's sorry for those sick sad people who have chosen to live their life that way...
...she goes on about a coworker she knows who is alone and alcoholic and who she suspects might have ***
and then you know...
that you will never be able to tell them about you...and you die a little bit more.
"Mom and Dad I love you...but I can never tell you these things because I know you will not understand how hard I fought it...
how hard I wished to be different...and how it never changed.
You are too important to me to lose....so I will continue to hide it."
Most of us can remember what it feels like to know that your different and to be utterly alone with that knowledge.
Remember what it was like to see others falling in love...holding hands...
kissing In the hallways at school, or on the walk home from school...
...behind the bleachers...
seeing the pictures of the power couples in the year book and wondering when It will be my turn.
"Who can I love that will love me back like that?"
Maybe that friend you secretly love...but can never tell because you don't know if he or she is gay and telling them is just too much risk.
So you date someone of the opposite sex...because that's what your supposed to do, and you hide the truth...
from your family...from your friends, and most especially...from your self.
Perhaps you are lucky enough to admit to yourself in the mirror that you are gay.
though...
I know taking that great leap does not mean that you can share that knowledge with anybody else.
Maybe you can tell a friend...or one of your parents...
but that does not take away from the soul scouring loneliness you live with everyday at school and elsewhere...
as you live with the knowledge that telling others about yourself, could mean total rejection and possibly violence.
The knowledge that there is no safe place for you.
I lived most of the examples that I have just talked about.
As did many of us who grew up and made it into adulthood.
We can remember with ease the burn of shame from each taunt.
We can remember the pain of loneliness that promised to never go away...
...but one day it did.
We can remember waking up to the knowledge that we were different from everyone in our family and all of our friends
and how it was like a knife twisting in our gut everyday.
Those are feelings and times that so many of us have had to come through that we will never forget them.
We made the plans...we found the pills...made a few cuts...wrote the notes...and stood on the edge of countless bridges...
knowing to the core of our souls that dying was the only way out.
It was not.
Some of us carried through with our decisions only to fail...
others stayed the act because something inside us said "maybe tomorrow..but not yet".
Without surviving those dark times, we would not know what we do today...
We would not know what our love looks like when she's sleeping.
We would not know that we would one day be a husband to someone we can not imagine life without.
We would not know how the sun could shine in our daughters and sons eyes.
We would not know how much these people would need us...and us them.
or how beautiful the world can look when we are not in pain
and how many adventures we were going to have because the road seemed so long getting there.
but all you have to do to get there...is show up.
The jocks at the back of the class who call you a ***?
They leave high school and they quickly discover that they are not the top of the food chain anymore.
The mean girls who made your life a living hell because she thought she owned the world?...same for her.
I remember seeing those people again, many years after I left high school....
the jocks had gotten fat...
and the pretty girls had faded into the crowd of pregnant moms...
and I realized in those moments that we were all the same.
I won't kid you...life will hold lots of amazing moments for you...but it will also kick you in the teeth.
It wont be easy and some days it will still be a fight.
You will find love..and maybe lose it a few times.
You will fight through that feeling of being alone against the world many more times.
...and the world knows how to make you hurt.
but in the end...
for all the scars you will carry...
for all the lines of care you will get on your face...
and for each gray hair...
you will have so many moments and memories that you will treasure.
And for myself...
as much pain as I have experienced and as much as I had at times wished that I was someone else...
or that I could go back in time and change things...I don't wish those things anymore.
I know that without them I could not be here...and here is a pretty good place to be.
I used to wish I was blonde haired and blue eyed..
like the guy everyone loved in my fifth grade class..
or that everyone would love me if I knew how to dance.
I used to wish I could get back to a day before everything in my life went wrong.
sometimes I still feel that pull.
but I could never give up the love of my husband and children for that.
I realise now, that all the stuff I have gone through has brought me to them...
and I will not trade that for anything.
all I had to do was show up.
keep getting out of bed everyday.
Keep being just who I was.
and life did the rest.
So if you are feeling that you are alone, that no one will understand the torment that you live with day in and day out...
that you will lose everyone you love if your secret is known...
that you are suffering the bulling of others because you are out, or merely suspected of being gay...
Please know that you are NOT alone.
So many of us have walked this road and we are waiting on the other side for you to get here.
Your life will change too...sometimes suddenly...other times, only by degrees.
Sometimes so strangely that you will wonder at lifes strange sense of humor.
But it will change and often in amazing ways...
and all you have to do is...show up.
From all of us who have been there...and from me...
see you on the other side.