Life

Hittin’ the keyboard like

Friends comin’ online like

DID YOu SEE tHE THINGg MY GOD

they’ve done a good job scaring us into the corners we came out of. i tremble at the idea of crowds full of other people, my body in rainbow paint. i will be meeting friends from high school and none of them know i’m gay. it terrifies me. i have no idea what they’d say. what if they ignore it. what if they make a big deal about it. what if they ask me how long i’ve been this way.

straight people tell me all the time that maybe it used to be dangerous to be in love with a girl, but i should stop complaining because marriage is legal. i think of how i still hear “gay” used as a slur, how every word i have for myself has been used as a curse word against me, how i have no identity that comes unsullied. i think of how every time i hold her hand in public i find my ears become satellite dishes, waiting to pick up on any incoming danger, always mid-flinch. i think about how their opinion of me changes when i tell them. i think about the cans thrown and the threats made and the fights that bloodied my teeth. i think about the arguments with my parents and the silence in churches and the shuffling of embarrassed feet. 

i’m telling myself i’ll go to pride and i’ll smile and i’ll have a good time. i’m telling myself i’ll be strong for those who can’t be. i’m telling myself thank god it’s 2017 and i live in the united states in a commonwealth that protects me. but the fact i have to rally just to walk in the streets says something. i feel sick when i think about where i’m going but proud about what i’m doing.

the closet was the worst place, i whisper to myself. darkness and spiders. but the closet is the safer place. and sometimes that matters.

“can we, like, chill with the gay pride?” i hear a girl on the bus say to her friend, “like… every june this happens and i’m tired of it.”

i’m gay every day of the week, even when i’m not proud of it. 

Yayoi Kusama