A special message to Gay Teens

This is a short blurb to tell you that no matter how crappy things are right now or how bad the bullying gets, IT WILL GET BETTER, I promise you!  Once you're out of High School, nobody cares if you're gay, straight, or bisexual.  Actually, a few people still will but they're the minority and THEY'RE  afraid to speak up in the real world.  Anyway, the point is, HIGH SCHOOL SUCKS!  It sucked when I was queer in high school and it's going to suck when my 2 year old finally makes it there.  It sucks because there are jerks in school now, there were jerks then and there will be jerks in the future.  Stand up and endure because it WILL GET SO MUCH BETTER after high school, it's like night and day.  So keep the faith and if you ever need to bend somebody's ear, I'm here and I'll listen.


IT GETS AWESOME! You will find someone and you will fall in love, you will have your heart broken and you will have friends hold you as you cry it out.  You will get disgustingly drunk and hit on somebody you are not attracted to.  Your friends won't let you go through with it.  Your best friend will tell you that you should.  Why?  Because it's funny and you will do the same thing to them one day.  You will have an amazing group of friends that love you and enemies that you all tear up behind their backs.  You will be the designated driver sometimes and the designated drunk at other times.  You will be the best dressed in your group sometimes and you will take fashion risks that sometimes don't work out.  You will never have to deal with stupid jocks again except to say, "I'd like fries with that" or "I think I want the leather seats and the sport package."  
Boys - Women will flock to you and will flatter you on a regular basis.  They will tell you that you are beautiful and perfect and will take you with them shopping.  They will ask for your opinion and will wait with bated breath until you give it to them.  Those yutzes that are bullying you now will be completely jealous of you later because you will have the power to tell the hotties NOT to date them and they will listen.
Girls - Men will be obsessed with you.  I'm so sorry.  It will be incredibly amusing though.  Women will be curious about you and will want you, even if they don't admit it to themselves.  You will find a girl that you will fall head over heels in love with and she will love you.  She will break your heart and you will fall in love again.  You will have a whole group of friends that "get" you.
THE BEST TIMES OF YOUR LIFE ARE JUST A FEW SHORT YEARS OF HELL AWAY!
We want you to be around for that.

So that you know I'm not talking out of my butt, here's my story (the truncated version):
You know, the funny thing is, when I said I would do this, I didn't think it would be this hard to talk about it. But I started writing and pretty soon I started really remembering. It REALLY sucked. The more I remembered, the less I wanted to write it out. So between last night and today, I've weatherized my whole apartment, fixed the hinges on all the doors and even watched Spongebob with my daughter, all to avoid doing this. But my word is my bond and when I tell somebody I'll do something, I do it... eventually. So here we go.



To say that I've been bullied in my lifetime, is to understate things just a little. I was bullied because I was overweight, I was picked on because I was smart, I was picked on because we were Jehovah's Witnesses and I was beat up for being queer. I've had my nose broken and my stomach stomped on, I've had My own father call me 'a slut and a whore that belonged on the street down by the river with the rest of the bums' after I'd been raped by a stranger in a park, I've been dragged across campus by my hair, I've been cut and had a smiley face branded on my thigh, I've been spit on and I've been burned by lit cigarette butts that were flicked at my back when I followed the advice I had been given by the school counselor to "Just kept walking and ignore them." There was even a girl that pretended to like me so that she could go to the school counselor and say that I harassed her in hopes that I would get kicked out of school for it. Luckily for me, one of her friends came forward and told the school counselor about the 'plan'. Those are just the worst of them. Countless name calling, tripping, attempts at tripping, singing derisive songs, one almost noteworthy swirly...

Some of that sounds kind of funny, but I still have scars from 'cutting' and from trying to slit my wrists when I thought I couldn't take it anymore. Thankfully, I didn't know you were supposed to cut them lengthwise. I even tried overdosing myself on painkillers and sleeping pills once. Thankfully, my stomach couldn't handle all the Vicodin I put in it and I vomited most of it up in my sleep. Truth be told, I was kinda pissed when I woke up the next day.

The funny thing is that the straw that broke the camel's back was one of the least violent of all of my experiences. A group of black girls (they thought they were a gang, but there were only four of them, so I didn't think it counted... I still don't) and their ringleader followed me around the dorm one weekend calling me "Dykey Wykey." Believe it or not, that was what it took for me to decide that I'd had enough. I spun around and got right up in the ringleader's face and said, "What's up 'Straighty Weighty'? You wanna go, let's go, 'cuz I'm sick of this crap."

I was scared to death but I was serious. At that point, I figured that I'd had my @ss kicked all over campus so much that if I was going to get it kicked again, it was going to be on MY terms, for once. Now, I'm not condoning violence as a solution at all whatsoever and in fact I didn't actually end up having to fight her (and thank the Gods for it, 'cuz I'm not a fighter and I would have gotten my @ss kicked all around the block) because all of her 'girls' started laughing their @sses off and she took a step back, (I was literally right in her face, like nose to nose, I couldn't even focus on her) nodded her head and said, "You know what, little girl? You're all right." Then they left. It was like a miracle. Seriously.

I'm not saying she and I were all buddy buddy after that. We weren't, not by a long shot. But she did leave me alone and that, to me, was a miracle in and of itself.

The thing is, I came out at 17 when nobody was coming out as a teen. Like many other queers, once I figured out that I was a lesbian, I was all about telling EVERYBODY! All of a sudden the world made sense and I just didn't care who knew or what the consequences were. No, that's not accurate. I didn't think about whether or not there would be consequences. It never occurred to me until it was much too late, that people would hate on me or hurt me just because I like girls and when I did finally figure it out, it hit me really hard.



I wouldn't recommend doing a lot of the things that I did. I attempted suicide, I got in one of my bully's faces, I ran away from home... and if I hadn't had help, I wouldn't be here today. It's not like I survived on my own. But, I'm putting my story up here on this FB page for those who are bullied to read and maybe to reach out to somebody or let somebody reach out to them. Because it was somebody reaching out to me and not taking "no" or "go f*@# yourself" for an answer, that really saved my life and allowed my little Ninny to have a life.



If there's nobody in your town that you can go to or talk to, you see my page, my name and everything up here. I will happily listen and do what I can to help you. I know there's this whole "It gets better" campaign out there and you're probably sick of hearing it but it's true. I know it doesn't seem like it and for you, right now, it probably doesn't feel true. But it does get better. A whole lot better.



I'm putting this up here, not for me but for those people out there who may be going through something similar right now. I KNOW how much it sucks right now, I REALLY do. I've lived it. Maybe not the exact same thing that you're going through but similar and just as painful, so please believe me when I tell you,

IT

GETS

BETTER.

WAY

WAY

OMG

WAY

BETTER.