Photo credit: 37Days.com
“Today I wanted to write the story of the first person I kissed because the story is important to my identity in the present but I couldn’t because I really wanted to write about WHY this came up today.
Four days ago, 49 people died because they were a nightclub that catered to the LGBTQ community in Orlando, Florida and an angry man with a gun couldn’t deal with that.
When I was 15-years-old, 14 women died because they were in an engineering class at a university in Montreal, Quebec and an angry man with a gun couldn’t deal with that.
There are men on the planet right now who do not want me to live. I’m in a privileged position to be able to camouflage my queerness with a heteronormative, cisgendered, opposite-sex marriage. I can hide in plain sight. I’m embarrassed by this. I need to do better. I need to be a better human so I can live with myself. The people who can’t or don’t want to hide face hate astronomically larger than the hate I could face if I could stop hiding.
I’m such a coward, I’m not sure that I can confront people who hate me, even if they don’t know that I’m actually hiding here behind my straight, white husband and hetero-appearing relationship, with love and empathy. I don’t think I have it. I don’t think I want to.”
You’re not a coward for keeping part of your private life… private. It’s honestly not your job to blaze trails for future generations- and I strongly suspect that those who feel their role is to blaze those trails are mostly unsuccessful, not to mention personally unhappy. Meh. I’m not expressing this well.
But I am continually in awe of your strength and bravery. Don’t sell yourself short over a form of survivor’s guilt.