JADE
MINNESOTA | SERIES # 4
What’s my story? Well, this is a loaded question for me. It's hard to explain my childhood without people trying to justify the behavior of my parents or family members. Instead of lying and trying to make my story all great, I decided to be fully honest with you.
I grew up in the bad part of my city living on Social security and Section 8. My mother was too mentally ill to get a job. My father was too busy getting wasted, spending every waking hour drinking booze and living his single life in the closet (this will play into my story later).
I knew at a very young age that I was indeed Gay, and instead of spending my time playing with the other children, I would spend most of my childhood questioning Myself and my Sexuality. Finally, when seeing those vote yes and vote no commercials being broadcasted, I decided it was time to indeed come out. I wasn’t sure how but I managed to come out to all my friends. I knew the consequences and risks, especially coming out during the highly publicized Same-Sex Marriage debate, but my friends were accepting of me and I was happy. On the other hand, my family wasn’t so accepting of me. Even with a few members of my family being Gay or Bisexual, the rest of my family was still really homophobic. I was going to tell my grandma before she died but I never got around to it. I was always so scared she would hate me and not love me anymore. I knew her stance on same-sex attraction, I knew she wasn’t too accepting of LGBT people in general but I still thought she should know that I was indeed a Homosexual.
I slowly became even more depressed I started cutting myself and plotting my own death. At one point in my life, all I could think about was killing myself. I became fixated with the idea that if my family didn’t love me, why would anyone? The classic, “Everyone bullies the Gay kid because their morality isn’t the same as your own.” I could have dealt with the bullying from my peers, but the fact that I got the same child-like behavior from my own mother didn’t sit well with me.
At a young age, I knew my mother wasn’t normal. Her mental illness ruled our lives with an iron fist. It gave me two sides of my mother — one side loved me unconditionally, the other side hated my father so much that she took it out on me. When I came out to her, I kept getting told that, “I’m too young to know.” As if being 12-13 made me too young to know my own sexuality. I dealt with my own mother Gay shaming my friends and me almost every day while I was in middle school. Even til this day she still keeps telling me that if I have a shaved head or short hair no man is going to love me. As if I live my life for other people.
If people truly think I’m going to care that they don't like my hair or the fact I like industrial and punk music then they are fucking delusional. You should never care about what other people say about you. If someone thinks it’s gross you are dating someone of the same-sex, cool, they can go be angry somewhere else. If someone doesn’t like that you are transgender, and get “uncomfortable” when you are around, cool, they can go be uncomfortable somewhere else. We have our rights and they have theirs, but most people can't seem to comprehend this. Arguing with brain dead idiots who refuse to let out the hate is just going to drag you down and make you hate yourself. Just like with conversion therapy, the very toxic practice of supposedly curing gay people of some mythical disease known as being a Homosexual. The issue is, it’s making Bisexuals hate the same-sex attraction side of them and making gay people commit suicide. This practice should be outright banned, but instead, people want to have their “religious freedom” while pushing their religion onto unsuspecting youth.
If you are going through conversion therapy right now, just remember life maybe be hard now, but instead of waiting around for it to “get better” you need to go out and make something out of yourself. Once you become an adult you are free to leave the ever restricting stranglehold of hate and you can surround yourself with people who actually love you. Family isn’t everything. If they truly loved you they would accept you for you. Never try to change yourself for other people. Cut loose anyone who is in your way of happiness and go be yourself. After all, my story is one of many stories in a long line of pessimistic and optimistic stories. Mine isn't the most detailed, but I hope I can help somebody out there struggling with being themselves.
Anyways, thanks for reading. Best regards, Jade.
