The Echoing Voices of those Before Me

Growing up, I was always a little bit different. On the playground, I used to run with my friend Cheyenne. We weren't just running though. We were running from boys. It was all for fun but teachers didn't see it that way.

One teacher took me aside and told me that I should be "running with the boys" and that it wasn't okay for me to run with the girls. As stereotypical as our games were on the playground, I know we didn't see it as a boys versus girls game. Cheyenne was my best friend so of course we ran together. That didn't stop my teachers from becoming worried though.

Throughout middle school, I was bullied constantly. I sounded just a little too feminine. I had too many girl friends with an emphasis on the space between girl and friends. I used my hands too much when I spoke and one time when I stayed the night at my guy friend's house, we woke up spooning.

The bullying took form in nasty comments, pushing me against the walls, and taunting with pictures of naked women. I even had a kid once pick me up and throw me across a classroom. That's not even an exaggeration. I was maybe 5'4 and he was a clean 6 feet.

By 7th grade, I was starting to really experience my attraction to guys. There was a football player. He had always been so sweet and so respectful to me. He was pretty popular and the star of the team. I fell for him so hard. I would daydream until I remembered that I wasn't gay. Then I'd get pissed that I was thinking about men.

The bullying of course wasn't the only issue. I had been assaulted by a teacher when I was six years old. It was a quick exchange in the bathroom that messes with me to this day. As a teenager, I couldn't understand how I could have been left bleeding and naked by a man and still find them attractive. Trauma only creates internal issues and my resentment for my sexuality only made me angry at the world.

I began a vicious campaign against men. I truly despised them. Men were disgusting pigs that only benefitted from hurting everyone around them. As hypocritical as these theories were, whatever I needed to do to deflect my internal conflicts, they worked.

Everything began to change my sophomore year. I found myself making several online friends. Many of these friends were LGBT+, who fled to the internet to deal with their own harsh realities. Slowly, I began to come out on there.

I met a man who was bi. He was very comfortable with himself and very reassured. He was so supportive of everything. He really guided me through coming out and was so important to me. Eventually though, he disappeared. I was left on my own.

Shortly after he disappeared, the Pulse shooting happened. Not only was I in shock that someone would so blatantly attack a group of people like that, especially over their sexuality, but I was hurt by the courage it gave other people. The months after the Pulse shooting were full of individuals who felt like they could now threaten me however they wanted to do. As one boy put it,

"If you even look in my direction, I'll recreate the Pulse shooting right here."

I became scared of everything. I couldn't walk down the street without a random car driving by and calling me a faggot. My support system was practically gone. I was left alone, facing some of the fiercest resistance to my sexuality I have ever experienced to this day.

I began to look for guidance everywhere. I had always had a fondness for history so I started there. And there I found a hero. The voices of those who had come before me.

Men and women who had watched as their lovers were burned by the world. Men who were so lost. Women who were so uncertain. They took all their pain and they turned it into something beautiful. You could hear their voices echo across the world as they called for everything to stop. They died as the government blamed the "gay disease." While the public said it was their God-blessed punishment. How do you wrap your head around all the love in God's heart while he slowly kills you and everyone you love?

A generation of gay men who went from hiding in night clubs as women to men who died at the will of the public. Gay men who proudly elected the first openly gay man to a public office in California to men who watched him get shot down in front of them. How do you watch the world burn?

I'm not a college boy who was pistol whipped by two kids until my face was soaked in blood. I'm not laying in my bed, bullets in my head as the church tells officers that my murderers aren't evil. They died as the world looked on and pitied them.

There I found my hope. The deaths of those before me, the voices crying for equality, symbols of a world they forced to change. Each voice gripping the world by its heart, saying, "love me" with hands ice cold. Their deaths will never be anything less than loving all they could.

I found hope in those that survived. Those who watched their brothers die, their sons murdered, their lovers neglected. They cried and their tears watered the world I walk on now. Their love was relentless even after everything vanished and in the end, they refused to give in to a world that was far too willing to kill them.

In the end, I can breathe. Maybe I have to be cautious walking down the street. Sometimes, I need to watch my back. Protecting myself is never a bad thing. All that but I never need to feel alone. This isn't only my fight. My voice is one of the millions screaming at the stars.

As I walk, I can feel them watching over me. Matthew Shepard is cheering me on. I can feel his heart beating in mine when I walk across my campus. Each time I stand my ground, Harvey Milk holds me up, never letting me give in. Every time I wanted to surrender, John Goodwin picks that noose out of my hand and I can feel every voice, telling me that it will be okay. Life will go on and I will fight and Love is everything.