Hope
If you read my last post it may seem that all hope is lost but yet it’s a word connecting the comments to that post like a web. I didn’t mean for that post to seem so hopeless but it was made up of some thoughts I felt I needed to say. At the same time I really am full of hope and I think I should tell you why.
I know a girl whose life parallels mine in so many ways. She is so very different from me yet so much alike. I always knew I was gay, I know that might be rare but I just never had a moment where I didn’t know. This girl grew into that awareness and at times struggled with it. She asked me so many thought provoking questions that I was sometimes worried it was more a phase than a realization.
When I was in high school I wrapped myself in my gayness in an arrogant and cocky ‘this is who I am and you will know it’ facade. The girl I’m thinking of does the same thing but in such a different way than I did. She is so self-assured and confident of herself that she doesn’t have to throw it in anybody’s face. She knows who she is and makes no effort to hide it. As if she is saying ‘if you don’t like me and who I am that’s just too bad and your loss because I am a good person.’
This girl is as popular in school as any straight girl. It just makes no difference to her friends, teachers, coaches, or to anybody else that matters to her. She is an awesome student and captain of her hockey team, everything just seems to go so much smoother for her than it did for me. I know part of it is the fact that she doesn’t have my arrogant abrasive personality. But I also like to think things really have changed in just a short time, changed so very much for the better.
I have only been out of high school about ten years now, really a very short time in the scheme of things, and my sister, my mini me, is ten years younger than me. And yes that girl I have been talking about is my younger sister. Every time I think about her life compared to mine I do have hope. Not so much hope that people can change, I know they can but deep down I fear they won’t, but hope that thanks to people like my sister and her generation it just won’t matter if you are gay anymore. That might be the best hope of all. That it just won’t matter anymore.
I am a very proud sister.
Michael Paynter - Love The Fall
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