high school can be awful
I'm posting my response to 'a gay hockey kids life' whose blog talked about older dudes who forget what high school is like, and that he wants to take a straight pill. Sorry to post a comment to someone else, but I wanted to put my thought here.
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Those of us who are "older dudes" haven't forgotten what high school was like. The homophobic slurs were ever present at my all male military high school. Being called queer or homo was an everyday event for me. I remember the day that it was much worse, when everyone was calling me "homo". Finally at the end of the day someone came up to me and helped. He peeled off the adhesive letters "homo" that someone had slapped on my back hours earlier. I just wanted to die then.
Every night I prayed for it to go away, to be normal, to take a straight pill as you said. But it never came. Now I can say that I'm glad that it didn't. I wouldn't be me if it had. I wouldn't have left my small town, moved to a much better place, gotten the good career that I have, met and married my husband, and had our son.
So yes, high school can be hell. I haven't forgotten, but I did hope that it was better for kids now. And it is some places, including the liberal California town where I now live, it is. The local high school had a gay couple as prom princes a few years ago. For most people, especially gays and lesbians, life gets better after high school. It won't last forever, and you can survive it. And you've got support here to help, Mikey.
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I remember praying each night not to be gay. High school is much too difficult for too many people.
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Reading about your trials and tribulations in high school reminded me of my own experiences. Beginning in the sixth grade, a bunch of my classmates called me "gay" and I made the fatal error of thinking at the time they meant it in the archaic sense of the word: "happy." So, I agreed with their assessment and unwittingly committed myself to a difficult secondary school experience. In retrospect, I'm unsure whether I'd act differently. School was tough, socially, but I survived and I like the person that I am.
ReplyDeleteVery well written, Green & Purple-- I look forward to reading more!
-mbg/ cueball007
School is awful for so many people. My sixth grade experience is even more embarrassing. I went to a Catholic school and in retrospect was very naive. Some girls sitting near me in class one day came across the word "penis" in the dictionary. It was a new word to them, and one of them asked me if I knew what it meant. I didn't, which made them laugh more. When they showed me the definition I must have blushed. I made sure when Leo was born that we only used correct anatomical terms.
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