It DOES Get Better

I have always been an introvert. And I have always been gay. But I struggled against that identity when I was attending Governor Dummer Academy in the mid-1980s. Being gay at a New England prep school of only 360 students was too risky, and would have resulted in ostracism. But it didn't matter. Even though I wasn't out, other students could read the signs on my being and I became a target for comments, and crab apples being hurled at me as I walked on campus. It didn't take long for that abuse, coupled with my innate quiet nature and other external factors, to feed into creating the dark cavernous space in my psyche of suicide. Death seemed the only answer. As I wrote at that time:

When living means nothing
And there is no escape from the misery,
You have to take your life
Into your own hands.

I survived that void, thanks to an act of God and the kindness of a school chaplain. Not every kid is so lucky.

And so hats off to Dan Savage for a brilliant and necessary YouTube campaign to help save LGBT teen-agers from taking their own lives.

Savage is calling on adults who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender to take a few moments with a video camera and let the next generation know that they remember the difficulties and trauma of being different in middle and high school... and they lived to get to where they are today,a place infinitely bigger, brighter and better than those troublesome teen aged years. Savage, a newspaper columnist and gay activist, was inspired to start this online video campaign because of the report of yet-another 15-year-old, Billy Lucas in Indiana, committing suicide because of relentless taunting and harassment from his classmates. As a student at Billy's school told one of the local TV stations:

"They said stuff like 'you're a piece of crap' and 'you don't deserve to live'. Different things like that. Talked about how he was gay or whatever."

Yeah, whatever!

The frustration for those of us who are adults, and have (thankfully!) left high school behind, is that we know there are hundreds of Billy Lucas' out there who just need to have an intervention... like my school chaplain... who will be there when they feel that the light of their lives needs to be snuffed out in order to deal with their difference. Sadly, unless we have a personal stake (read: parent), our motivations for approaching the schools are suspect (read: molestation.... or ye ol' 'conversion' argument, a favorite of homophobes). But the internet, and YouTube, gives us an avenue to reach kids in communities both local and international to let them see us, hear us, know our story, and see that we're still standing... and able to go back to our 25th high school reunions! (If we care to see those folks again!)


Here is Dan Savage with his husband, Terry, discussing their story. Please share this information using the "Share" buttons at the bottom of this blog. And if you have a video camera, grab it, and film your story of survival of the truly fittest and grittiest... and let a kid know, "It Gets Better!"