We are infinite.
Just like that, I’m 22 years old. This last year has been the most challenging — and the most rewarding — of my life. From losing my election to finishing my undergrad to coming out to taking the leap and moving halfway across the country, it has truly been a rollercoaster.
I’ve never been a religious individual. Rather, I’ve found strength from within to tackle the obstacles I face, rebound from disappointment, and determine my path forward. I’ve never appreciated the concept of some mystical dude in the sky controlling my actions, glancing at all the predetermined courses of action that I may take, and telling me how to live my life. You see, for most of my life, religion has been used as a weapon against me. My birth family would tell me that my “father in heaven” would be disappointed with me, that their God would set me on the path I was intended to be on. But over time, I realized that it was all a sham. I never really knew my father, but I’ve learned that he was a blatant racist and homophobic person, and their religion? Whether using it to help or to hurt, the Bible is a fantasy story that people cherry-pick to serve their needs. And that’s actually my problem with it: it’s assumed that everyone needs the Bible, that everyone needs religion, that everyone needs blind faith in a supernatural power, in order to move through life with purpose. There are occasionally people like me who stray from what the world tell us we need and we take the reins, determining our path on our terms — not on those of a mysterious deity’s or on those that society forces upon us.
Throughout the last year, many of my friends have asked me how I’ve persevered, how I’ve strayed from the path that my birth family set me on, how I’ve remained sane through all I’ve faced. Until this point, my answer has been that it’s a fluke — that somehow I managed to scrape enough self confidence and self-worth together to place a greater value on my happiness and move forward unrestrained by the toxicity of my past — but that answer has been discounting the strength I’ve shown unto this point. There are people out there experiencing far more trauma than I could ever imagine, people who are so tightly bound by their circumstances that they can’t find a way to set themselves free. I’m not lost on the fact that I had the privilege, the means, and the willpower to identify the toxic environment that I was living in and go about freeing myself from those restraints. Our society places a label on the nuclear family as the most important thing in our lives, but the nuclear family is meant to be taken at face value without question — and as history has taught us time and again, anything that is designed with the explicit directive not to be questioned, usually means it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
The trauma I experienced from my birth family is something that so many LGBTQ+ youth have to endure every single day, and it’s not fair. People use religion and twisted excuses for principles to hate and ostracize their own children. They expel reason after reason, excuse after excuse, lie after lie, to defend their behavior and their actions — which does nothing but proves to everyone else why they should’ve never been parents in the first place. Nearly all queer kids hear “It gets better” from cisgender, heterosexual adults detached from the situation, unaware of the daily torture it is to grow up queer in a family that thinks you’re an abomination. Hell, I used to tell people “It gets better” as well, but that’s something we say when we can’t find any other words to comfort those hurting in ways we can’t imagine. Here’s the truth: it doesn’t get better; you make it better. With the weight of the world on your shoulders and the burden of existing in families that loathe your existence, LGBTQ+ kids shouldn’t have to take responsibility for anything else — but it’s left up to them to pick up the pieces of the shattered life they’ve been surviving in. Making it better isn’t an easy feat, and that’s why there are so many individuals who live with this trauma for far longer than they should have to. Because you have to have something, someone, some glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel in order to pick yourself up and figure out a way to keep going. Until you’ve seen or experienced that something that gives you enough hope to find a way forward, you can’t imagine an alternative; the darkness continues to swallow you up until there’s hardly anything left.
I figured out how to make it better. It took a hell of a lot longer than I ever thought it would, but I expelled the toxic individuals from my life, I exhaled for the first time in forever, and I took it step by step. The reality of what I’ve accomplished for my own mental health and happiness in the last year is still something that’s difficult to wrap my mind around. Because I haven’t been happy before. I haven’t allowed myself the time to stop and exhale and let go — because if I stopped, it would all catch up to me and the tiny amount of control I had would slip away and I would slip away with it. And to be honest, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing and I probably won’t know for quite some time. I’m learning to be patient with myself, to allow myself to truly experience my life, to begin to legitimately feel for the first time.
Moving forward, my articles might look a little different than this. While I hope that these are found by a queer kid somewhere that needs to know they’re not alone and needs a little help to make it better, I wrote these to sort through the chaos of my mind. I’m reminded of a quote from Perks of Being a Wallflower: “I don’t know if I will have the time to write any more letters, because I might be too busy trying to participate. So, if this does end up being the last letter, I just want you to know that I was in a bad place before I started high school, and you helped me. Even if you didn’t know what I was talking about, or know someone who’s gone through it, you made me not feel alone. Because I know there are people who say all these things don’t happen. And there are people who forget what it’s like to be sixteen when they turn seventeen. I know these will all be stories some day, and our pictures will become old photographs. We all become somebody’s mom or dad. But right now, these moments are not stories. This is happening. I am here, and I am looking at her. And she is so beautiful. I can see it. This one moment when you know you’re not a sad story. You are alive. And you stand up and see the lights on the buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And you’re listening to that song, and that drive with the people who you love most in this world. And in this moment, I swear, we are infinite.” I hope I don’t have the time to write these articles. I hope I don’t feel the need to write these articles. I don’t want to forget about the things I’ve been through because no matter how traumatic some of the experiences were, they played a role in shaping me into the strong, courageous individual I’ve allowed myself to become.
We are not defined by our experiences, but how we respond to them. Out of the ashes of my old life, I’m creating a new one for myself that’s only about me — my joy, my fulfillment, my passion. It wasn’t that long ago that I couldn’t see anything when I tried to imagine a future for myself. I knew only how to make it through the day, and the next, and the next. But as I embark on this new journey, I’m looking forward to the butterflies from new relationships, the excitement from trying new things, the heartache, heartbreak, and the fire within me that I’m slowly but surely finding again. I’m going to make out with cute guys and drink too much on random weeknights, I’m going to write and explore and make mistakes and stumble through this shit show we call life with a smile on my face. Too many of us have succumbed to the story written for us, but it’s time to start from scratch. To find ourselves, and to find the people that help us realize we are infinite.
Until next time,
GC
