10 Years.
For as much as things have changed in 10 years, a lot has stayed the same.
10 years ago, I woke up and my first instinct was to open my Twitter feed. In that way nothing’s changed.
The first post I saw was from one of my friends at school, one of a few I knew who were queer.
“There’s people that want to kill us just based on who we are.”
I had no idea what they were talking about. As I continued scrolling, I figured out why. While I was asleep, 49 people were shot and killed at a gay club, Pulse, in Orlando.
I got out of bed and turned on the TV. For summer homework in my AP Political Science class, we were assigned to watch one of the many Sunday morning political news shows on TV. I had prerecorded CNN’s that morning. I turned it on, sat there, and watched but barely listened. Just stewed in my fear and my thoughts.
I had been thinking for maybe a year or two at that point I might like boys and girls. The only people I dared to tell were close friends at school, and even then I was selective. I made a few friends at conventions that really were the first people I was ever able to fully let my guard down with when it came to being bicurious. It was a matter of convenience for me when I hid or broadcasted my feelings.
Right around the time I started thinking I might be bi, my family started going to church regularly for the first time in my life. I opted out, typically coming up with some excuse that I wasn’t a morning person, I just wasn’t ready to dive into religion, or I just wanted some time to myself at home.
The reality? I was scared I wouldn’t be accepted. I’d already gone through so much of life feeling that people outside my family would struggle to accept me for how my ASD affected my behavior. Not to mention I was a kid — and now, an adult — who felt split between the worlds of sports culture and nerd culture.
The people that had accepted me, regardless of anything, were my family, and I didn’t want to jeopardize that with what they may or may not think of me being bi.
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So I watched CNN that day in silent horror. I probably tried to reach out to one or two friends, but I don’t remember anything that felt like relief. As I’m watching, my family is walking out the door to go to church. I don’t think they said anything about what I was looking at. It was just me and all my fears, now with more kindling.
I stewed in that silent fear for years. The first person in my family to even get an idea I might be bi was my brother when one of my friends blurted it out. His reaction was total indifference. When my mom visited me my first semester of college, I finally bit up the nerve to tell her and she embraced me. I had a good feeling she would.
The rest of my family? It took me six years before I finally said to hell with it and came out. A lot of them showed support. Was it unanimous? Probably not, but part of what made me finally ready was I didn’t care.
When I woke up today, I had no plans to write some sort of “this is what Pulse means to me.” Heck, I had no idea it was the 10th anniversary of the Pulse shooting until, you guessed it, it popped up on a social media feed. I reflected on it and came to a realization of why it still means something to me.
10 years ago, it instilled a fear in me. Slowly, without even realizing it, that fear has subsided.
Maybe it was just not being a 16-year old terrified of the world. Maybe it was going out and finding a group of people where whether I was straight or not was either trivial or a gateway to making connections. Maybe it’s seeing it more in our media or our culture. Maybe it’s a side effect of being an 11 out of 10 on the vulnerability scale.
I think the biggest piece is pride. That the LGBTQ community came out of Pulse galvanized. That it made people into equally unabashed allies. The pain of that single day and what it meant remains, but it’s nothing compared to the love I’ve seen and felt since.
I got to cover a college football game in Orlando at their MLS stadium. There’s a section of 49 seats made to look like a rainbow in a sea of purple chairs. I sat in that section before the game and thought how the 49 lives they represented were probably strangers to most of the people who’d wind up sitting there that night, or any night.
It was a city and a team’s way to say ‘We love you, we embrace you and we won’t forget about you.’
It’s what I needed when I was 16. I imagine there’s at least some kid that needs that now.
There’s people that will love you based on who you are. With that, it’ll get easier to brush off those who don’t.
