It Gets Better: Hope

Dear middle school/high school teenager,

I want you to know that it gets better. I know that right now, this sounds like some mad hope, some unattainable dream. That was what I thought too, when I first saw Dan and Terry’s “It Gets Better” video.

But this quarter in college, I took a freshman seminar about the “It Gets Better” project and growing up gay. I had the opportunity to explore, read, watch, and analyze books, films and media that fully portrayed LGBT people. Before the class, I was not aware that there was such an abundance of literature involving LGBT people. I guess I never really thought about it. But what surprised me was that not only were there so many works of art involving LGBTs, but all these books I’ve read and films I’ve watched featured happy endings for their homosexual characters. Each and every one of them: Therese and Carol in The Price of Salt, Maurice and Scudder in Maurice, Jamie and Ste in Beautiful Thing.

And just like these people in the books, in the movies, you will find your people and be happy. I know this because I have LGBT friends who are happier now that they have entered college and found their community.

This was in the preface of Peter Cameron’s Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You:

“Be patient and tough, someday this pain will be useful to you.” – Ovid

Best advice I’ve heard in a while. People do really get more mature with time – the bullying eventually stops. You just have to stick it out. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.

Whenever you find yourself feeling hopeless and downcast, look at all these art, all these sources of solace; turn to them and immerse yourself in these wonderful works, and know that it will get better.

I want you to remember that every day there are many others fighting the same battle. You are not alone, even if you feel that way. Reach out, if not to other people, then to literature, to film, to art. Be strong; draw strength from all these characters I mentioned whom you may read about, and have hope that things will get better.

Because hope is a good thing, and no good thing ever dies.

Sincerely,

Jorene.

Injustice

The rain is famous for falling on the just and unjust alike, but if I had the management of such affairs I would rain softly and sweetly on the just, but if I caught a sample of the unjust outdoors I would drown him. – Mark Twain

People are like stained glass windows

“People are like stained glass windows: they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within.” – Elizabeth Kubler Ross

Your very flesh shall be a great poem

“This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with the powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers, of families; read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life; re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, dismiss whatever insults your soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only it its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.” – Walt Whitman

Hey punks

“The weirder you’re going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.” – P.J. O’Rourke