As a somewhat loquacious person, I have a love/hate relationship with Twitter. It is one of the few social networking platforms that can be gratifying and infuriating at the same time. I have a hard time putting everything into 140 characters, and I’m quite jealous of the 818 accounts I currently follow because they are much better at it than I am.
One of my favorite aspects of Twitter is how quickly a retweet can create a snapshot of what is going on in the world around us. It allows us to quickly retweet funny moments, things we agree with, or even calm ourselves in scary times.
After the Charlottesville Rally resulted in the Death of Heather, a Tweet from President Obama became the most liked and fourth most retweeted in history. This was a small comfort, after something so vile that it will go down as a dark stain on our nation’s history. It allowed us to check that voice that said “Evil is Winning.”
Recently, I absentmindedly scrolled through my Twitter feed as I waited on a staff meeting to start. I noticed many of my friends retweeting the same thing. At first, I didn’t think twice about it. In truth, I was just looking for a puppy meme or a clever hashtag. My thumb stopped dead it in its scrolling tracks when I finally read what was being retweeted. From @introvertgay, it said:
It had been ‘liked’ around 6,000 times in the past day, and retweeted a couple of thousand times as well. Since then, its been ‘liked’ 64,000 times and retweeted 14,000 times. If I could do both more than once I would. Until now, there hasn’t been a Tweet yet where I felt so much like Meryl Streep at the 2015 Oscars cheering for equal pay.
For cisgendered heterosexual people, it might be hard to understand and connect with this Tweet the way my friends and I have. I know my family did not truly comprehend my passion for this Tweet. They probably never will; for my part, I hope to add to the cornucopia of conversations that have started over this Tweet.
◊♦◊
Every so often, I come across articles that discuss LGBT culture and the people who have contributed to it. It happens significantly more during Pride Month in June—in countries around the world. The articles sometimes pose a question: “Why does the LGBT community parade around and act like teenagers if they want to be taken seriously?”
Or, more pointedly: “Why can’t the LGBT community act their age?” When I read this, my frustration and irritation rises faster than my blood pressure. Aside from the senselessness of trying to make everyone in society act a certain way to suit a certain standard of acceptability, the questions are downright disrespectful in their denial of experiences and life lessons that the ones asking were fortunate enough to have much earlier in life.
Our teenage years were not as fun or safe as those of our straight peers.
|
RuPaul has a song with the lyrics: “Who do you think you are?/ I’m tellin’ the truth now / we are all born naked and the rest is drag.” Everyone who breathes should understand the simple truth in these words.
The clothes we wear, the things we say, the jobs we work, and all the other minutiae of our lives are just drag. We spend so much time selecting these things based on what others will think or say or how they will react. We too often forget that, at the end of the day, the only opinion that should matter is our own.
Just like every other community, the LGBT community is full of diverse opinions and life experiences. When I say ‘we,’ it’s because these happen to be mine and that of many of my friends.
The resonance of this particular Tweet hits many of our emotions at once. We experienced pain, anger, happiness, and sadness, to name a few. Our teenage years were not as fun or safe as those of our straight peers. As a result, we do choose (quite openly and proudly) to live our our teenage years in our 30s—or late 20s, in my case!
◊♦◊
Growing up in South Carolina, I loved many aspects of my youth. There are also many things I would change. My teenage years, in particular, were especially difficult.
I spent a good chunk of time convincing others everything was fine on the surface, while I was drowning in a sea of depression and self-hate on the inside. For many of us, we were denied the “teenage experience.”
The teenage years are supposed to be a time when a person starts the process of self-discovery. To experience life truly as you! At the same time, we in the LGBT community are trying desperately to cover up our own person-hood—because of fear.
We were not granted the opportunity to live out our teenage dreams when we should have been.
|
While many teenagers are choosing how to act and are given opportunities to make mistakes because of their youth, we don’t take those same risks—because of fear. They are given the first tastes of adult freedoms. We don’t indulge in those freedoms—because of fear.
It’s a fear of society and of being found out for who we truly are and then having backs turn on us. I know people who were turned out of their homes by their own flesh and blood. I know people who lost jobs. I know people who turned to illegal activities in order to survive. Sadly, I even know people who have been jumped in the streets and lost their lives. All because of their sexuality. We all know the same stories, or have lived them.
I am one of the lucky ones. Even as I hid my true self away, I knew my family would not turn me out. I knew I would always be loved and always have a place with them. (My family will never truly know how much that means to me.) Still, society kept me from getting the teenage experience my straight friends had. It was easier to stay the me society wanted me to be and not the me I truly was. Until adulthood finally hit—in all its glory.
◊♦◊
My grandfather once told me the older you get the less you care what other people think about the way you live your life and the more you start living the way you want. For many of us, that starts around 25-30 years old. We are finally making our own money. We are living in stable situations, without the fear of losing it. For those of us who lost our birth families, we choose the family we want to be there for us during life’s ups and downs. And when we find out how much fun everybody had during their teenage years, we rightfully decided we want in on the teenage experience.
That is why so many LGBT people live out their teenage dreams in their 30s. We were not granted the opportunity to do so when we should have been. And by god, we are living it now.
We deserve the same self-discovery journey everybody else got.
I have spent more of my life on the journey to truly loving myself than I have spent at the final destination. Now that I’m finally here, I will cheer on every single one of my friends in the community as they get their own teenage experience. I will be there to pick them back up if they need it.
I freely admit that during our self-allowed teenage experience we don’t get everything right. We make mistakes we shouldn’t—myself included. Many of us have put ourselves in dangerous situations that involve alcohol, drugs, sex, and other things. We face the consequences of our actions like anyone else.
The fact that some people question or try to deny us the opportunity to live our lives fully is exactly why we didn’t choose to take our teenage experience the first time around.
—
—
Photo Credit: Getty Images