#relatable
Tag: jp brammer
anyways i’ve been thinking of this jp brammer piece a lot
I consider all the ways I have muted myself. All the ways I have hidden. All the ways I have held back and apologized and changed. All that, and I can still be killed just for standing in a gay bar.
Our senses heightened after Orlando, allowing us to see the world as it had always been — and we saw that it was unfair, had always been unfair, even though some of us had become complacent. Why were there gay bars in the first place? Why were people killing us?
Don’t they know how much we’ve been holding back?
I realize now, in the wake of Orlando, that I have been sacrificing something special for a safety that was never guaranteed in the first place — a safety that asked so much of me and gave so little in return, but a safety I had become comfortable with nonetheless.
I was used to the spitting and the kicking and the shouting — but this, what I was suppressing in myself, was a different kind of violence. I could leave this at the door, leave that at home, stuff those in a closet somewhere, and I would be safe.
Orlando changed all of that.
I realize, now, everything I have lost. I realize that if a homophobe were to kill me tomorrow, I’d die a repressed, second-rate version of the person I could have been. That’s scary. Scarier than the alternative, even, because if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that you can do your best to hide — but they’ll still find you, even if you’re doing your best to walk, talk, dress, and act like everything you’re not. I don’t want to be something I’m not anymore. Even if that something is “safer.” There will always be the threat of lightning.
a porn bot liked this piece so it showed up in my notes again. good timing porn bot
