Remember those ads from ten years ago? Perhaps you're too young to recall the original message or numb to the churn of mindless, flashing images, smut or cat videos that've sanitized your brain. It Gets Better is still around today, though it's unrecognizable and muffled by far more strident, bizarre brands of activism.
Non sexual relationships are called “friendships”. Not being interested in sex can indicate psychical or psychological issues that need treatment not jargonism. Why are we making up more confusing bullshit terminology? How is this in any way relevant to the LGB spectrum?
Alas, we don't seem interested much in truth, objectivity or charity, our tribal obsessions focus on being right. I have many essays and videos where I talk about our tribalism, though, and in this, a message to my viewers and, ideally, to new faces outside my influence, I prefer to share some stories from my life.
When growing up, I was a delicate boy; effeminate and so dainty as to be occasionally mistaken for a girl. Even as I stretched and sprung over my fifteenth summer, I only went up, not out, and remained a lean, string bean of a creature—awkward and gangly, uncomfortable in my skin. A young man or woman feeling alien in one's flesh is not unusual, though we now have different words for the disharmony of being a pubescent mind in a body consumed by strange alchemies. While I don't recall the exact day or moment, around my fifteenth year, I realized that I wasn't sexually attracted to women. It began with an unrequited crush on a male friend of mine, which I never expressed or saw reciprocated. Indeed, I couldn't untangle the messiness of what I felt: the tightening of my throat, the excitement when we made plans to play video games or go for a hike—yes, hiking actual hills and not lego monoliths in Fortnite was something kids used to do.
But he grew up, grew into his desire for girls, and I eventually moved away to stay with my mom and finish high school elsewhere. With my parents going through a separation, they cast little attention on me and the changes I underwent. I don't blame their decision to divorce or lack of awareness for the slowly creeping confusion and despair that entered my life. I hid my darkness behind wry comments, sarcastic humour and an obsession with dark fantasy. I felt as if something monstrous and damning lay within me. Thirty years ago, being gay carried a tremendous stigma and justifiable worry about harm. After all, Boys Don't Cry is based on a true horrific account of a hate crime. Unlike today, there wasn't any social clout or cliques to celebrate "queerness." In isolated or non-metropolitan communities, you were desolately alone as a gay teen. A battle of you against inner demons and insecurities, saturated in a hormonal fugue. I developed terrible headaches and was shunted off to a disinterested physician who thankfully chalked my condition up to teenage hysteria and prescribed me placebo drugs.
His indifference probably saved my life. I stopped speaking to my friends. I started skipping school. I couldn't focus on the books and fantasy worlds that'd so often been my succour. I remember feeling gray, obscure hopelessness and defeat when I decided to take my life. One night, I wrote a note to my mom, downed the entire bottle of migraine pills and then went to sleep, expecting never to wake up.
But I did wake to my mother shaking me and weeping. I recall the crystal clarity of that instant: a phlegmatic day roiling behind her in the window, her shadowy face contorted, her eyes teary from wrathful worry, a vision of perfect despair. On the way to the hospital, with my father somehow summoned or present, I remember being silent, unable to answer their questions about why I'd done what I'd done. The sun came out, dazzling the beads of water on the car window, and all I could think of was the beauty I'd almost left behind. Could you conjure back the spirits of the dead to answer, I feel that many would regret what they'd done. Because depression and grief, while all-consuming, are storms that often pass.
We arrived at the hospital, where I drank several noxious draughts of charcoal and water as a precaution, even though it was clear I hadn't succeeded. But once you've walked over that line, it's hard to walk things back—or was, if you know what's happening in Canada with MAID. Thus, I stayed in the part of the hospital reserved for those suffering mental afflictions. My fellow inmates were illuminating, eclectic and inspiring in many conversations I'd one day craft for fictional characters. I passed my time playing cards with fellow patients and listened to stories of lives far, far worse off than mine. So often, gratitude is simply a broadening of experience and surrendering of ego and ignorance. One young woman left a burning impression: she suffered from early onset MS or another neurological disease and had, more than once, sought to end her life before further deterioration. We became friends for a time. Ironically, she would've benefited from or chosen MAID, as her diagnosis was terminal.
Nevertheless, we take so much for granted and rarely treasure the complex wonders of the bodies we're given. As a result, we treat ourselves poorly: junk food, garbage for the mind, and malnourishment for the soul. My fated affection for personal betterment undoubtedly arose from my physical neglect, seeing how others treated themselves and eventually conquering the underlying depreciations that drive people to ruin.
After about a month, they let me out of the hospital. My friends kept a distance; my life had changed. I needed a clean slate, though. A canvas on which I could paint the new me. And I went through many iterations of Christian: the nerd, the goth, the sissy twink, the muscle boy. These delegations are costumes we wear to hide our feelings. But, eventually, you discard the subterfuge and stand naked and proud in your beliefs.
My perpetual evolution had slowed when I met my forever love. I had, at last, a sense of the value of life. He'd lived through a terminal accident, and I lived through a kind of accident, too. We'd each been granted another shot at life through fate or providence. Sometimes I think of that: one simple decision to affirm my depression with medicalized care, and I would be dead. Please consider the chilling implications of my care had I been born this generation with MAID or gender-affirming surgeries available. Regardless, I've seen every day since my darkest day as a miracle, a blessing, an opportunity to nourish my good parts and keep the dark elements in balance. Even holding my mother's hand in her final moments is another beautiful sorrow I can bear until the Earth finally claims me as her own.
What I find unconscionable is the thought of my rude, roughshod and ultimately contented self becoming interrupted. Of course, I had friends who died from AIDS and others from drugs or darkness they couldn't resolve. But I had far fewer intrusions, tribes and pharmaceutical demons contesting for my attention, trying to twist my beliefs and shape me before deciding what shape I wanted to be. You have to hang in there; evolution is a process. In the words of Louisa May Alcott: "Don't try and make me grow up before my time." Yet every modern force appears Hellbent on transmogrifying children, accelerating puberty, sexuality and uniformity in beliefs.
Don't be anything but yourself. Whoever that is, however long it takes you to find that person. Conformity may offer security and freedom from testing your limits, but in the end, it will dull you with placation. Be wary of promises that life is easy because it's easy only without challenges. Through challenges, we forge the best parts of us: courage, conviction, critical thinking, self-awareness and genuine empathy. Aspire to be the best. Don't settle for mediocrity. Failure to achieve greatness will leave you greater than never having tried; failure is a powerful lesson on how and what to improve.
The messiness of a child's metamorphosis is a process best uninterrupted. If you rip the butterfly from its chrysalis, do not expect it to be beautiful; you would instead hold a half-dead, malformed thing unrealized in potential. But, unfortunately, we do that to our children, their bodies, and their minds. We are violently interfering with their growth and exploration of self. And it has to stop because a society that harms its young is sociopathic and doomed to extinction. But it starts with you and me sharing our stories, stumbles, and ultimate successes; by letting people know that grief, confusion and negative emotions are normal states that do not need instant amelioration or medication. Instead, discussion and therapy should be the first and fundamental tools.
So if you're listening to this and confused, sad or alone, I want you to know—from someone who's had a pretty sketchy life—that it does get better. Leave the butterfly alone and allow it to become.
—C