My first semester at college was horrible. I missed my family. I called my parents daily and begged them to let me come home.
The best thing they ever did for me was to not let me come home.
Now, as a mother myself, I know how hard it must have been for them to do that. To deny their daughter the easy way out. But they knew what I needed. They told me they loved me. I
knew they loved me.
By that next summer I was ready to go back three days early and I rarely came home.
I made lifelong friends my sophomore and junior year. Among them was my best friend. She was the one who held my hand when I made the call to my parents that I was pregnant. I was her maid of honor. She was mine.
I also met another friend, Doug.
Doug was a freshman my junior year. It was hard to believe he was only 18 years old because when you talked to him you felt like you were talking to an 80 year old man who had seen it all. He had class. And style. He loved Dietrich. Madonna was his idol. He was the only one in dorm who had an upholstered accent chair in his room. Draped dramatically with a blanket, of course.
He wore a scarf that he would flip around his neck as he eloquently took a drag on his cancer stick. I remember how he used to sweep his long, curly bangs out of his face as he made a very important point. Likely about how we were all going to go to Hell for being so wicked.
The first time I met Doug, I knew he was gay.
I didn't care. It wasn't a big deal. He didn't need to reveal himself to me or our other friends. We all knew. We didn't talk about it. Much. Except to ponder when in the hell he was going to admit it to himself.
One night we were playing "truth or dare" or some equally academically stimulating activity and I don't even remember what the question was but I remember him trying to tell us about the first time he had sex with his high school girlfriend. Do you know that scene in The 40-Year Old Virgin where he is trying to explain having sex with a woman but it's quite obvious that he has never had such an experience?
Yeah. It was just like that.
We were all drunk. We called bullshit on Doug. Told him that he could stop pretending. That we loved him. It didn't matter to us. We only wanted him to be true to himself.
In true Doug fashion, he screamed at us for being complete and utter morons (but he probably used big words a la Tim Gunn) and fled.
The next day Doug called me and asked if we could talk. He told me it was very hard for him. That he had to hide who he was. That his father would never accept him (this was the South and his father was very much a stereotypical Good Ol' Boy). His mother knew but kept it a secret from his father. I believe he had a sister, but he didn't talk about her much. He had an Aunt whom he loved dearly and loved him for who he was.
But Doug was tortured by not having this acceptance from his parents.
Things got a little better once he admitted to all of us that he was, in fact, gay. He was free. He started sharing with us. We were a little family, our group. We were there for him after his first "out in the open" date with another boy. A boy who looked a little like Paul McCartney in the early years.
Doug would fall madly, deeply in love with each boy he dated. It was exhausting keeping up with him.
I remember laughing a lot with Doug. I remember how proper he was. How we would tease him mercilessly. He was teased a lot the semester we took biology and learned about STD's. My best friend would remember that 1 in 4 people had herpes by saying "1, 2, 3, Doug". When we would say things like this, he tell us how classless we were and how we needed etiquette lessons.
He loved it.
We loved him.
Then life happened. I got pregnant. I moved to California to be closer to my parents when it became clear I was in it alone.
Doug called me once after I moved. I was lonely. And tired. And sad. And bitter. And very, very pregnant. I didn't talk to him for a very long time. I may have even been short with him.
Remember this was before facebook. And twitter. We had just barely started using e-mail, people.
I would hear stories from our friends (who did keep in touch through my moody pregnancy that I was experiencing 3,000 miles away from them as they went on with college life and parties and internships) that Doug was lost.
He started doing drugs. He dropped out of school. He didn't contact anyone for anything. A boy he was dating at one point was HIV-positive.
I thought of him often as the years passed.
Earlier this year I learned from a mutual friend that he was gone. I don't know the reasons. But I know he took his own life.
When I found his obituary online it was clear that his family barely recognized his passing. There was no funeral. There was no address to send condolences or flowers. There was nothing.
I heard that some of his friends planned a memorial service a few weeks later.
But he never got what he needed most.
Acceptance. Love.
From his family.
It's hard for me to wrap my head around that as
love from my family was something that I never had to question. Or work for. Or. Or. Or.
I wish he had grown up in a family where being gay was okay.
I wish he had the love and acceptance from his family that he desperately needed.
I wish I could have done more for Doug.
I can't bring Doug back. But I can teach my OWN child. The one that Doug came to know through ultrasound pictures and whom he dubbed "buddy". I can teach her that being gay is okay.
We played Life the other night and I married a woman. She married a man. We talked about how either choice is okay. For her. For our friends. For our family. For the people we love and the people we strongly dislike.
We talked about bullying. And what that means. And how if it happens to her or her friends then you have to tell me. And we'll take care of it. And if they don't help, we'll tell someone else. And we'll keep telling until someone listens.
Because what happened to my friend Doug, who at 29, couldn't take it anymore?
That should have never happened. Never, ever, ever.
Gay is okay.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Resources (originally shared by Angie on
www.awholelotofnothing.net):
HRC: Human Rights Campaign
PFLAG: Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays
Soulforce – for Christians questioning the teachings of homosexuality in the Bible
Education.com – 10 ways parents can help stop bullying
Watch
For the Bible Tells Me SO
Watch
this powerful message from Ellen Degeneres about ending teenage bullying
Bullied by Gays – Not really informational, but eye-opening
It Gets Better Project
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And, from Lizz at
www.onenerveleft.com:
www.projectlifevest.org.
