It Gets Better (35 page)

SAN JOSE, CA

 

 

 

 

I
was the typical straight girl. I had the boyfriend. I was president of my high school. I played sports. I was in a sorority in college. But I knew I was different. There was something huge missing from my world. I wanted that “butterfly-in-my-stomach” feeling when you like someone and they like you back.

Even though I had friends who were gay, and people who were open around me, I still thought I was the only one going through exactly what I was going through. I thought I was going to lose my friends and my family. I thought nobody from high school would like me again, and later I worried that I'd get kicked out of my sorority.

I decided that I couldn't keep the secret any longer. I told my parents. My closest friends and I even stood in front of my sorority (140 members strong) and told them I was gay. At this point I wasn't concerned anymore if I was going to lose anyone's friendship, I just didn't want to lose me. To my utter surprise those closest to me already knew and didn't show any disappointment when I finally told them. Maybe it was because I wore 501 jeans and listened to the Indigo Girls. My friendships were different going forward. I was able to show my true self to others. There were a handful of my sorority sisters that I didn't hear from after that but I was totally okay with it. I can only hope that their reaction will be different today, especially if their own child comes out to them.

So if you're a parent reading this, talk to your kid. Just love them. Just tell them every day that you love them; that's why I was able to come out. I knew my parents might have been disappointed, which they were at first, but they
loved
me.

When I was in high school I dreamed of having a family but I never thought it was possible. I met my partner ten years ago at San Francisco Pride. We now have a dog, a mortgage, and a little baby girl.

I need you young people, those of you in junior high and high school, I need you to stay around. I need you to make this world a better place for my daughter. I don't want her to ever, ever think twice about telling people that she has two moms. So if you're out there and you're struggling, I need you to stay around. I need your help. I need you to be your authentic self and make this world better for my little girl.

NEW YORK, NY

 

 

 

I
don't always think it is going to get better. Sometimes it gets worse, a whole lot worse than I ever thought it could. And on those days I don't think it's going to get better. So I had to wait to write this 'til I thought it would. And this is a day I think it's going to get better. It took me about a week to get to this day. So what do you know, it got better! Here's the deal. I'm sixty-two years old. I've led a freaky, geeky life. I've messed around with sex and gender. I've done a lot of things in the world that make people laugh at me, make people want to hurt me, to the point where I've wanted to kill myself. I can remember six times in my life that I've planned it all out, ready to kill myself. Fuck it. Why go on? It's not going to get better. And each time, I managed to find something else to do instead. I've found lots of reasons to go on living, lots of ways to make life more worth living. And that's all I'm asking you to do.

I wrote a whole book about it. It's called
Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws
. There are a hundred and one things in there that are better than killing yourself. Some of them are illegal and immoral, unethical and self-destructive. They're all in the book. You don't have to buy the book or buy it for laughs when you've got some extra cash. Great. Help me pay the rent but that's not the deal.

The deal is this. Here's all you need to remember to know that life gets better: You can do whatever it takes to make your life more worth living. Really. You can do anything it takes to make your life more worth living. Anything, baby. There's only one rule you need to follow in order to make that kind of blanket permission work. Only one rule in the whole frickin' book.
Don't be mean.
As long as you're not mean, you can do whatever you want that makes your life more worth living. Now, if you do the illegal stuff and you get caught, I can't help you. That's the justice system. It's a risk. Sometimes all that I can think of to make my life more worth living is the illegal stuff. And if I get caught, you couldn't help me, either.

But if that's what you have to do, if you think that's what it takes to make your life more worth living, do it. Take the risk. Just don't be mean.

Now, the trouble with this kind of permission, this kind of, “Oh, I can do whatever it takes,” is that it can get you in trouble with God, especially the sex and gender stuff. That can get you in big trouble with most anybodies God you can think of. You can get sent to hell. Well, I can't get you out of jail.

But I can get you out of hell.

Go to my blog and download a copy of my Get Out of Hell Free card. You can print it out and give it to your friends. You don't even need the card. Here, I'm going to give you one from my heart—this is a Get Out of Hell Free card coming at ya. Take it if you want to. Put it in your heart.

So if what it takes to make your life more worth living—and you weren't mean—gets you sent to hell, take the card out of your heart and give it to Satan. I'll do your time for you. Yeah, ain't that a deal? It's a deal I made with the devil. Satan and I agreed on that one. So, you get to do whatever it takes to make your life more worth living. Anything, baby. Anything at all.

And that's how you can make your life get better. That's how you can look back on life and say, “You know, it did get better.”

I love you. I love you for the courage it takes to explore this stuff.

Kiss kiss, my darling.

M
y mother made me come out to her.

“I understand if you're gay,” she said to me one day. I was twenty-one, and I had known I was gay since I was thirteen, but I was afraid to come out to my conservative Christian parents. When I told her, yes, I was gay, she said, “It doesn't change anything. I still love you.”

Then she added: “But don't tell your father.”

My father was dying of cancer and my mother didn't want to worry him. I didn't want to upset my father either, or my mother, so I never came out to him. But he would sometimes say things that led me to believe he knew. Once, after he got sick, I drove from Seattle to Spokane in a car I borrowed from my “friend,” actually my boyfriend, to visit my dad.

“What kind of car is it?” my dad asked. “A pink Cadillac?”

Dad laughed, kindly, and gave me a paternal wink.

I believe he was trying to tell me, in his own gentle way, that
I
was okay, that
it
was okay
,
that
we
were okay.

If the It Gets Better Project had existed back when I was a teenager, if there were thousands of online messages of hope for bullied LGBT kids back when I was being brutally harassed in my high school, I like to think my dad would've let me know about the videos. He wouldn't have said anything directly; that wasn't his way. I imagine my dad would have mentioned the videos over dinner.

“Did you hear that the President made one of those ‘It Gets Better' YouTubing video things for gay kids getting bullied at school?” he would've said . . . to my mother, but while I was sitting there at the table, listening.

Wink.

And if I'd gone to the It Gets Better website when I was in high school, or read this book, and found these messages of hope and all this good advice from all different kinds of people—gay, lesbian, bi, trans, straight, rural, urban, famous, unknown,
even the freaking President
—it would've made a huge difference for me.

And not just for me. I had one gay friend at school. We didn't know any gay or lesbian adults who could, by sharing their stories, help us see that life could get better. Both of us desperately needed to know that life after high school wasn't going to be more of the same—that the bullying wasn't going to last forever—and we needed to know that there were straight people out there who valued their gay friends and family members. If I had found my way to the It Gets Better Project, I would've made sure my gay friend found his way there, too.

Then we both would've helped spread the word.

 

When Dan called me from New York City in early September of last year to tell me about this idea he'd just had—to make a video, and post it on YouTube, to call it It Gets Better, to reach out to bullied LGBT kids who might be thinking about killing themselves—I told him I thought it was a great idea, and told him to do it.

There was a catch, he said: He didn't want to do it without me. He wanted us to do this together.

Dan had written a couple of books about our life together; one about our efforts to adopt our son, D.J., and one about our decision to get married, in Canada, on our tenth anniversary. My rule has always been that Dan could write whatever he wanted to about us, and say whatever he wanted to say on TV, so long as I didn't have to go on TV or do any interviews or pose for any photographs.

But I agreed to make this video. I wanted to reach out to the kids I was reading about—kids who were being bullied, sometimes to death, because they were gay or perceived to be gay—because I knew that not every LGBT kid is lucky enough to have parents as loving and supportive as mine would turn out to be.

I don't need to tell anyone reading this book what happened next. There were thousands of people out there who had the same reaction I did to Dan's idea: People wanted to help; people wanted to reach out to bullied and hurting LGBT kids with messages of hope, love, and support. People wanted to share their stories, and their joy, and their advice for getting through it and, if possible, making it better.

So what's next for the It Gets Better Project?

In a way, the messages in this book and the videos online are a little like those red ribbons for AIDS awareness that everyone was wearing to the Oscars in the 1990s. Red ribbons did an important job of raising awareness and giving comfort. But here's the crucial difference between the It Gets Better videos and red ribbons: Those ribbons are gone now, moldering away in dresser drawers and landfills, no longer doing the job they were designed to do. But these videos will continue to exist online. Fifteen-year-old kids who need to see them now can watch them now, and five-year-old kids who will need to see them in ten years will be able to watch them then.

Which is why we've created—with the help of the folks at Blue State Digital—a stand-alone website. These videos will always be archived at
itgetsbetter.org
. So the same videos that are today giving hope to LGBT adolescents will be giving hope to LGBT adolescents for years to come.

 

I want to say a few words to LGBT kids who've just finished reading this book.

Middle school and high school can be hard. Believe me, I know. When I was in school I was pushed into lockers, shoved to the floor, punched, slapped—and that was just the physical abuse. I probably don't need to tell you about all the times I was called names. When my parents went to the school to complain, the principal told them that I was bringing the harassment on myself by “acting that way.”

There's so much coming at you right now: new feelings, new people, new experiences. Not all of those feelings are positive, not all of those people are kind, and not all of those experiences are pleasant. Sometimes you can feel lost and alone. I did. Kids can be cruel, parents can be hurtful, and preachers can be particularly hateful, quoting certain verses from the Bible while ignoring others. And there are still teachers and school administrators out there who ignore or excuse bullying.

But, after reading this book, you know that there are people out there who went through what you're going through. You've heard from parents who love their gay kids and religious leaders who want you to know that not all faiths reject you. You've heard from teachers and educators who are working to make schools safer and more welcoming for you and other kids who are different. And you've heard from politicians who are committed to standing up for you and your rights.

And there are thousands of more messages like these online—go to
itgetsbetter.org
to watch them—and there are more coming in every day. You don't have to sift through the clues like I did when my dad tried to reassure me, as best he could. The message you're receiving today is much simpler, much louder, and much clearer.