Sometimes when your hopes have all been shattered,
There's nowhere to turn;
You wonder how you keep going.
Think of all the things that really mattered,
And the chances you've earned.
The fire in your heart is growing.
You can fly, if you try leaving the past behind;
Heaven only knows what you might find!
There is no society in which it is easy to be a pre-teen or teenager. Your body and mind are changing without forewarning or your consent. Neither your younger nor older peers seem to understand anything about you anymore. More often than not, you also no longer understand their world, despite having so recently been one of those younger peers and having looked forward to being one of those older peers.
Our culture prides itself on the idea of "freedom," and yet this freedom has not brought anything in the way of making this transition time easier. If anything, it has made things more difficult - there are rules and laws about what you can and cannot do, based only on your age. You're treated like a child but expected to act like an adult. You're given responsibilities, yet are treated like an unusual specimen if you complete them and treated like a failure if you don't complete them. You're bombarded with messages about who and what you should be, and you're told you are wrong or rebellious if you don't feel it matches what your heart tells you.
Worst of all, in the struggle to find their place in our culture, many of your peers feed into this situation and magnify it ten-fold. The passionate responses you find coming naturally magnify everything you say, do, and experience, and it works the same for your peers. Maybe, once in a while, you've caught yourself doing the same to your peers - something they did just set you off, and you couldn't help yourself.
Life will not stay this way. It gets better.
Dare - dare to believe you can survive!
You hold the future in your hand.
Dare - dare to keep all your dreams alive!
It's time to take a stand -
And you can win, if you dare.
It may not seem like it now, but your future holds incredible potential. There is so much you can do with your future, despite what you've been through and are going through now. Listen to the many awesome people, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Fort Worth City Councilman Joel Burns, and Ellen DeGeneres, who have true, heartfelt messages for you. Your dreams and your future are your own - do not let bullies take those things from you.
Everybody's trying to break your spirit,
Keeping you down...
Seems like it's been forever;
But there's another voice if you'll just hear it,
Saying it's the last round.
Looks like it's now or never!
Out of the darkness you stumble into the light,
Fighting for the things you know are right!
Like so many others, I know it gets better, because I've been there and it has gotten better. I've been bullied most of my life - even before my sexuality came into the picture, it was because of how I looked, what I wore, even how I sounded. I really, really wanted to do a video message for the It Gets Better campaign, but I am currently facing a major stumbling block in my life with a fear of being recorded on camera. It happens, once in a blue moon, but I'm always uncomfortable with it. It's a direct result of being bullied - the bullies were so cruel and so persistent over such a long period of my school-age years that I learned to hate my own voice, among other aspects of myself. I am working on it, but it's been a long work-in-progress. I didn't know I had options for help or people to turn to while I was growing up, and my parents' solution to bullies was to "ignore them." I did "ignore them" - I didn't react when I was shoved into lockers; I burst into tears and hid when my clothing was ridiculed. I sat silent, red-faced, with my head down as they threw wads of paper and ink pens at me and the teacher did nothing. I put my jacket over my head and read my books as clusters of broken crayons rained down on me on the school bus. I did not hear my actual name (Elizabeth Harden) from anyone but a handful of friends and my teachers for the entirety of my K-12 life, but I learned to respond to "Bug Eyes," "Fattie," "Dork," "Four Eyes," "E-Lizard Breath," and "Hard-on." I got the occasional "Nerd," "Freak," "Weirdo," and other common insult-names, but those were the ones I heard routinely for years at a stretch. I'm shaking and nearly crying as I think about it now.
My small reprieve came during my first couple of years of high school - I met an incredible, wonderful group of friends who were not only good shoulders to cry on when I was being bullied, but who were (and still are) awesome and supportive of me as a person. They were so awesome that they drove an hour and fifteen minutes (one way) to pick me up and take me to high school prom with them, because my family had moved away by that time and they still wanted to share that important experience with me. Al, Anne, Wied, Tiff, Trish, Mo - I'm giving you guys a shout-out now, because I'm not sure if you know just how much your friendship has meant to me all these years, and since I don't talk about these things very often, I don't think I've ever been able to tell you personally. You guys were my first glimmer that there was a possibility of having not just one or two friends at a time, but many! You were the first glimmer that there might be a future out there for me, as I am, no strings attached. I held on to that when we moved away and I started yet another in a long string of different schools. I held on to that when I moved on to college. I found out at college that it was true - there are so many awesome people in the world. It got better.
Dare - dare to believe you can survive!
The power is there at your command.
Dare - dare to keep all your dreams alive!
It's time to take a stand -
And you can win, if you dare!
I'm not going to pretend that when you turn 18 and run out your parents' door that a magical world of happy people and flowers and bunnies opens up and you never run into hardship again. I came out as bisexual for this year's National Coming Out Week. I'm 30 years old. It was still a nerve-wracking decision, and I not only talked to my husband about it first (because I was afraid of his Facebook being spammed up with 'OMG DID U KNOW???' messages, even though he's known since we started dating), I also did a lot of hand-wringing and soul-searching. I knew for a fact that it was going to put yet another rift between me and my parents and brothers. They've been homophobic since...well, forever, I guess. I grew up listening to homophobic language and jokes. My first direct experience was when I was a teenager; I used to have a passion for creating temporary tattoos with non-toxic ink and food coloring, and after doing a number of "safe" tattoos of things like flowers, dragons, favorite male characters and animals on myself, I decided one morning to be "bold" and do a tattoo of She-Hulk. Shulkie was kind of my inspiration during those years - a bold, beautiful woman who was strong and successful despite being tall and green. It may seem silly - looking up to a fictional character, and one so absurd - but she really epitomized what I hoped for in the future. I spent a lot of time on the tattoo, making it detail-perfect. When my mom saw it, all she had to say was, "You shouldn't be doing tattoos like that. You should do something more appropriate for a girl, like one of the guy superheroes." It stung, partially because it ignored the laborious effort of several hours, but moreso because I knew the implied meaning immediately - only a lesbian would wear a tattoo like that, and it was unacceptable for me to be a lesbian. It wasn't hard to know - Ellen DeGeneres was starting to hit her stride in popularity with her own television show at the time, and she wasn't allowed on our TV. Any time she was mentioned on the news for her success, all I ever heard was, "I wish they'd quit talking about that Ellen Degenerate, she's disgusting." (I LOVE Ellen today, for the record. I watch her show when I get the chance and I am a fan on Facebook. I'm sad and a tiny bit bitter about all of the years I wasn't allowed to watch her on TV.)
On the other hand, I've had a lot of positive responses to coming out. Many of my online friends had known for a long time, and were as supportive and enthusiastic as always. Many others were surprised but still supportive. My husband posted publicly that he was proud of me for coming out. I am so, so grateful and appreciative of all of the support, not just for myself, but for all others who are able to see these very public responses. It's proof in print - it gets better.
Dare - dare to believe you can survive!
You hold the future in your hand.
Dare - dare to keep all your dreams alive!
The power is there at your command!
I survived. I'm still surviving. It's been a long road. I'm 30 and still struggling with a lot of baggage, but I've been to counseling and I've built a strong, caring support network. I've reached out to people - both those willing to help me and those whom I can help. That's why I'm reaching out now, with this blog - if I can help one person, all of my pain and emotional turmoil will be worth it. If one person reads this and realizes that they are not alone and it will get better, then I will have accomplished what I set out to do.
Dare - dare to keep all your love alive!
Dare to be all that you can be!
Dare - there is a place where dreams survive.
It's calling you on to victory!
Where am I now? For those who don't know, I'm married to an incredible, loving husband who totally accepts me. I'm finishing my Master of Arts degree in Studio Art, with an emphasis in Expressive Ecopsychology. I have an Associate of Arts and Sciences degree in Humanities and an Associate of Arts degree in Computer Information Systems - Microcomputer Specialist, as well as the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art - Expressive Ecopsychology, already under my belt. I'm loved, and I love others. I'm on my way, because it got better. It'll get better for you, too.
Dare! Dare!
It gets better.
Lyric credits: Dare (Transformers: The Movie) by Stan Bush
