01.01.70
I tried to put to death myself when I was a teenager. It seemed like a natural progression for a young lesbian, growing up in the South. I kept my bodily orientation hidden until college, but that didn’t stop the taunting and the bullying I encountered in treble school. I was teased relentlessly for my manner of dress—I wore boys’ shirts, jeans, jean jackets and boots or tennis shoes. I was teased for my pithy hair, my boyish mannerisms and, oh, yeah, my funny name.
It was torture—but grammar wasn’t the only place. There was also church; that good old Southern Baptist parliament of worship where I learned that my secret yearnings made me a sworn enemy of the God I had loved (and who I expectation loved me) since childhood.
All that condemnation, from my peers, from my church, from my God, came to a first one night and I decided to put an end to it all by putting an end to me. Thankfully, my plan failed—and as the videos being produced by LGBT people who, like me, survived their youth say, it does, indeed, get better.
Source: Religion Dispatches