Before you attempt to commit suicide, call someone.  Talk to someone.

Trevor project helpline (U.S., LGBT-specific):  1-866-4-U-TREVOR
Hopeline (U.S.):  1-800-SUICIDE
Samaritans (UK):  08457 90 90 90
Samaritans (Ireland):  1850 60 90 90
Find local suicide hotlines in Canada
Lifeline (Australia):  13 11 14

1-866-4-U-TREVOR

(1-866-488-7386)

Suicide is a serious issue in the LGBT youth community.  While we call ourselves gay and associate with the rainbow, life as a young gay person is often neither happy or brightly colourful.  The GLSEN found in their 2007 student survey,

86.2% of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, 44.1% reported being physically harassed and 22.1% reported being physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation.

73.6% heard derogatory remarks such as "faggot" or "dyke" frequently or often at school.

More than half (60.8%) of students reported that they felt unsafe in school because of their sexual orientation, and more than a third (38.4%) felt unsafe because of their gender expression.

31.7% of LGBT students missed a class and 32.7% missed a day of school in the past month because of feeling unsafe, compared to only 5.5% and 4.5%, respectively, of a national sample of secondary school students.

The reported grade point average of students who were more frequently harassed because of their sexual orientation or gender expression was almost half a grade lower than for students who were less often harassed (2.8 versus 2.4).

With numbers like this, it’s not hard to imagine why around 30% of gay male youths attempt suicide.  [Remafedi, Gary, et al. "Risk Factors for Attempted Suicide in Gay and Bisexual Youth," in Pediatrics (1991).]

It’s also not hard to imagine why 30% of all successful youth suicides in the United States are committed by gay and lesbian adolescents.  [Gibson, Paul. "U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary's Task Force on Youth Suicide Report," 1989.]
[Remafedi, Gary. Death by Denial: Studies of Preventing Suicide in Gay and Lesbian Teenagers (Boston: Alyson Publications, 1995).]

In high school, I fell into all of these statistics, except, thankfully, the last one.  I was harassed and assaulted, I was surrounded by hatred and bigotry, I skipped classes and full days of school when the name calling got bad, I kept my head down in school and tried not to participate and I tried, several times, to kill myself.

I’m out of high school, and my life is so much better than what it was.  I’m an adult now, and in the adult world, my employers and co-workers are either indifferent or supportive of my sexuality, and they don’t care if I express myself freely.  I walk into work on time with my head held high and a smile on my face where, three years ago, I walked into school late, sunk into a chunky coat and trying not to be seen.

I bring this up because of something that happened at work today.  A boy who looked about 16 walked into my department alone with red, puffy eyes, walking with his hands in his pockets and his face pointed at the floor.  Naturally, I thought he was stoned and looking to shoplift, so I followed him at a distance.  When I approached him to let him know he was being watched and wasn’t going to get away with any bullshit on my shift, (“Hello, sir, can I help you find anything today,” in retail means, “Hey, fucker, I’m watching you like a hawk, and if you try to pull one over on me, I’ll swoop down and fuck your little world, insignificant rodent,” in English.) I noticed he wasn’t high at all.  He was crying.  The shoe laces on his Chucks were rainbow coloured and he was wearing mascara that ran down his cheeks.

I looked him in the eye, half-smiled and said, “It gets better.”

I don’t know who made him cry or what they did, but if I had known that then, I would have been fired from my job today for pummelling children.  I saw way too much of myself from not too long ago in this kid and it brought back a huge wave of emotion.  When I saw this broken little homo look up at me with mascara on his cheeks and tears set in his eyes, I wanted to beat every 16-year-old motherfucker who ever made a 16-year-old queer kid cry.

As I made small talk with my co-workers while closing up the store and as I bitched about retail work with my roommate over coffee, the kid from the store was foremost in my mind.  I hope he’s okay.  I hope he can push past the bullshit and make it out of high school safely.  I hope his tormenters end up in the Roanoke Valley Juvenile Detention Center at Coyner Springs, preparing for their future of being shuffled around in the real prison system.  I hope that he gets into the college of his dreams and becomes an architect, a doctor, a Senator or whatever he wants to be.  And when he returns to Roanoke to visit his family, I hope the jocks who harassed him have to bag his produce at the grocery store.  But mostly, I hope that when things don’t go that way, and the insults and the harassment inevitably get worse, and the kids who perpetuate it inevitably scheme their way out of being punished, the little gay boy I met today gets help before he makes the same mistakes I did.

For any teenager reading this who feels trapped under a blanket of hatred, know that it does get better.  Even in rural Virginia, where I’m currently still stuck, it gets so much better than high school.  No matter how tattered and threadbare you feel like you are, and no matter how irreparably ruined you think your life is,  it will get better.  Just give it time to do so.

The following is a scene written by Jeannette Kenny, Margaret McQuail and myself in 2004, from a show called True Colors, copyrighted by Kevin Jones.

Bullying

Setting:  A bare stage except for two black boxes downstage. As the lights come up, a male cast member is seated on the stage left box and a female cast member is seated on the stage right box.  Upstage and center is another cast member (Graduate), who is standing.
During the scene, Male & Female do not acknowledge each other.  Graduate is listening to the others and is nonverbally responding.

Male: The bullying started when I was in second grade. I was a city kid who moved to a small town. I tried to get along with the other kids, but everything seemed so different. No one tried to understand me, so they chose to mock me instead. I didn’t care that they didn’t like me, but why did they have to pick on me so much?

Female: (Sings to the tune of the Gillette razor commercial) “Jeannette, the worst a man can get”. That’s what they came up with today.  By lunch it was all over the school.  By fourth period, people had stopped singing the words, they just kept humming it.  Whistling it.  When I walked in the room, when I walked out of the room, softly behind me as I walked down the halls.  Please don’t let this last long.  Don’t let it be like the “trip Jeannette” game that went on for a whole month.

Male: I get text messages every single day: “Gay people are sin”; “Jesus hates homos”. My pastor told me that God made me who I am, and He has everything already planned out for me.  (Sarcasm)  I just wish that He could share the ending with me.

Female: Don’t be ashamed, don’t be ashamed, don’t be ashamed. There is a part of me that keeps chanting that.  She knows.  She knows that I should be proud.  Proud to be different.  Proud to break the stereotype of what an acceptable girl should be.  And I do hear her.  Just not well.  She’s getting quieter and quieter.  Becoming tired.  And I can’t say as I blame her.  I’m deeply ashamed and I’m tired too.  I’m tired of this body.  I don’t want it to be mine anymore.  It’s not like I have control over it.  I’m tired of my shoulders hunching up all the time, no matter how much I try to relax them.  I’m tired of my head lurching forward because someone pushed it.

Male: Verbal abuse is specifically crafted to get under your skin and stay there forever.

Female: But I can’t give away this body.  As much as I wish I could, I can’t.  So they can have it.  I don’t care anymore.  Take it.  Just leave the real me out of it.  My soul and my heart.  I want those, even though they’re damaged almost beyond repair.  I’m going to put them over here in the corner where they’ll stay safe.  Someday, when I can find enough time to cry over everything, I’ll go looking for them.  Because crying doesn’t help me now.  There’s not enough time.   I can’t be in pain and in school at the same time.  I can’t.  And crying is what they want.  Reaction, is what they want.  Not only do they want to hurt me, they want to make sure that others see it happen.  They don’t care about me, they want the laughter and acceptance of their friends.

Male: Last week three jocks showed up at the local coffee shop to publicly harass me. The manager threw them out, but they waited outside for over two hours for me to leave. I thought that I was as good as dead.

Female: Not only am I going to stop crying, I’m going to stop reacting. So go ahead, push my head into my book again.  I won’t give you the satisfaction.  Do you think you’re clever?  Think you can reach around me and drive the book upwards into my face again?  Go ahead, try.  I’ll feel you disturb the air around me first and I’ll be prepared.

(“Rapid-fire” and escalating in intensity)

Male: Hit me.

Female: Humiliate me.

Male: Shout at me.

Female: Trip me.

Male: Sexually threaten me.

Female: Physically threaten me.

Male: Throw things at me.

Female: Mimic me.

Male: Shun me.

Female: Point at me and laugh.

Male: Spit on me.

Female: Move away from me.

Male: (Almost screaming) Until you’ve gotten all the laughs you want.  (Beat.  Calmer now.)  Maybe you’ll quit then.  That’s it really.  All I want to do is quit.

Female: This is the only way.  I’m tired of fighting for breath when I’m told to choke back my pain instead.  I’m tired of fighting for space to occupy when I’m told I’m not wanted.  And I’m tired of fighting for bodily integrity.  I’m not even sure I deserve those things anymore.

Male: I am nothing. I have been told that for so many years that it has become my reality.

Female: I just want it to be over. Now. Yesterday even.

Graduate: (Soliloquy)  I’d hoped that things had changed at my old high school.  I had hoped that I would be the last person to walk those halls feeling the pain of that abuse.  But I guess not.  I wish I could talk to them.  Of course, if they’re anything like I was, they’re too busy surviving and too preoccupied with suicide to really hear me.  I just want to fast-forward their life so that they can be where I am now.  Because here my pain, fear, and humiliation have changed me forever.  But it’s over. It’s not part of my life now.  And now is what’s most important.  From the time my harassment started in the third grade, I’ve lived in pain.  That’s nine years.  But what I see ahead of me is 60 more years of my life.  Another 60 years, or more, of being an adult, having adult friends, and being free from that particular type of pain.  Ultimately, I wish I could tell them, and every other person that is living through their childhood in a defensive crouch, that their teachers and parents are right, and that their peers are wrong–that they are a great kid and that they are a good role model–and that they will have another 60 years of being an even greater adult.  They just have to live long enough to get there.