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[–]PatsyStoneMaverique 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Not gonna lie, it was pretty awful.

I'm from kind of a benighted part of the U.S. that has a lot of endemic social problems which make everything, any problem you could have, harder to deal with. For instance, my high school was not only racially segregated but segregated by social class as well. Our honors program consisted of the children of people (usually transplants from other states) who had college degrees and worked professions. So although I grew up in a heavily religious and Republican area, most of the kids I actually interacted with at school were from politically liberal families that weren't religious or were mainline Protestant and Catholic.

The reason I feel the need to clarify is that those kids bullied the shit out of me. I got called a cuntlicker pretty frequently beginning about my Sophomore year, especially by a particular group of boys that I shared a lot of classes with, and I slowly got ostracized over the course of that year to the point that only a handful of people would speak to me. I was one of those kids who spent lunch in the library.

This continued until graduation. The justification for this was that I had been identified by the other kids as a lesbian and I "was not accepting myself." This was the preferred form of bullying at my school and I can remember several boys from my year who got subjected to the same treatment.

I think this situation colored my view of the world permanently, because I have never liked or trusted "allies." There is no way in hell I would ever go to a teacher for help, they were like them. There were no out gay people in my town that I was aware of.

It also drove me to hang out with mostly Evangelical kids and Muslims (we had a lot of Muslim kids for a little town in rural America.) They are homophobic in their own, different way, but at the time they were the kind people who treated me like a human being and I felt safe around them.

Sad to say, I think it made me an asshole. It also, as I got older, made it difficult for me to fit in and find a place in the LGBTQIAA2S+ community when I tried. I'm just too different to relate.

[–]oofreesouloo⚡super lesbian⚡[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Damn, I'm so sorry for the things you went through :( I truly hope you feel better right now and have found true friends who will accept you for who you are!

I'm just too different to relate.

I kinda feel this way lots of time. So, don't worry! I get you. Big hugs

[–]PatsyStoneMaverique 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Aw, thanks so much 💗 I think we all underestimate how different our lives are sometimes.