this is a speech i'm giving to my whole school as a 'names can really hurt us day'
Hi I’m Darrolyn and I’m a Junior.
Ask any of my friends and they will tell you that I am confident, outrageous, hyper, and eccentric to say the least. I frequently change my hair color from, purple, to green, to bubblegum pink which isn’t hard to miss. I come to school with mismatching outfits, colorful knee high socks, a smile, and a hug. But it wasn’t always this way.
I wasn’t proud of myself at all, not only not proud but I hated myself. I hated my body and rejected the fact that I was a girl. I always wore baggy boys clothes, shaved my hair off, and bound myself with ace bandages. I was constantly teased about my weight and my appearance.
On top of being insecure about my body I was also terrified about telling my family or total of two friends that I was a lesbian. I felt like I had to pretend to be someone I wasn’t, holding in this secret hurt more and more as the years went on. I felt like I could never truly be me. It was in eighth grade when my secret accidentally slipped out to my best friend and I pleaded with her not to tell anyone. I wasn’t ready to even tell my family and I sure as hell didn’t want the school to know. But unfortunately I was forced to come out of the closet whether I liked it or not. For the remainder of the year I had trash thrown at me in public and in school. I was beaten up at least weekly while they yelled “Dyke!” without remorse. The teachers always conveniently looking the other way, no one cared about the fat lesbian always walking around with bruised sides or red eyes from silent tears.
I stayed at home afraid to leave my house knowing that only more torment would be waiting for me. All I knew was that before I was even 13 I had cried alone and afraid everyday. When I switched schools in my freshman year to Old Saybrook High School I decided that that it would be best to come into this new school as an out lesbian. I was tired of hiding, tired of pretending, tired of the names, tired of the beatings, tired of the fear, and I was tired of not accepting myself. It was a transition that went relatively smooth, and although I have battled many different forms of prejudice and discrimination in this school it is no where near as violent.
After the long process of becoming more confident I have become a huge gay rights activist. Now I am the president of our school’s gay straight alliance and I am more proud of who I am than I have ever been in my life. I know that I will struggle for my rights for the rest of my life and will always be faced with people who will hate me because of my sexuality. But I am done being hurt by these people. I am me, I am proud, I am woman who loves women hear me roar. (rawr)
 PsychWardPanda · Sun Oct 26, 2008 @ 07:50pm · 0 Comments |
