It Gets Better. It Gets So Much Better.

Hi there gentle readers.  Your blogger cannot figure out how to make a video and then get it onto the internets.  Your blogger is somewhat technologically inept… sorry.  A video is definitely in the future, but until I can figure it out, I wanted to put my thoughts down here.

I expect this post will be difficult for me to write, because there are a lot of things I don’t really spend a lot of time talking about; I’ve gotten through them, and I have the privilege now of not having to hash them out to everyone.  But the kids who took their own lives in the past few weeks – the young people who, because of the cruelty of others, felt there was nothing to live for anymore – they will never get to this place.  They’re never going to get to put the pain behind them; they’re never going to get to share their voice with the world.  It breaks my heart.

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My name is Alex.  I’m 26, I’m a third year law student in Seattle, Washington, and I wanted to share my story with you because I want you to know – that it gets better.

Some of my friends in high school waited until after graduation to come out.  I didn’t have that option, I came out when I was 12.  I’ve known I was queer since  I was able to know anything at all, I’ve probably known since before kindergarten.  At 12, I just didn’t see the utility of keeping it to myself anymore.  So I told my parents.  And to my great shock, because it hadn’t occurred to me that they would be anything other than supportive, their response was “well, don’t go around advertising it.” That’s it.  That was the entire discussion.  For about 10 years, that was everything my parents said to me about who I was.  What they meant was easy even for a 12 year old to comprehend: Shut up.  Don’t be yourself.  Fit in.

For a bunch of different reasons, I left my small, rural town and went off to an all girls’ boarding school  for high school.  Which you might think sounds pretty damn ideal for a young lesbian, but if you did think that, you would be wrong.  I guess in a sense it was great – my friends were wonderful, they will be my friends my whole life, and I’m so thankful for them.

For me, the bullies weren’t my peers; the bullies were the people who were supposed to be protecting me, supposed to be nurturing me and making me safe and healthy.  They were teachers, administrators, school staff.   They were adults, who had so much power over me, and they used that power to try and try and try to break us.

My freshman year of high school I fell in love for the first time, with a junior who was also new to the school.  It was everything young, first love ever is – intense, ridiculous, joyous, powerful, important, persistent.

It took us about three weeks to get caught.  I remember being called out of class one day into the principal’s office, in December of my freshman year.  I had no idea what was going on – it hadn’t even occurred to me that being in love was something I could get in trouble for.   My friends with boyfriends weren’t getting called into the principal’s office.  When I got there, my girlfriend was already in the office, crying.  She tried to apologize to me, I learned she had been so scared that she had denied everything: no, she wasn’t gay, no, we weren’t gay together, no – nothing was going on.  When we didn’t persuade the principal, we were forbidden from seeing each other.  We were forbidden from being in each others’ rooms, even with the doors open, forbidden from sitting together at meals, forbidden from passing notes in the hallway, from speaking.   For our own good.  And yet my friends with boyfriends had them in the dorm all the time.  We were threatened and terrified.  The message was loud and clear: there is no place safe to go.

Instead of breaking, though, we pushed through – we spent the next two years fighting a daily battle against people infinitely more powerful than us.  At times it was so bad I thought there was nowhere I could go to be safe, nowhere where it was ok to be who I am.  Neither of us could go to our parents, neither of us were safe at school.  It was crushing, the weight of it.  They did everything they could to break us.  They treated us like discipline problems, like they could punish the gayness out of us.  We lived in constant fear, we were sneaking around, we were always tired.  They told us we were sick, that we were unhealthy and wrong.  That there was no way to have a healthy relationship if you were gay.  They held our future over us – they threatened to expel us, they threatened to put discipline on our records, telling us we’d never get into college.

At one point the principal thought it would be a great plan to out us to our parents without even warning us.  Again, out of the blue, we were called into the principal’s office during the school day.  It was a courtesy, she told us, that she was even talking to us at all – she’d already spoken to our parents.  It was a disaster.  It was bad for me, it was catastrophic for my girlfriend.  Her parents showed up that day and pulled her out of school for a while – what happened with her is her story to share but it was weeks before she would even speak to me again.  After this happened, I thought things couldn’t get any worse.  I thought I had no voice, I thought I didn’t stand a chance – the people who were hurting me were so much more powerful than me, I was just a kid.  I was 15.  I thought life wasn’t worth living anymore, I even thought of taking my own life.

I’m so glad I didn’t.   When I look back now, I don’t know how I made it through – my friends, the ones I still count as family today, they gave me a reason to make it through every day.

After my girlfriend graduated, the administration of my school changed, and things got a little bit better.  I found a couple of teachers who helped me stay strong, who helped me learn to be tough, to fight on when things were hard.  And high school only lasted four years.

I got out of there as fast as I could – for me, that meant going to college.  When I got to college I was so amazed – I was so shocked to be meeting people who were queer, who were gay, lesbian, transgendered – and who were happy.   Suddenly, I was surrounded by people who cherished me, for exactly who I was.  I found a world where I could hold hands with the woman I love, without fear.  Where I didn’t have to lie, to deny who I am.   Today I live with my partner of 4 years, she is the love of my life and I assure you, our family of the two of us, one silly lab puppy, and two grumpy cats is quite healthy.  I’m studying to be a criminal prosecutor – I’m going to make this world better by doing my best to keep people from hurting others, and hopefully giving people who the world has tried to silence a voice.  A perk?  All the fight I learned, the refusal to give up, the strength I gained by pushing through – it’s made me one badass radical queer woman.

And the best part is, now I get to add my voice to this project – I get to pass on a message to people who stand where I stood 10 years ago – and tell you, I promise you, no matter how dark it feels right now – it gets better.  It gets so much better.  There’s a world out there, full of people who love you – there’s a world waiting for you where all the things that make you different are the things people cherish most about you.  There’s a world of love, and joy, and freedom from fear.  Yeah – there are still going to be people who try to make it hard, I wish I could tell you otherwise, but if you make it through this time right now, it also gets easier.

Please, if you think you have nowhere to go, if you’re thinking of hurting yourself – call the Trevor Project at 1-866-4-U-TREVOR  Or email me, at alexis dot rado at gmail dot com.

The world needs you.  This world needs your joy, your love, your hope, your voice – this world needs you because you can help make it better.

To iPad or not to iPad: I am torn.

Gentle readers, it has come to pass that I perhaps have the opportunity to own an iPad.  After months of swearing it off, I’ve begun to fall victim to the appeal – drawn in by the shininess and polished facade.

But I’m torn.  The price tag can be as high as $800 – that’s a hell of a lot of cash for something I’m not entirely sure what I’d do with.  I mean, I was just browsing the Apple store website, and it looks to me like the new iPod touch actually does more than the iPad.

Here’s how my story started: Over the summer, while working at my limited license to practice internship, I went to court frequently, often carrying enormous stacks of disorganized files and paperwork.  Inevitably, I would spend 20 minutes looking for one file while papers flew everywhere and the judge and opposing attorney looked on – either amused or impatient.  About halfway through the summer, one of the attorneys I worked with frequently came to court with an iPad instead of the box of files.  I noticed that he had transferred all the PDF files onto the iPad, and while I lost papers and cussed and shuffled files, he accessed each client file, in complete form, right there with one touch.  This was the first practical application of the iPad I saw and, being more or less a practical-minded human being, it was what really got me thinking about the possibilities of the device.

Coincidentally, around the same time, I came home and found, to my horror, that my beloved Kindle (1st gen) had been destroyed somehow – the screen had gone kaput and was cracked and irreparable.  I got the bad news that the warranty I had gotten would not replace the now thrice-outdated (but much loved by me!) device.  It felt like my entire library had burned to the ground – the Kindle was my most beloved of all my gadgets – which is saying something because I am somewhat gadget-obsessed.

At Best Buy post Kindle-death, I started playing around with the display iPad.  I like the look and feel – and I can see the potential in terms of reading and PDF storage.  I started thinking about what, exactly, I would use the device for.

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Welcome Back to the Schoolyear

Hi everyone!  Now that the long summer break is over and we’re all back to the routine of school,  I am excited to get T&E up and running again.  I’ve got a few posts stored in my brain that I hope to roll out over the next couple of days, and I am happily taking suggestions for things you’d like to read about!  My original hope for this blog was to illuminate readers on all sorts of things, from stuff I find funny on the internet to living with learning difference to the day to day life of a law student, so anything you’d like to see here just let me or my esteemed associate know.

I can’t believe Wm! and I are 3Ls now – the past 2 years flew by so fast it feels like yesterday I was ditching law school orientation for cigarette breaks and coffee.

The time went by so fast, in fact, that I can barely wrap my mind around it except to mark the time in milestones, to convince myself that time has passed at all… luckily for me, a lot of important things have happened since I started my 1L year.  Let’s see if I can come up with a complete list:

Since the first day of 1L year, I have:

• Gotten engaged to my beautiful & amazing partner
• Taken on de facto guardianship of my younger brother (he’s 20)
• Shaken off the chains of an evil, vindictive landlord and moved out of Seattle and into the northern suburbs
• Worked 2 summers in prosecutor’s offices
• Worked 2 quarters at a public defender office
• Turned 25, and then 26
• Gotten a puppy who is now over a year old

And I know there’s more.

So whether you’re starting 1L all fresh and new, or heading into 3L year kicking and screaming – welcome back all!  And to all of you the best of luck!