Why Me? Why Now?

I'll admit, it's not always easy trying to advocate for LGBT rights from deep within the closet. Being vice president of my school's GSA, I constantly put myself out there while holding back just enough, laughing things off, and sometimes having to say no. I keep secrets, and I feel the negative repercussions every day. It's in the confusion I feel when I tell my best friend I'm going to a GSA meeting, but can't tell her why. It's in the way I avoid my mom's gaze when I make up an excuse to go to an GSA lock-in, or when I hide the rainbow ribbons and LGBT books at the back of my shelf or the bottom of my backpack.

And sometimes I have to ask myself - Why me? Why now?

I joined GSA and I started this blog because I couldn't handle my own silence. I felt as if I owed it to the community and to myself to do as much as I could.

The LGBT movement will be the next great civil rights struggle that goes down in history. I am not willing to be someone who holds back in fear, suppressing her beliefs because they are not widely accepted. I am not content to speak only when the moment is opportune and the fight is already won. I am not ashamed of my inner voice, no matter how contested and inconvenient it might be. Someone once said, “Your beliefs don’t make you a better person, your actions do”. If this is true, then what good is a person who will not take action to defend their beliefs?

I will not be silent. I will do what I know needs to be done… and I will hold my head high. We idealize revolutionaries, but when we see them in society, why is our first instinct to quiet them, to reproach them for disrupting the unwritten rules and keeping the norms from feeling too comfortable? The world is changing around us, and this is not the time to afraid. All the disapproving looks and scandalized whispers in the world will not deter me from pursuing my dreams with sincere passion. I believe with all my heart, so I will fight with all my strength.

Why me? Because I simply cannot stand back and watch.

Why now? Because it simply cannot wait.