By Ella Ware
I’ve been out as queer since I was 10 years old, and I just had my first real Pride month at 24.
It was long overdue– I’m new to Grand Rapids, and grew up in a tiny town in Texas. I attended school and church in a town that has a population of 198 people, was almost completely white, and was certainly not tolerant of the LGBTQ+ community.
I was one of those kids where it was evident that I was queer. The kids could tell, the teachers could tell, the church could tell. The only person who didn’t know was me. I definitely knew I was different, but I was shielded from any gay representation. I just knew I didn’t really care about the boys my friends were obsessed with, and I wanted to crawl out of my skin when I was treated like the girls.
When I was little, I didn’t think I could actually be gay or trans, because I was being told in my Southern Baptist church that those people were going to hell, and that they were bad people– abominations. I wasn’t a bad person, and I didn’t want to go to hell, so I simply couldn’t be.
Eventually, I couldn’t ignore it anymore and had to face reality; the praying and pleading had not worked. I was not cisgender and I wasn’t straight. I didn’t know how to reconcile my beliefs; the gays were going to hell, and yet I was gay.
Unsurprisingly, my town didn’t have a Pride celebration. I told my parents and some of my friends when I was 10 (to mixed reactions), because I’ve never been good at keeping my mouth shut. I was technically out, but stepping back into the closet multiple times per day out of necessity. My faith was a fundamental part of me, but so was this other thing, so I couldn’t actually be honest about who I was. Theatre was my reprieve, and I gained lifelong family there, but I didn’t feel comfortable broadcasting it to every member of the cast.
I moved to Grand Rapids eight months ago. I immediately felt safer and more unapologetic. I started pursuing a medical transition, and people around me easily adopted my pronouns, something I’d never experienced in person before.
This June, I attended my first Pride festival. It was surreal, and at times I felt like I was in a trance while people-watching. I saw the drag queen Madame Mystery, who is a singer, magician, hypnotist, and comedian. It was actually my first time seeing a drag queen in person, which feels crazy considering I have been obsessed with drag since high school.
In fact, everything I saw were things that I’d seen and only engaged with heavily online. The internet was the only place I’d celebrated Pride, and it was unreal to be surrounded by people in my community out in broad daylight.
It was one of the first times where I didn’t feel ashamed or embarrassed. It was packed with people of all ages. I saw a young child with a they/them pin on their shirt, and I wondered how different it could have been for me had I been in a community that nurtured that part of me rather than condemned it– and I felt unbridled joy for them. I saw priests with t-shirts that said “God Loves You” and “This Priest Loves You,” complete with clerical collars sticking out the top. I thought of the kid I used to be, sitting in pews, hearing vitriol before I even started learning my multiplication tables.
I also saw older people from the community. I’ve never been able to actually envision myself as a 50-year-old, or a 70-year-old. It was reassuring to me that people like me do survive whatever is thrown at them, and they do grow old.
It’s a terrifying time to be trans in America, but Pride started as a protest, and it remains a protest. Protections are being rolled back, and new legislation threatens the safety of transgender kids and adults. The Trump administration even went as far as to create a counterterrorism strategy classifying “radically pro-transgender” ideology as a national security threat. We haven’t heard very much good news from the top in quite a few years.
At Pride, all of this was irrelevant. My first real Pride month has taught me that I don’t have to shrink myself anymore to make myself palatable to the people around me. Moving to Grand Rapids opened me up to a world that had previously felt make-believe.
