What If

I pride myself on being an advocate and fighting for what's right, but how can I do that when I'm completely hidden from real life and the vicious brutality of this endless fight for freedom?

I never hear it at my school, because this is Chapel Hill, and Chapel Hill is all pep, honors kids, and anti-discrimination, right? Wrong.

That, my friends, is a front. It's an amusing facade we put up so parents will be content with their children's education, and college acceptances and scholarship offers will one day fill up our mailboxes. What a surprise it is when those endless hallways and ever multiplying classrooms begin to hold more than childlike innocence and joy, and begin to be a place full of fear, pressure, and discrimination on all fronts.

It scares me that when hearing the word "faggot" from across the room in Biology, I get caught completely and totally off guard and don't know what to do. I mean, I'm glad I don't just sit back and accept it, or even worse, use it, but what am I gonna do when I get out of this town? This school? What happens when I'm fighting the real bad guys, the ones that want me to burn in hell, and not just freshmen boys that don't realize what they're saying? Will I be able to handle it?

What about when someone uses it and understands what they're saying? When they know how hurtful it is, but they don't care? Will I be able to stand up and do something about it? I'd like to think that I would, but I just don't know. What if I'm afraid? What if they don't listen?

What if it's a friend...?

You see, that's what wakes me up at night. That's what makes me wish the future would never come. Would I be able to stand up to someone that I really liked, even loved, and risk what was between us? Dear God, I hope and pray that when and if that day ever comes, I will be able to stand behind my beliefs and do what is right by me.

Please let that day never come.