Entry tags:
Isn't the air in my lungs the same air you breathe?
LJ's Writer's Block question today:
What's the first major news event that you remember hearing about as a child? Where did you learn about it? How did it impact your world view
The first I remembered right away was the murder of Matthew Shepard. I was told by my mother a bit back that this is probably because early on, she and my father were paying a great deal of attention to the story and talking about it and that I'd be hanging around while it was on the TV and they were talking.
I don't know how long it was before I knew that Matthew was gay. It can't have been long, because I remember being haunted by that story long before I came out to myself. It was a very long time before I heard his killers' defense that they were high during the attack/killed him for drug money. What I always heard (probably first from my parents, who were just as disgusted as I was by the matter) was that Matthew was gay, and some people who didn't like that killed him. And that's probably what stuck with me: that if you're gay, some people won't like that and they might kill you. Considering that I was only eight at the time, it's not surprising the impact it had on me--I wouldn't be surprised if it fed into a moment I had a year-two years later, when I had a flash of 'that girl is pretty!' and then quickly repeated the mantra of 'I'm not a lesbian, I'm not a lesbian' (maybe it was I'm not gay, I'm not gay--but I'm fairly sure I said lesbian). I'm sure in my nine-or-ten year old mind, I was doing that partially because I didn't want to die
So it definitely shaped me. Hearing that a young man was killed for being himself terrified me, and made me wary of people even more so than I had been before. It could have very easily kept me in the little box I'd made for myself because of how frightening the 'what if' I learned from it was. I knew it was wrong, but it taught me that to some people it is right. That idea stays with me now, and terrifies me far more now that I am in a relationship. I have never become jaded to that idea; it still causes me fresh pain whenever I see the name of another person who has been killed simply because they dared to be themselves. I know that person was someone's child, someone's sibling, someone's partner. And someone killed them because love scares them just that much.
And that is horrifying. Love should never be cause for more anger in this world.
What's the first major news event that you remember hearing about as a child? Where did you learn about it? How did it impact your world view
The first I remembered right away was the murder of Matthew Shepard. I was told by my mother a bit back that this is probably because early on, she and my father were paying a great deal of attention to the story and talking about it and that I'd be hanging around while it was on the TV and they were talking.
I don't know how long it was before I knew that Matthew was gay. It can't have been long, because I remember being haunted by that story long before I came out to myself. It was a very long time before I heard his killers' defense that they were high during the attack/killed him for drug money. What I always heard (probably first from my parents, who were just as disgusted as I was by the matter) was that Matthew was gay, and some people who didn't like that killed him. And that's probably what stuck with me: that if you're gay, some people won't like that and they might kill you. Considering that I was only eight at the time, it's not surprising the impact it had on me--I wouldn't be surprised if it fed into a moment I had a year-two years later, when I had a flash of 'that girl is pretty!' and then quickly repeated the mantra of 'I'm not a lesbian, I'm not a lesbian' (maybe it was I'm not gay, I'm not gay--but I'm fairly sure I said lesbian). I'm sure in my nine-or-ten year old mind, I was doing that partially because I didn't want to die
So it definitely shaped me. Hearing that a young man was killed for being himself terrified me, and made me wary of people even more so than I had been before. It could have very easily kept me in the little box I'd made for myself because of how frightening the 'what if' I learned from it was. I knew it was wrong, but it taught me that to some people it is right. That idea stays with me now, and terrifies me far more now that I am in a relationship. I have never become jaded to that idea; it still causes me fresh pain whenever I see the name of another person who has been killed simply because they dared to be themselves. I know that person was someone's child, someone's sibling, someone's partner. And someone killed them because love scares them just that much.
And that is horrifying. Love should never be cause for more anger in this world.
