What Does Pride Mean to Me?

I grew up in conservative north Texas. What that means is that I grew up not seeing positive images of gay people everywhere. We didn’t yet have an influx of queer-positive content like we do now. Not in the mainstream culture anyway. That kind of thing existed on the fringes and thus remained unknown to me for many years. Needless to say, this meant that I grew up with only one idea in my head of what a gay person was: unhappy and alone. Pride? That was something sinful, not something to be celebrated. 

So of course when I came of age and realized that I was gay, I knew that it meant I could never tell anyone. I would be ostracized from my community and condemned to a life of loneliness. Or so I thought anyway. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-20s that I was able to finally come out even though I still thought I would end up lonely and ostracized. I just couldn’t pretend anymore. I was done with living a lie. 

And I admit, those first few months could be lonely at times. There wasn’t exactly a huge gay community in my hometown. There was a gay bar so that was someplace I could go on weekends to meet gay men for a drink or whatever else the night might entail. But I still didn’t really have a community. I didn’t have a social life. I still felt lonely and afraid. I remember when I finally got my first boyfriend and how nervous I was to hold his hand in a public place. I was worried about getting gay-bashed and that someone I knew might see us and my secret would be out. I was out but I wasn’t quite ready to be that out.

About a year after coming out, I left Texas finally. It was partly because of a job opportunity and partly because I needed to make a fresh start somewhere else. I moved to Chicago, a land that allowed me to first start to see that being gay didn’t need to mean you were condemned to loneliness. I saw gay people thriving in Chicago. Living as their full, authentic selves and having relationships and community. This wasn’t at all what I had experienced before. This was new and different and fun. I marched in the Pride parade that year which opened my eyes to what society could be. 

What stuck out to me about the Pride parade is how many people were there to celebrate being queer. People of all ethnicities, genders, ages etc. were there to celebrate Pride, something that I had previously associated with sin. There was nothing sinful about this celebration though. It was joyful and celebratory. It was everything that Pride should be about. I loved it and it really transformed my own view of my queerness and my relationship to it.

I still go back to Texas on occasion. And while I’m fully out now, there’s still a part of me that doesn’t feel completely safe even in my hometown. I probably never will. I’ve come to realize that there is a reason I left and that’s ok. I’ve found a new community in San Francisco, one where I don’t ever have to feel unsafe to be my authentic self. 

So what does Pride mean to me? It means not being afraid of who I am. It means learning to be comfortable in my own skin. It means having a community that supports and loves me for all of who I am. It means being willing to challenge the status quo and protest against injustice. All those things are Pride and all those things are just an aspect of Pride. 9 year old me couldn’t even begin to understand all of that. And even now, almost 30 years later, I still struggle with. But I am willing to try and I am willing to work every day to make a more queer community. 

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