What Is Justice to a Community that Refuses to Remember?
Courtney Bither
My heart is pounding as I stare at my computer, hands hovered over the keyboard. I am nervous. Writing, like Twitter and the buzz my phone makes when I get an email, triggers me.
It has been more than two years since I felt compelled to write anything. After my last post on Quaker process, I gave it up. I was done with sacrificing myself for people who couldn’t listen to me or see me. I took a step back to heal.
Now 25, I look back on the year I came out—21-years-old and knowing no other ‘out’ folks in my community—and I finally feel compassion for myself. I didn’t say things nicely back then. I didn’t ask for respect; I begged for it. I screamed, and I wept, and I held my friends sobbing on the sidewalk, and then we got up and yelled some more. I lost relationships. I burned bridges.
I wish things would have gone down differently. I believe there was no other way for things to have gone down.
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