In 2022, as part of a class on Human Development, I was prompted as follows
“Reflect on your identity development during adolescence by writing a letter of support to your adolescent self.”
This was my response:
Dear Jeff: hey you/me. There you stand at 14 and here I write you, 41 years later. 14/41 a palindrome, which you surely know without my pointing it out. Word and number games; still wonderful! I’m writing on deadline for an assignment in college; no joke, it took us several decades to get around to college and so maybe that’s why I’m writing you?
Mostly though, I want to tell you that heartache is headed your way (I think the scientific term is metric shit-ton) and it’s OK to be sad about it. Please, please, please know that when Mom & Dad ask you if you want therapy—they’re offering it to you because they’re going to separate and get divorced after you read this—it’s OK to say yes. You don’t have to show bravado, you don’t need to feel embarrassed. The reason I feel so strongly about this is that you & I both know you’ve got worries other than mom & dad’s divorce and if you start tackling those issues now, then maybe some of the heartache can be avoided. I told them I didn’t need therapy. It wasn’t as brave a choice as I thought it was.
I’m not 100% certain that the therapist you deserve to see exists in northern Colorado where and when you are now. So, if you start therapy and you think it’s a mismatch with your therapist—if he or she in any way makes you feel awkward for being gay, then you are also allowed to say you need a new therapist. Until you find the right one. Be in the driver’s seat, insist on your emotional and mental health. This time should be for you, now: discover what you love, who you love, use your words and your voice and don’t pipe down. Just trust me on this. Make waves. Make noise. Be brave. Don’t be accommodating! Don’t feel you need to make it better for everyone else!
Mom & Dad are both about to be distracted by their own exploding lives. It’s not that they don’t love you or Kim, it’s that they grew up where & when they grew up (in the 1950s, in Decatur-fucking-Georgia) and neither of them has had opportunity to really explore who their adult selves were meant to be. Yes, Mom is a nurse and Dad is a banker; that’s not really what I mean. No, it wasn’t an arranged marriage, but they weren’t done growing yet, they weren’t actual adults when they married. They couldn’t have known who the subsequent decades would shape them into being. Spoiler alert: they do not wind up together, and honestly, from this vantage point, I do not have any language to suggest how on earth they appealed to one another in the first place.
You know already that you are a gay man. From your vantage point in 1980, you can’t know what that is about to mean. And I can’t really foretell that chapter for you. It’s a spoiler I wouldn’t know how to share with you. For all the heartache inherent in what’s about to come, you do have to believe me that you will survive most of the heartache (not all) through the love and support of so many friends you know already, and through the love of several others you have yet to meet.
I deeply wish I could shield you from the sadness and the self-defeating depression (and its recurrences) yet to come, and to spare you that oppressive higher order context screaming “Jesus Hates Fags” and “shhhh-don’t-talk-about-gay-lives-they-are-disgusting-and-to-be-ridiculed” and “How Lonely Those Men Must Be” and yes, “Cousin John is one of them we don’t speak of.”
I want you to reach out to Cousin John now. Ignore Aunt Jean’s homophobia because he will run out of time very soon and it’s more important you know him, and for him to be seen by you; I missed that chance with him. Jean will erase him because of White Jesus and her own self-hatred and shame. You need to understand now (not several decades later when I finally got past the seal of silence) that your father’s sister is a broken, evangelic fool because she had an affair while she was overseas with your uncle. Hatred of insufficiently pious people is how she copes; she stands in judgement of others because it diverts her from feeling the degree of judgement she’s leveling at herself. Understanding that now might help you reach out to John and spare both of you too much ill-advised self-hatred and despair. Family secrets can and do kill, so I want you to know that you don’t have to be distracted by any of it: your talents for music, and writing, and drama, and your deep, heartfelt friendships are the way forward. Be all the things you dream of being: NOW.
Dream Big, you/me, Dream Big. And don’t let the bastards get you down. XO Me/You
OMG! The photo of the younger you! It's all right there, already!
This was beautiful and something I think I might benefit from doing as well.