Friday, February 17, 2017

Learning About Gay History

I picked up a book recently about the history of Stonewall. It was interesting because our (gay) history didn't begin in the 60's. It began long before that. Gays have been around for a long, long time.

I wish there was a singular place to get all the history that I wanted in one place. Maybe like an encyclopedia just for LGBT history. 

I bring up this little rant because as I come to terms with my own identity and my struggles and traumas, it would be nice to reflect on what other people in history have done to cope with all the bad things that have happened to them.

Mental Health counseling wasn't always a thing you know. It has only been in the past few decades that mental health has been used to treat terrible events in a person's life. 

I think about this now because I can still see the people's faces that assaulted me at night. In fact every night. They are most often the first or even second thing I see when I wake up. I cannot get the images of what happened out of my head. I also do not want to tell fifty thousand people every dirty detail of what happened either. Its something I do not want to relive again and again. 

This brings me back to the topic, gay history. Trauma has been almost inevitable in the LGBT community, as far back as Oscar Wilde (which I realize is not that far back) knew that the life of a homosexual was going to be brutal at times.

Yet we have ways to bounce back and be happy once again. Even in the aftermath of becoming some one's victim.

This leads me to a question for everyone, where can one go in literature to learn about coping with trauma?

With Love
Jeff Utnage

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