It Gets Better, my two cents

The It Gets Better Project is a wonderful thing, and I write in not so much to reassure the world that it did get better for me (and it did), but to let you all know a large part of HOW it got better.

I was bullied for every reason imaginable.  I was chubby, awkward, that kind of smart that doesn’t help you grade-wise, so I couldn’t even fit in with the nerds.  I spent almost every school day thinking up ways I could get sent home, faking illness just so I could hide and not have to hear the teases and taunts from everyone outside my room.  The school years for me were very very long.

I’ve watched a lot of videos and talked to a lot of people, and so many of them talk about how once you survive high school, college is worlds better.  That’s true.  But for some, college is years away

Here’s what got me through. 

I went to a summer camp called French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts, in upstate NY.  Don’t let the name fool you, the program is huge and diversified, and while they do 70 or so productions for all ages every summer, there are plenty of kids who never set foot on a stage and have a great time anyway. 

I don’t want to get into sounding like a commercial for them (they have a website for that, www.frenchwoods.com).  But the point is, I was spending my summer with open-minded, creative people, who could understand, appreciate, and support me.  I would stay in touch with the people from camp during the year, and it would be a beacon during the dark days of school when I was being tormented.

I work there now, and French Woods is the same now as it was then, and more.  Kids come to camp and find they can be gay, bi, different, whatever, and rather than being shunned and bullied, they are embraced.  The internet now allows these kids to easily stay in touch all year round, and from talking to many of them, I know that this helps.  I hear phrases all the time like, “French Woods is the only place I don’t get bullied”.

I’m not doing this justice.  I don’t think mere words could.  I’m sure French Woods isn’t the only place like this out there, but this was the place that saved me from year-long crap from my peers, and gave me an oasis to escape to in the summer, where people loved art and musicals and each other.  I wish every bullied kid in the world could go there and spend a summer feeling loved and accepted.  Until there is college, there can be camp.  They do give scholarships.  Not only does it get better – if you go to the right place, it already IS better.