A Face = A Connection

I've heard the horror stories of how people treat their gay children, but like everyone else listening, I felt distanced. That changed today.

Jason Driskell, for those of you that haven't been reading as long as I've been blogging, was someone I grew to fancy over the course of last year. I believe he is graduating this year. He's a very kind, very artistic person. His paintings are beautiful and vivid. Just looking at him makes me smile.

I learned in Clay today that Jason is one of these people. He is one of people in the world that have to deal with parents that don't love him because he is gay. Everything was there. His parents were Christians. They do not go to any of his openings, and Jason has had several gallery openings from what I understand. On top of that, he lives with them and wants nothing more than to just make them happy and proud of him. He even went to church with a group of people who were "recovering homosexuals" just to make them happy!

Upon learning this, I started to become overwhelmed with depression. I turned around and expressed my feelings on the matter, but my judgment and choice of words came out all wrong. Even my tone of voice did not sound like I was being sincere! I felt bad for Jason, but I couldn't express it orally to even the person next to me.

I'm lucky. I don't have to go through all that shit. Compared to Jason, I have the perfect family for a gay artist like himself. One that supports him and his talent.

If I could, I would try my damnest to do something for Jason right now to make it all better for him. What, I don't know. I just want to do something to make his hurt go away. I never did like hearing these kind of stories, and now that I have a face to put on one story (a face that I find equally attractive as his works of art), I find myself hating these kind of situations even more!

I wish the world didn't have to be this way. I wish for once that we didn't have to label people. I wish that things could be different.

I just wish I could fix things for Jason.