{"id":8756,"date":"2011-01-11T07:19:50","date_gmt":"2011-01-11T11:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/?p=8756"},"modified":"2011-01-04T09:20:07","modified_gmt":"2011-01-04T13:20:07","slug":"it-truly-does-get-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/?p=8756","title":{"rendered":"It Truly Does Get Better"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been thinking about the wonderful It Gets Better Project<\/a> which gives encouragement to LGBT kids struggling with bullying and disapproval. It’s intended to help those who are in despair realize that there really is a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, and they need to hold on in order to get to it. I think that’s a deeply important lesson which goes well beyond just LGBT issues, and applies to any kid who feels marginalized.<\/p>\n

I and many visitors to this blog are what I would categorize as “settled” goths: We’re comfortable with ourselves and our lifestyle, and have moved beyond particularly caring whether the mainstream approves. There’s another strain of the goth community, though, who feel like outcasts and embrace the culture as a sort of defense mechanism: If you look weird and scary, people are more likely to leave you alone.<\/p>\n

If any of those kids are amongst my readers, I’d like to extend the same message: I swear<\/em> to you that it gets better.<\/p>\n

A friend of mine once made the extremely insightful observation that young people have a tendency to think that however they’re feeling right now<\/em> is how they’re going to feel forever<\/em>. As it turns out, you won’t. If you muddle through, you’ll eventually move on, find your footing, and discover that the situation you were in doesn’t apply any more. (High school, in particular, is not even tangentially related to real life, and even though it all seems terribly important right now in a few years you truly won’t give a damn about what any of those people think.)<\/p>\n

It really does get better. Hang in there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been thinking about the wonderful It Gets Better Project which gives encouragement to LGBT kids struggling with bullying and disapproval. It’s intended to help those who are in despair realize that there really is a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, and they need to hold on in order to get to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8756"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9602,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8756\/revisions\/9602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}