I'm just a dreamer but I'm hanging on.

matthewgallaway:

Don’t ask me why — or actually, it’s basically in response to the unrelenting number of gay suicides in the “it gets better” era — but I decided to write a 5000-word essay for The Atlantic lol my own blog, on what I’m calling the “suicide impulse,” which is not exactly going to be a revelation but is still worth discussing (or I think so, anyway), or basically an impulse that I think exists in EVERY gay (loosely defined) just by virtue of having been denied the opportunity as adolescents to channel or express our inner lives in ways that roughly speaking could be considered healthy/constructive or at least not rooted in self-destruction/self-mutilation, meaning that even if we don’t kill ourselves when we’re ten or twelve (and even if we’re not bullied or beaten to death, which I was not), we already understand the very strong appeal of doing so (even thirty or forty or fifty years later), and all too often only need to push a knife that’s already there a few inches deeper to finish the job. GPOY at ten when despite having sweet seventies hair and basically every other social advantage, I was first seriously entertaining thoughts of killing myself. 

(via kateoplis)