Sometimes, Pride Looks Like Grief

For my late grandfather

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

This year, Pride means wanting an apology that I am never going to get.

Pride means early mornings when I can’t sleep, remembering the last conversation we had, will have, when you told me that not even God could love me.

Who were you to limit the love of God?

This Pride, I remember that queerness means re-defining love: expansive and joyous, bright and shining, not gated off, accessible only to those who believe as you do.

Remembering Jesus was friends with whores and prostitutes.

This year, Pride looks like a stomach that’s been rumbling for weeks, a memory of the heavy meals you favored at noon, which always left me feeling heavy and bloated and loved.

Pride looks like standing in front of the mirror, naked, examining the parts of myself that I deem less than, wondering what I could have done to be more perfect. And it is knowing that nothing I could have done could have changed this outcome. I was a thing you could not change, and you could not find the serenity of acceptance.

Pride looks like deep breaths and body-shaking sobs because I knew that my marriage could not begin in the dark. That the only way to make my relationship work was to be my be my authentic…