I Think We’ve Finally Found A Home In This Place
If you didn’t know it already or haven’t been paying attention, Pose is the most important show you’ll watch on TV. It tells the story of Blanca Evangelista (MJ Rodriguez), a trans Latina from NYC who, after being diagnosed with HIV, decides to start her own house in the ballroom scene both to leave a lasting impression in the world and to give other queer and trans black and Latinx people in 1980s NYC a home, a place to be, and a desire for more from life.
Over the course of the eight episodes of season one, you see her and her house children (Damon (Ryan Jamaal Swain), Angel (Indya Moore), Lil Papi (Angel Bismark Curiel), and Ricky (Dyllón Burnside)) grow to become more confident in who they are, win balls, and become a house mother and house that catches the attention of even some of the most iconic and legendary members of the ballroom scene (most notably Pray Tell (Billy Porter) and Elektra Abundance (Dominique Jackson)).
This story highlights something most queer and trans people, especially queer and trans black and Latinx people, know to be true: how important it is to have a loving and supportive family and home to go to; and, more importantly, the importance of a chosen family.
I could restate many of the statistics about family rejection, and the effects it has on one’s mental health, especially for trans women of color; however, I’d rather be a bit more personal since this is something I’ve gone through as well.
Past the age of six, I can’t remember feeling I was — and, at times, still don’t feel like I am — part of my family. At that age, I started to become more aware of my attraction to other boys, and knowing that my mom was (and still is) homophobic, and that she staunchly supported the reading of the Bible that many Christians support that purports the idea that God hates homosexuality, I believed myself to be a permanent outsider in any space I was in: whether it was school or at home.
I began to pull away from everyone and everything. Sometimes my grades suffered from it. I never really wanted to make friends because I feared that if they found out I liked other boys, I’d get made fun of and rejected more than I already did for every reason people could find. By the age of eight, I was already deeply depressed and suicidal.
Some time during this time, my mom made my older brother, my younger brother, and me make a promise to her and to each other that if one of us (my brothers and I) were gay we’d jump that person. That was the promise that felt like I had already signed my death warrant, and I didn’t see a need to imagine a life beyond it.
By the time I got to high school, I felt like I was living on borrowed time. I did things like draw on myself and write the lyrics to my favorite depressing songs to try and get people to not want to get close to me. For the most part it worked, but, because I was in school with my older brother and one of his friends, I was still a target for people’s abuse.
When I came out, I was determined to start paving the path for my suicide. To my surprise, however, I found more acceptance from people than I expected.
The first time I came out to anyone was to my high school guidance counselor after I had an emotional breakdown in her office. After that, she became sort of a mother to me. Then I came out to a queer friend of mine. Then my sister. And then to some classmates and co-workers during an internship. And then my mom.
I knew going in that she wouldn’t accept it, and when she didn’t I ran away from home and lived with my sister for a while.
During that time, I ended up going to the LGBT Center in Manhattan, specifically the Y.E.S. (Youth Enrichment Services) Program (currently known as Center Youth), and made a family/friend circle of my own. We were all messy and difficult and still growing, and we made a fuck ton of mistakes, but we were, for the most part, always there for one another.
I started to figure out who I wanted to be, and what I wanted to do with my life because I was finally in a space where I could just be.
It didn’t cure my depression or anything, but it allowed me an opportunity to believe that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Something I never thought I’d ever be able to do.
I’m not close to every single person I became close to during that time period; however, I’m grateful for all the experiences and connections I made with them. And looking back on the decade I’ve been out, and all that I’ve learned — from being more patient and accepting of myself, to learning to love my blackness (something I’ll write about soon because I definitely was not prepared for the amount of racism in the queer and trans community that I’d have to deal with) — I’m a much better person for it.
And having that be represented in Pose, as preachy as that show can get, specifically being able to see people who represent what me and my post-coming out chosen family looked like — a group of Black and Latinx queer and trans people who are learning about themselves, growing, and trying to make a better future for themselves and the people they care about and the queer and trans community of color at large — it’s an incredible feeling and experience. It’s forcing the world to finally see and acknowledge and pay tribute to a community that’s been part of the larger queer and trans liberation movement from day one, a community that continuously gets erased.
There’s a song that I love by City and Colour titled “Blood” that’s about looking for something more, something beautiful in the world; and finding a home within this world. The second verse of the song goes:
The sun is just rising up
Mother birds feeding their young
The light of a brand new day
I think we’ve finally found a home in this place
To me, those lines describe what Pose was portraying: that when queer people of color who were rejected by their birth/foster/adopted families find people — people who love and accept them for who they are, and push them to be the best version of themselves possible, and don’t hold their faults against them — to call their family, it’s a beautiful event worth taking in.
Originally published at https://medium.com on July 28, 2018.
