BY Roberto Addoms
The tragic suicides of Asher Brown in Texas, Tyler Clementi in New Jersey, Billy Lucas in Indiana and Seth Walsh in California have brought me a sense of outrage that such things could happen in 2010.
What it has also brought back are some very sad memories of my own. Namely, of the time I attempted suicide when I was 12 years old, and of the only other time I considered suicide: when I was 18 and a freshman at UCLA. What drove me to such despair both times was I just couldn’t think of any other way to escape from the bullying I had to endure every day at school. Until recently I had thought we as a society had been making progress against teaching our children that hate was not an option: now I am not so sure.
When I was 12 and a new seventh grader, I couldn’t understand why I was being called a “faggot,” especially since I didn’t even really know what the word meant. I couldn’t understand why I was being beaten up, and I didn’t understand why someone would want to spit in my face while a bunch of other kids laughed.
I really wanted to ask “Why?,” but I was really too scared. The principal, who actually was a very kind man, heard of the spitting incident and tried to do what he could to make it stop.
But there is just so much one principal can see and do. His advice to me was to “not be a patsy.”
One day it had just been too much, after another terrible day at school and a fight with my older brother ““ I had had enough.
I snuck in the bathroom and started to swallow aspirin tablets. I had no idea how many would be enough, but I took enough to make me sick and I had to tell my parents what I had done. They took me to the emergency room to have my stomach pumped. It was never spoken about again.
By the time I started high school, the atmosphere wasn’t much better, but at least the bullies had gotten tired of me as a target, and by then I had learned how to stay out of their way. I was a good student and had learned what the word “faggot” meant, and while I did not consider myself gay, I knew enough to at least try not to give anyone reason to single me out.
There were good times, but by my senior year I was really tired of it all. I couldn’t wait to start college and finally start my new life away from the bigots, bullies and the ignorant, cruel and small-minded.
Unfortunately two things happened when I arrived. The first was I was housed with two very cruel roommates, and the second was all the hiding and shame I had internalized left me quite sheltered and incredibly ill-equipped for what was about to happen.
I had spent the weekend at home, and came back to my empty dorm room with an extremely vulgar drawing of me on the door with my name and that word, “faggot.” This time, I fully understood the implication, and by the end of the day everyone in the dorm complex knew who the “faggot” was; I could hear the whispers.
The first thing I did was go to the student store at Ackerman Union and find the shelf where they kept the sleeping pills.
Lucky for me, I had no idea how many it would take and was scared that it would just prove my roommate’s point that there was something wrong with me. And I was afraid of making a mistake and ending up in the ER again.
I called a friend of mine from high school that was also at UCLA and was very fortunate to find a shoulder to cry on, for which I am eternally grateful.
I dared tell no one else as I was deeply ashamed and did not want to make things worse. While I was beginning to understand my sexuality, I was horrified of being found out and did not begin to accept myself until I was well through graduate school.
I still feel to this day that what should have been some of the best years of my life were robbed from me. My roommates had me kicked out of my dorm room. In essence, I was the one that was punished, not the perpetrators. Even recently, when the UCLA Alumni Association solicited campus experiences for their website, my posting about what happened to me was removed.
What happened to me should never have occurred. And it especially should not be occurring nearly 30 years later.
Every student deserves an education without worrying whether today will be the day he or she is once again humiliated. There is simply no excuse for this to happen. And if it does happen, the administrators and faculty that are responsible for allowing an atmosphere of hate, or simply choosing to ignore it, must be held accountable.
Addoms is a UCLA alumnus.