Writes of Passage: Donald Hann

You,

I hope this letter finds you at just the right time. If it does, you’re hiding on the floor behind your plant, in tears and praying your father doesn’t come back in. The sting on the side of your head from the back of his hand will last for a while but not as long as the hurt that comes from the hatred in his eyes. He just found your letter to Ben and your life has officially changed forever. Again. There is good and bad news, and that is that he will not touch you again for twelve years. By then you will know what kind of person you are.

There is a lot down the road for you. You will sit at your bedroom door in a few weeks and listen to Ellen come out on her sitcom. You will discover The Real World on MTV and its diverse cast including Pedro and Dan, the first two gay men you will idolize. You will quietly learn how to survive in the closet, while still feeding your inner flame.

You will also spiral into depression and anger at the fact that you cannot be who you are. You will hurt people close to you out of spite. You will break a girls arm and forget about it until a decade later. You will face off with your stepmother and while you win a few battles, she will win the war.

After a year of this life, you will be taken from your home in the middle of the night. You will be admitted to a psych ward, and not say goodbye to your brothers and sisters. You will be scared. Be brave.

The next few years will be hard. You will deal with your abandonment to the state. You will deal with the loss of your brothers. You will come out. You will be ridiculed, abused, neglected, hated, feared, misunderstood, and so confused. Slowly you begin to realize you have nothing to lose by being yourself. In a psych ward no one cares for you more than the eight hours they are paid to. It is when you realize this that you are truly free to be who you are.

You find people to care about and who care about you. You rebuild a family and as you do so you rebuild yourself. You surround yourself with loved ones who see you and what you stand for. You take your emotional scars and your past and you use it to make the lives around you better.

Today, as I sit writing this letter, I realize the most important thing I can tell you: You will survive. You have taken on so much and still come out alive and happy. Through being true to yourself you have a family that loves you. You still see who you were, and live by the lessons you learned. You found a community out there that understands where you come from and where you want to go.

You learn the amount of pain that you caused, and you feel the shame that comes with it. You are empathetic. You see how people are mistreated, and you feel anger. You are compassionate. You see ignorance and discrimination, and you stand up against it. You are brave.

The handprint from your father has long disappeared. The scar it left inside will always be there. The difference is that now, you wear it with pride.

Donald Hann

Donald Hann lives in Kansas where he works at the residential facility in which he used to live.

Read more letters in our National Coming Out Day section on Gay.com.