Summer is closing it's doors once again, draping the furniture of a different life in sheets so the sun can't bleach the wood. Shut the windows, lock the shutters. Turn out the lights, unplug the clocks. Mount September on the road to fall. With it comes the fear thats kicked up on your boots staining the tails of your coat. Let the winter chill consume the skin beneath your knitted layers, freezing the peach fuzz on the small of your back. Let the chill wash you. Let the chill numb your face. Before October approaches the chill will feel like home and the fear feels to familiar to be a bother.

An open Letter to the United States

In the news recently, Jason Collin’s came out as the first concurrent professional male athlete in U.S. History. Though, he’s received backlash from NFL players and ESPN announcers, the support from his family and friends; Collins categorized as “truly inspirational”. Additionally, Hip hop artists Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s hit son “same love” advocates equal rights for the LGBTQ community. The first time I was really immersed in any  gay rights protests was in 2008 during the prop 8 campaign. I was amazed at the fire spit from both sides of the picket line. One side yelling for equal rights and the other shouting for the right to choose. Both of these arguments are so definably American, that this fight no longer surprises me. Both sides are fighting for the future world of their children and grandchildren. So here I am stuck at a crossroad, with the fight at my door begging me to pick a side, I choose the pro-life side. What do I mean by “pro-life”? I mean I choose the side that has  more human lives lost; more lives lost from teen suicide and bullying. More lives lost at the hands of murder and “misunderstanding”. I choose the side of Matthew Shepard. I choose Ryan Keith Skipper. I choose Harvey Milk. I choose the loved ones who lost their family, because of the hate that followed from openly expressing who they were and following their hearts.

I was taught to always introduce myself and stand behind my words. My name is Devin Hiller. I’m an EMT,  a Student, and I come from a middle class background. I’m the Daughter of a Public Defender, the Granddaughter of a woman on wall street and the Goddaughter of the Deputy Director of the Women’s Division of the Human Rights Watch. I’m surrounded by powerful women who always told me to study hard, follow my dreams and work hard to earn what I want out of life. However, the one thing none of them could teach me first hand was how to live life as a gay woman. I’ve always been gay. My family knew I was gay before I did. My mother likes to joke that I ended up gay because she listened to Melissa Etheridge during her pregnancy. My Dad helped me come out to him by joking “you can only play softball for so long, Devin.” And my Grandmother said it was so nice to finally meet my “little friend” when I brought my first girlfriend home for thanksgiving. 

To be honest, I still don’t know how I ended up as a gay woman. Both of my parents are veterans of the U.S. Airforce, white-collar workers, who took my siblings and I to our respective soccer games, ballet lessons, and violin recitals. Neither of my siblings are gay, making me believe that parenting was not a factor. I grew up on Star Wars and Disney movies; and unless Han Solo was hiding lady parts in those skin tight pants of his, I think his relationship with Princess Leia was heterosexual. When I played house in elementary school a boy played the husband and a girl played the wife. No homosexuality there. In middle school, we went over the first round of sex education, and unless I missed the part about how gay people reproduce, It a was heterosexual version. Finally in High school, when I came out during junior year, no one seemed to know much about lesbians because I kept getting the same question, “how do lesbians have sex?” to which I replied “let me know when you’ve tried it”(my mother may have taught me tact, but she also taught me sarcasm). So here’s my childhood in a nutshell and I still can’t figure out how I became gay in a world so heterosexual; It must be in my genes. How did any of the U.S. become gay in the predominately heterosexual culture? To make it through the years of teasing and bullying that comes from grades one through twelve, and still be gay and living is next to a miracle. 

Taking the focus of this letter back to the present day, I wonder how our country can call its self a representation of what our founding father’s meant for us? When the colonies broke away from the British Crown, we gave ourselves the freedoms of John Locke’s natural law, which included basic human and economic rights, making each citizen equal from the time they are born to the time they die. Weather you are a woman, have different skin pigment, share different religious beliefs, or if you grow up loving a different gender; Being born in the United States of America gives you the birthright to be treated equally.

So, Here is my request America, let me grow old with the woman I marry, with a dog and a house. Let me send my kids to school without them being teased for having lesbian parents. Let them sit uncomfortably through the birds and the bees, and tell me “how embarrassing I am”. Let my children grow up without the worry that their parents could be assaulted because they love each other. And finally Let my future children grow up in a world where they can be swept off their feet by their own Prince or Princess Charming without feeling the pressure tho hide what they are or who they love.

My Name Is Devin Hiller. I’m 21. I’m an EMT. And I’m gay.  

This is what I meant... 

“You say you're 'depressed' - all i see is resilience. You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human.” 

―David Mitchell

I'm sorry I jumbled words when you needed ears.

I could be completely content laying next to you, listening, for years beyond this one.

Goodbye Facebook. I'll be back the next time I actually need to use you. But you're taking over my life and I can't be myself, so i'll be here, being me with real friends, not the 900 I don't know or never talk to.

its been fake,

Devin

And so the decision was made. Leave the world of observation and immerse into the beauty of the unknown. Sneak by the fears, slither under the shadows and bounce over the waves of doubt. Read the maps once. Burn them. Draw new maps. Forge new paths. Let the old brick arches be overgrown with ivy, covering them with memories of the new. Have respect for the cliffs, but kick stones off the edges. Here you are in your brave new world. Swim through plans, fly over the walls. Here you are in your brave new puzzle. Find the pieces and hope they never end. Look for the lost pieces at each end of your new map and smile through the sweat and tears you use to get there.

A bit of Hope.

As the steam lifts off my reveled back, gathering a chill from the stray drips that the towel missed, I slouch; feeling every bone creak and the muscles from the tips of my fingers to my eyelids to the will to keep positioned upright. I think about the day having trouble with what happened. Nothing of importance, but everything a new territory. Line by line I try so desperately to return to the work I return to in my free time. Yet line by line I drift off the edges of the pages, into the world of late spring, year round. Where light bounces off every surface, illuminating the naked feet slapping against exposed dirt and the unstoppable spirits. "Come to Me" i whisper "join me in the forest". My heavy eyelids open and I am back again the the aches, that my smile seems to attribute to my journey to the place of magic.

I often wonder if I am the hero of my story. I wonder what being the hero actually means. I wonder even, am I writing my story? Well If I am not; will the author please give me a view of the sea, an occasional lazy sunday, and stories of travel and adventure to dazzle me to sleep at night. And please if I am the hero, write me like a classic.  

It's days like today, when I feel busy, and lazy, and stressed that I take a moment to breathe in knowledge, family, and your blue eyes so that I feel better than the moments preceding.

I feel like the groove of a train track and the passengers all at the same time.

Like great green waves, shadows stretch across their crests and chests. A peach fuzz blanket lain down over their immense bodies, tucking in the earth beneath. Each fringe of billions of cell walls being tossed forward at the foreign beauty screams past. Hard silver steel, decorated with rivets and screws; all the while glistening in the sunshine. Beyond its shining skin it hides away the cells sleeping in their seats, bustling between corridors, each vein taking the cells where they are needed. Each cell imagining the breeze and the wind whistling past their ears. Each cell casting their gaze back to the magnificent green waves that careen by making them missed as soon as they slip beyond the edge if the windows and out of sight. On to the sea the silver beauty urges. On to the sea.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Run! Paws rake into the dry earth, kicking up dust and stones. The wind that beats past their ears colliding with their coats taking off the sheddings. Turn. Jump. Chase. Sticks crunching under the downward pressure of his huge legs. Sniff. Smell. Lick. Bound to the towering tree. Sniff. Smell. Lick. Pee. Through the gates on, on the leash, home to where the sun glistens on the floor through panned windows. Sniff. Smell. Lick. Sleep.

It only takes an hour of Parks and rec to realize that things get better and work out. ehhh so it's fiction. thats what fiction is for.

Run faster. Breathe harder. Get out of bed. Sweat. Live. Run some more. Bring those dreams to life.

Here it comes again. Shadows creeping from the edges of my mattress seeping into my skin, the porus surface of my body. Like an IV drip through my veins, the shadows are taking me, controlling me, paralyzingly me. "Stay still" I tell myself , Stay still, keep the pain from your heart, push it out. Keep the candles lit and the shadows at bay I tell myself. Feel the good I tell myself. Keep your grip on the silver linings I tell myself. Don't shut down I tell myself. Run it out I tell myself. I keep telling myself there's a cure. But then I shut my eyes and the shadows return.