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Lindsey: Learning a New Language “I can talk to people now. Like, I never used to be able to talk to people. . . . I never talked to anybody, and that was hard.” S itting on an old sofa in the “hangout” room at YouthWest on a Saturday afternoon, fifteen-year-old Lindsey is an open book. With her straight brown hair flowing down to the middle of her back, baggy untucked shirt, and fluid way of walking and moving, Lindsey exudes ease—that rare teenager who seems extremely comfortable in her own skin—and the forthcoming way in which she tells her story is in keeping with her physical presentation . Lindsey checked the boxes “female” and “bisexual” on the study’s preliminary survey, but when I ask in our first interview how she identifies herself in terms of her gender and sexual orientation, she simply says in a confident and self-possessed voice, “I don’t identify. . . . I’m Lindsey.”1 As Lindsey tells me later in this first interview, however, being at ease with herself and trusting that others would accept her did not always come easily: “Like, if you would have met me a year ago—I’m a totally different person.” Unprompted by questions about “voice” or any other concepts that would much later become organizing themes of this book, Lindsey names honest and open communication with others as the major factor in her turnaround : “I can talk to people now. Like, I never used to be able to talk to 1. Because Lindsey uses the term gay when describing her coming-out process and the harassment she experienced at school, I also use that term to discuss those incidents. During high school, Lindsey first came out as bisexual and, in her Phase II interview, she identities as lesbian, so I use those terms in those contexts. Otherwise, I use the term LGBTQ to describe Lindsey in order to avoid placing her into a distinct category. 2 40 Chapter 2 people. I just—I didn’t care. I never talked to anybody, and that was hard. I feel so much more open and so much more free now.” Harassment, Family Rejection, and a Suicide Attempt The story of how Lindsey learned to “talk to people” begins in middle school where, like David in Chapter 1, she endured extreme harassment because of perceptions about her sexual orientation, even before she was out to others or herself as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. Lindsey’s older sister, Kelly, was one of the chief perpetrators of this abuse, taunting Lindsey both at home and at school and acting as a ringleader among her friends: And, um, my older sister, she was just—oh, I hate her. When I was, like, in sixth grade, she had, like, all of her friends that were—all her friends on the bus. . . . They’d pick up rocks and throw them at me and call me a dyke, and, like, they’d pull my hair and try to trip me and stuff. And Kelly would just laugh with them and just, like, have a good old time. She was like, “Yeah, I call her a fag. She hates it.” It was horrible. In addition to Kelly and her friends, Lindsey says that other peers in middle school bullied her and that this made school “really hard” for a long time. To make matters worse, when Lindsey came home, the harassment continued, leading her to doubt whether she could ever safely come out to the family. In addition to Kelly, Lindsey’s stepfather verbally abused her, calling her names like “dyke” and “carpet muncher.” Lindsey associates her inability to escape from this abuse with a suicide attempt she made when she was thirteen years old: School was, like, really hard. Everybody was always, like, you know, calling me things. . . . I had a lot of friends, but there was always, like, that group of people that liked to call me a dyke and just—I was, like, I was goth and everything. So I used to dress different, and people’d just, like, pick on me and just, you know, say shit. And so, I was like—I just got really fed up with it. And then, like, I’d go home, and I’d have to listen to my stepdad calling me things. And him and my sister would, like—my older sister—would start, you know, saying things, and I would just like—I couldn’t take...

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