By Nickolas Gaines

Content Note: Suicide, homophobia, bullying

The first time I attempted suicide, I was a high school freshman.

An email circulated around my friend group that said I was gay, and it was also posted up by the lockers. The school administration worked with the IT department to track down the source. To use the computers, you had to sign in to the system and it tracked students’ online activity. The email was signed by a boy named George, but we soon found out it wasn’t sent from George’s account. It was sent by my best friend and homie, Justyn*.

I felt embarrassed and ashamed. Friends were hard to come by. My family lived in a mostly white upper middle class neighborhood. Though my parents both worked great jobs, invested a lot of time and energy into my academic success, and let me participate in extracurricular activities and clubs, it didn’t make it any easier to fit in with my peers. No matter how much money I had, no matter that I took the same advanced classes, or rode on the same buses on field trips as my white counterparts, there was an unspoken code that we werent the same.

Being friends with Justyn, who was also Black, was a gift. Our lives were similar. His mom was the only other mom mine trusted to let me hang with on the weekends or attend church with. We got each other. We called each other brothers. So him being the one behind the email was the ultimate betrayal.

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I’d never told Justyn I was attracted to both guys and girls, but he knew nothing about how I acted screamed hyper-masculine. In earlier years, he’d seen me get bullied because I wasn’t on any sports teams, enjoyed performing arts and student government, made friends with girls easily, avoided fights, and got quiet when picked on. He’d also seen me get escorted to class for a week because I didn’t know how to fight back when some of my peers tried to jump me the week before.

I don’t think he wanted to send the email. But as a 14-year-old, when the decision is loyalty to a friend or fitting in with a peer group and being respected and you don’t get respect anywhere else, sometimes you choose the latter.

That year, I was more conscious of my bisexuality and queerness, but I still didn’t have the language to claim a bisexual or queer identity. I felt nasty thinking about being attracted to guys. Heaven knows I didn’t possess the courage or the support to be assuredly proud of it. I was aware that I enjoyed making out with the girl I had a crush on, while also hyper-aware that there were a few guys I found attractive. Internally, I felt incredibly frightened and morally repulsed at the notion of acting on that attraction.

This wasn’t just because the kids around me weren’t mature or evolved enough in their understanding of sexuality to make a cogent argument for or against it. It also came from the messages I was being taught at home. I needed to change, needed to be delivered from myself. Who I was wasn’t acceptable to God, and in order to be acceptable, pleasing, or worthy that fragment of me had to be stripped away.

My mom was concerned about the bullying. She knew it affected my health, that it caused me anxiety, stomach aches, and emotional outbursts when it was too much. But she was also concerned about her understanding of Godliness. Because of this, though there was an attempt to end the bullying, there was also a constant pressure to change me—a bullying of its own. My parents made me fast without food for days, put my flesh “under subjection,” go to alter calls asking God to take away my urges and to give me sexual purity, read books on how to stay pure and have sexual integrity, and to memorize scriptures.

So with nowhere to turn, suicide seemed easier.

I wanted people not to care about who I liked. I wanted to not be the only one fighting for my dignity and humanity. I wanted to stop suffering, just like Jamel Myles.

I wonder about the ways 9-year-old Jamel Myles was scarred as he went to school everyday. In his final four days of life as he decided to live openly as a gay young man, did he have teachers who saw him? Did he have a friend who listened? What types of horrible things did adults in the room hear that they never corrected? Were adults complicit in the abuse he suffered because his identity wasn’t one that they shared?

Jamel’s mom was accepting of his sexuality and even told reporters that she “wanted his death to serve as a lesson about equality.” But how did she get there? What internal work did she do to recognize that her son didn’t have to live up to societal expectations of who he should be? What did she read, listen to, or watch that prompted her to talk equality and justice at a time like this? How do we get everyone in the next Jamel’s life to her place before it’s too late?

For my undergraduate studies, I pursued a degree in American Multicultural Studies focusing on understanding systems of oppression, intersectionality, and how to work at the interdependent and structural level to dismantle them. I learned how to stand up for myself and others, even amidst rampant racism and bigotry from my professors, peers, and people I worked with.

I took the ways I’d been bullied and the rage it created and used it to pursue a career to serve others, especially those who were oppressed. When I worked in a non-profit, as a Pastor, or directing Boys and Girls Clubs in Chicago, I always identified with those who had intersecting identities. My career of the last 10 years has been focused on providing spiritual and clinical mental health care to military families, focusing on suicide prevention, sexual assault, and combat trauma.

I decided to try to be who I needed when I was younger.

There have been countless stories of other queer children like Jamel who were abused, beaten, killed, or attempted suicide because of bullying related to their sexuality. Every time I hear about it I mourn another opportunity for a child to be themselves and for the world around them to lovingly embrace them so they could flourish.

According to the American Medical Association, the suicide rate for Black youth is nearly double of what it was in the early 1990s. The study found that suicide rates for Black boys increased 95 percent over a two-decade span. In 2016 alone, at least 48 Black children between the ages of 6 and 14 took their own lives.

In 2017, research by Bridge and colleagues found that among children ages 5 to 11, and young adolescents ages 12 to 14, those who  took their own lives were more likely to be male, African American and dealing with stressful relationships at home or with friends.

The resources that do exist to combat homophobia aren’t often directed toward young men of color. The pressure of continued policing and feeling the need to perform masculinity in acceptable ways for the community around these young boys is debilitating. That combined with toxic masculinity––which denies boys agency, the ability to show a full range of emotions, be visibly scared or emotional, and form deep, personal connections with others––leads to thoughts of self-harm and suicide.

I envision and strive to create a world that is much safer for these boys. One in which they don’t have to fight to be seen as worthy of love for visibility and pine for love. One in which queer children don’t have to “pass” so that they won’t be humiliated and bullied.

I envision a world where the educators, parents adults who witness bullying and disrespect don’t tolerate it, but instead have ongoing perpetual conversations that debunk outdated notions of heteronormativity and heterosexism. One where churches don’t incite violent language to queer folks that kills their spirit, mind, and soul, but just misses their bodies in harm.

I teach and model for my sons that we are human beings entitled to a full range of emotions. This means allowing space for them to be upset and voice their feelings, to cry and voice their disappointment or fears. It means lots of affirmations. Reminding them daily that they are smart, brave, strong, handsome, worthy, and always enough. We hold hands, I give them kisses, and when on business trips I remind them of how much I miss them and can’t wait to be with them again. We read books that affirm their identity as Black boys as well as spark discussions about race, class, and love being more than heteronormative.

This also means means educating myself and working to make sure I understand experiences that aren’t the same as mine by reading articles, interacting in real life and on social media with diverse people, and submerging myself in a community that is devoted to equity and justice. The work is internal as well as external. It is not a one time event, but a daily commitment.

How will you work to better understand, advocate for, and love an experience that you don’t share? How will you teach this type of self-reflexivity to the children and students who cross your path? Contemplating the importance of these questions is a good start, but reflecting upon them within the context of your own life is where the real work begins.

Jamel Myles should still be here today. Gay. Free. Loved. And happy. But he’s not. I hope that this baby is resting in the love and the highest measure of peace that he never received on this earth.

*Names have been changed to protect identities

A version of this post originally appeared on Education Post

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Nickolas Gaines (he, him, his) is a veteran, national speaker, and educator. Nickolas is a prominent scholar-practitioner who has a wealth of experience, expanding over 10 years of service in local, regional, national, and international communities. He is a global citizen who has served the United States Army for seven years and has led initiatives for the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs providing spiritual care and clinical mental health care.

As an educator, his work has been featured in Ebony Magazine and The Good Man Project. He was also recognized by Apple Podcasts and the New York Times for his podcast work on topics such as masculinity, race, mental health, queer identity, and fatherhood. Currently, Gaines is raising his two sons aged 4 and 8 and pursuing his childhood dream of being a high school teacher as a first-year English language art reading and social studies educator in Dallas.

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