| My brother Jimmy comes from a family of
seven children. I am the oldest. Jimmy is fourth in line. |
| When people hear we have seven kids in
our family, they assume we are Catholic. Actually, we
are Quakers. |
| If you know anything about Quakers, you
know that they are accepting of everyone. I am very grateful
that Jimmy was born into such an open-minded and loving
family. I believe that is one of the factors which kept
him alive to see 19. |
| Even as a child, we knew Jimmy was different.
He was always extremely sensitive. He played extensively
with dolls. He had no male friends. His mannerisms were
strongly effeminate. |
| For the most part, he was a happy kid.
It wasn't until he became a teenager that things started
to change. He didn't admit to us that he was gay until
he was 18. |
| None of us were surprised. We had kind
of guessed it all along. My mom told him she loved him,
but it would be a hard road ahead. My sister, Kendra,
said "Big deal, it doesn't change my feelings for
you." And I said something dumb like "Who wants
to be like everyone else? Different is refreshing." |
| So Jimmy tried to pretend that he was completely
comfortable with who he was. He tried to pretend that
it didn't bother him when the kids called him names like
'Faggot' or 'Queer' or that it didn't totally humiliate
him when they pulled him out of the gym class shower and
peed on him. |
| He tried to pretend these things didn't
affect him, but they did. In fact, he used these incidents
as ammunition for an arsenal of angst-ridden poetry and
paintings. He found solace in the music of Tori Amos,
Courtney Love and Fleetwood Mac. |
| He never looked for reasons to live, only
for reasons to die. He considered everything he did to
be a failure. Towards the end, he talked extensively of
suicide. We thought he was simply being dramatic. After
all, Jimmy and I were the two biggest overreactors of
the family. |
| Our flippancy toward his pain must have
been very hurtful. But none of us could relate to his
depression. We couldn't understand the self-hatred and
the hopelessness that centered around his being gay. He
attempted to slit his wrists at least two times. |
| My parents put him into therapy. His therapist
said that Jimmy was a cutter, and, not to worry, cutters
never take their own lives. He wasn't in therapy for very
long before he killed himself. My mother and I found him
in his apartment. He was about three feet from the door.
He had hanged himself. |
| - Jennifer Wheeler |
