They Wrote it Off as School Stress. I Hid the Truth Out of Terror

[Jessica_Rose]

They Wrote it Off as School Stress. I Hid the Truth Out of Terror

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/they-wrote-it-off-as-school-stress-i-hid-the-truth-out-of-terror/ar-BB1iTCSQ?ocid=windirect&cvid=c7ec3f58640a4ca7a2305b6089a5b0d3&ei=126

Story by Carey Candrian (26 Feb 2024)

I was 28 years old when I came out to my mom.

As her tears kept falling, I said: "Can you please tell me why you're crying?"

"Because I feel like I lost a daughter," she said.

I suffered from a condition called globus throughout junior high and high school—where you feel like you literally have a globe stuck in your throat when you swallow.

Doctors wrote it off as "stress" from school.

Then, when I started grad school, I had severe abdominal pain...

They wrote it off again as stress.

But I knew what was causing this pain in my body: Stigma and the terror of being a target because I was different.

Violence and violent threats targeting LGBTQ communities is at an all-time high. And federal threat monitoring has shown that these threats are incredibly tied to domestic violent extremists and hate crime actors.

The key driver—and the ultimate irony? Extremists think LGBTQ people like me are a threat.

Yes, we're the threat.

In 2020, Harvard Medical Magazine reported that the stress of hiding and living with chronic stigma could take an average of 12 years off an LGBTQ person's life. Think about that—more than a decade of life lost because of fear and stigma.