The Pain We Carry: Gay Trauma and the Value of Being Earnest
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There’s nothing that feels worse than finding out someone you’re close to has died via social media.
It’s a uniquely awful feeling that combines a shameful FOMO with genuine despair and that’s how I felt when I learned Mark had died. Not only died, but had committed suicide under the most gruesome circumstances you could imagine.
Mark Glaze was 51 years-old when he hung himself in a jail cell on Halloween 2021 in Lackawanna County Prison, Pennsylvania, following a DUI arrest in September.
He was arrested for fleeing the scene of a car accident (involving personal injury, abandoning a vehicle on the highway, and careless driving).
Once referred as the “face of the gun movement” by the Wall Street Journal, he was credited as being one of the main founders of the anti-2A campaign.
He worked for some of the largest gun-control advocacy groups in the United States, including Everytown for Gun Safety, and cared for LGBTQ and human rights. He also served as an advisor to the Commission on Federal Election Reform led by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker.
Glaze grew up in Colorado, where his parents owned and ran a gun store, backed by the NRA.
Prior to his death, he had struggled with alcohol, depression and anxiety; issues I was well aware of from talking about them with him. His death was covered in the New York Times, The Advocate, and Washington Post.
Although all of the lurid details that landed him in that jail cell never revealed themselves I often wonder what bereft state he must have been in. Friends wrote that “In the last years of his life, Mark actively sought help. He completed several treatment programs, with the hope of finding peace and breaking free of the addictive cycle that caused him to feel so desperately alone and in pain. … We pray that by being open about Mark’s cause of death, something positive may emerge from our devastating loss.”
I began a long period of mourning that continues to this day as I tried to process my grief.
In the last five years I have witnessed the death, overdoses, and suicides of over a half dozen gay friends. It’s shaken me.
In the 1990s we emerged, a new gay generation of gay men. Something the world had never seen. Among us, the best and the brightest, all possessed the kind of life stories that drive clicks and garner Wikipedia entries.
Despite the odds we’d made it.
Or had we? As we aged, many of us, too many began dying.
AIDS had wiped out a previous generation. But we had vanquished the plague. All while one more insidious emerged. One psychological as a opposed to viral. A plague whose epidemiology has consistent and identifiable features.
The litany of symptoms are familiar: mental illness, PTSD, suicide, depression, and substance abuse. But what accounts for what’s killing us? Killing our friends and chosen family.
I believe it’s complacency. Despite the veneer of success, we are not okay.
While LGBT+ identification has risen to new heights, we need to recognize the unique features for those of us who identify as gay. The rhetoric around sexual orientation suggests a freedom to express multiple sexual identities: bi, pan, polyamorous, what have you…we are not limited to a binary. As if being gay was a simplistic and outdated way to identify.
Yet when legislation is wrought the message is clear: Don’t Say Gay.
But for those of us who identify as gay, sexual orientation is paramount, most claim that it is extremely or very important to our overall identity.
It’s why many us believe in gay exceptionalism.
We are smarter. Gay men earn undergraduate degrees at the highest rate of any group in the U.S., according to a study on sexual orientation and academic achievement. Over 52 percent of gay men in the U.S. have a bachelor’s degree, compared to 36 percent of all adults and about 35 percent of straight men. Across data sets and across the different educational outcomes gay men outpaced straight men by substantial margins and by virtually any metric. Our academic achievement shows resilience in the face of victimization, aligning with research from Harvard and Yale, that led to the “best little boy in the world” hypothesis which holds that gay men respond to homophobia by overcompensating in achievement-related domains like art, business, education, science, and technology. Our unique experiences make us innovators.
But it comes at a price.
There is a powerful case to made for post-traumatic stress being part of our identity. The foundation of trauma begins as little boys, little boys with a secret. We are precluded from being our authentic selves. We have to hide who we are, or risk being picked on or harassed or worse.
Born into a hostile environment there is a reason that many of us identify with the mutant characters of Marvel Comics’ X-Men.
The conventional wisdom and analogy often made to mutant and human identity is that of race. It suggests Charles Xavier and Magneto’s adversarial relationship is akin to that of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X during the civil rights movements.
But it’s different. The reason is that we are different from our families.
We bear witness to the ugly naked bigotry of our own mothers, fathers, and family members. We know they wish us dead. That they themselves would proudly execute us should they learn our secret. That want to fix us. Make us not this way and for our own good. We are secret agents from a world invisible to many. A world where if you are straight you are encouraged to express freely, fall in love, kiss, and publicly display affection with pride without the fear of engendering violence and death. It is this constant reminder to hide that depletes our self-image, increases social anxiety, and keeps us from living our full truths.
It is a constant re-traumatization.
Bobby Drake, Ice Man’s mother gets at this in 2002’s X-Men 2 when she asks him: “Have you ever tried not being a mutant?”
And Jonathan Alexander, the author of Dear Queer Self masterfully articulates it when he says, “I feel like a survivor— the survivor of a culture that was trying to kill me. I think many of us who went through those early days of AIDS and governmental indifference — fuck, not just indifference: we’re talking about calls to send people like us to ‘camps’ or to tattoo our HIV status on our asses — you don’t live through that and come out fully well-adjusted. But you do come out if you’re lucky, activated — and by that I mean not just aware but willing to struggle not just for your right to exist but for the inherent beauty and glory and fabulousness of your existence.”
Moreover, the few places considered safe to come out are limited to bars, clubs, and social settings, places alcohol and drugs flow freely— no wonder many of us abuse substances.
We struggle with our authentic selves. When you’ve learned to keep your life secret, saying it can be uncomfortable to reach out and share our feelings with others is a deadly understatement. We go through our lives carrying an invisible backpack. As each trauma strike us like bricks, we collect and carry them.
And if we don’t check to see what’s back there, and empty our backpacks, inevitably we fall over.
Being LGBTQAI+, is an identity that elicits such comfort and inclusivity that everyone, even straight people, feel entitled to ownership.
But why that and not gay, fag, or worse? Because being gay, just that one thing, historically speaking yesterday, literally meant you were mentally ill and criminals.
While LGBTQAI+ people face similar traumas, the manifestation of those traumas is often different for gay men.
For Mark Glaze…
Savas Abadsidis is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of GayNrd LLC.
