I graduated in 2018, from a conservative religious school that did its best and worst to intimidate me into leaving. They wanted to either muzzle my voice or erase me entirely, and I refused to let them do either. One professor told me he was surprised I made it to graduation.

I’ve been thinking about my graduation cap this week.

I wrote and cut the cursive words by hand out of rainbow cardstock, using my bed as a work surface. The words are lyrics from “This Is Me” from The Greatest Showman. I felt angry, and stubborn, and proud. The faculty advisor for the student paper had just prevented me from publishing an opinion piece stating that LGBTQ+ students exist at Taylor and want to be seen and spoken to as equal humans. During finals week, I’d hidden my engagement ring (I was dating a woman at the time) to avoid questions from one professor who didn’t know about my relationship. I could count a dozen names off the top of my head of queer students who barely knew me but trusted me with their closeted secrets, because I was the outspoken out person on campus.

I listened to that song on repeat this morning as I scraped together the willpower to walk out the door and drive to work. I cried in the car.

When I graduated from Taylor University, I was out and loud about my bisexuality. In the six and a half years since, I have learned more about myself and come out as genderfluid.

Honestly, this week, I *am* scared to be seen. I’ve been seriously kicking around thoughts about moving. Leaving the state, leaving the country, taking whatever fits in a suitcase and waiting a few years outside this frozen-over hellscape to see if there’s anything left to come home to in four years. Wondering which state bill or executive order will be the tipping point that officially qualifies me as a refugee.

I’m trying to work on my fantasy romance stories, because embracing and celebrating queer joy is an act of resistance. Writing and reading those stories is supposed to help me and my readers escape, provide rest and happiness for a time.

But the escaping isn’t working. Joy is the last thing I feel today.

So I’m writing this instead.

I am scared. I am sad. I am tired, and betrayed, and heartbroken, and furious. I am stuck living in a state that hates me, a country that hates me, a place that no longer feels like home while the grubby paws of insecure men grasp power and money of which I will never have the smallest fraction. The millions of people rubbing shoulders with me welcomed them to do it.

I guess I’m going to don the same hat I did in college. The angry writer, wielding their pen for justice, voicing what their community needs heard, fighting for their rights alongside others on the chopping block.

People will probably start telling me how strong and brave and resilient I am, again. And again I will think of how I didn’t choose to be.