They

They were peaceful. They were quiet. They had their life solved, or so they thought. Even if it meant living someone else’s life. Living but waiting for death’s release. Is peace and quiet even the goal? Is there even a need for a goal? They sometimes still wonder, doubting their decisions. But they could no longer hide. The internal pressure was too high, even when they were so used to showing one face in public and another in private (in the deep privacy only loneliness can give). It helped (or didn’t) that they saw others coming out. They had to. And so they did. As they stepped into the public arena, they could hear the crowd screaming. Epithets, bigoted adjectives thoroughly designed to hurt, to push them back into hiding. The crowd spoke in languages they no longer understood—languages that used to be clear and obvious, unquestioned, but they had forgotten at some point. Why? They wondered. Why so much hate? Why so much fear? Why did the crowd want to force them into patterns that were not a part of them? Why did the crowd fear them just for not complying with the binary?