After Survival

Survival has been heavy on my mind lately.

Not the kind of survival you see on reality TV where people are dropped into the wilderness with a pocket knife and a dream. I mean the quieter kind. The kind that doesn't always look dramatic from the outside. The survival I'm talking about is the kind where you're just trying to make it through. Maybe it's school, gritting your teeth through another awkward family gathering, recovering from heartbreak, surviving addiction, or simply navigating a world that doesn't always seem to make room for people like you.

For a long time, survival was the assignment. I got pretty good at it.

As a Black gay kid growing up in Oklahoma, I learned early how to read a room. I learned which parts of myself felt safe to share and which parts were better left unsaid. Like a lot of people, I became skilled at adaptation. The problem is that when you're always adapting, it can be difficult to know where the performance ends and where you begin.

A few years ago, if you'd told me I'd be approaching five years of sobriety, I probably would've laughed. Not because I didn't want it. I just couldn't picture it. If you'd told me I'd be engaged to someone I love (and loves me fully), building a future instead of just reacting to the present, I don't know that I would've believed that either.

I wasn't hopeless. I was focused on getting through the day. The future felt like a luxury reserved for people who had everything figured out. And I definitely wasn't one of those people. The older I get, the more I realize nobody really knows what they're doing. Some people are just better at pretending. That's one of the reasons Pride Month feels different to me now than it did when I was younger. Back then, Pride felt like a statement. Now it feels more like a question. What do you do when you finally have the freedom to be yourself?

For years, many of us spend our energy managing other people's expectations. We learn what to hide, what to soften, what to explain, and what to leave unsaid. Then one day, if we're lucky, we find ourselves in a place where we don't have to do that anymore.

People talk a lot about coming out, getting sober, healing from trauma, or surviving difficult seasons. We don't talk nearly as much about what comes after. Nobody tells you that peace can feel unfamiliar or that happiness can sometimes make you nervous. Nobody tells you that after spending years preparing for the worst, it can be difficult to trust the good when it finally arrives.

I wonder how many of us are still living like we're waiting for something terrible to happen, carrying versions of ourselves that no longer need protecting. How many of us have survived situations that ended years ago but still live as if we're in them?

That's why Pride matters. Not because life suddenly becomes easy and everything is "fixed" or we've reached some final destination where we're completely confident and fully healed. Pride is simply the decision to stop shrinking, apologizing, and stop treating our lives like waiting rooms.

Pride isn't about being fearless, but about being present and recognizing that I spent years fighting for a life that I now actually have. If I'm being honest, I'm still learning how to enjoy it and trust it. After all, survival teaches you how to endure. Living asks something entirely different.

Maybe the real challenge isn't making it through the difficult seasons of life. Maybe it's learning to trust the good seasons when they finally arrive. After years of expecting rejection, disappointment, heartbreak, or failure, joy can feel surprisingly unfamiliar.

Sometimes we become so accustomed to surviving that we don't know what to do when life finally gives us permission to exhale.

As another Pride Month comes to a close, it's the question I keep coming back to:

After spending so much of your life surviving, how do you finally allow yourself to live?