A bumpy ride

This is going to be a bumpy ride.

In Trinidad, because of the crime and lack of security in general.
We are getting the message.. take care of your own.

Cause when there aren't enough resources...
Humans tend to become tribal.

But what some of my friends and family don't get, particularly if they, themselves have never lived abroad.
Is that when everyone has rights.. it is a better, kinder society for all.

I know this because I lived in London.
Now people talk about the racism, and yes it does exist.
But gay youth who have been distanced from their families, have a way of bonding..
to a point that we become family.

G was of Greek descent, his father kicked him out of the house when he said he was gay.
He ended up in a group home, and due to issues there, moved in with a sugar daddy.
Somewhere in the melee he became HIV positive.

One night, I don't remember where we were,.. we are sitting on the ground in a darkened room.
He said very quietly,.. "I took a train ride"
He had gone back to his small town to see his mother.
He knew her schedule.
He waited hours outside the supermarket.
His mother saw her son across the street and did not acknowledge him.

And that is why G understood me so well, because for him, I
think sometimes for his mother to have died would have been easier for him to accept.

And readers,... I am nineteen and he is twenty one.

HIV stigma is universal.

One day, someone dropped some change on the counter rather than place it in his hand, it was something simple like that and I got upset. And he was like don’t bother with it.

Imagine a Trini, saying in that off handed way we have.. "small thing", scooping it off the counter in one motion.

And I realise my friend is actually accustomed at being treated with this level of contempt.

By all rights,.. if you are subjected to such suffering
You should turn into a bitter, hateful thug.

But what I have found, is that in some people.
It has the opposite effect.

The beauty of my experience of living abroad taught me this.
That allowed me to have such a friendship across race and class barriers.
Is that in London, I am a nobody. I have no family name or social standing by birth.
I am an immigrant.

I hope one day you experience this,. because it was in this cross cultural context.
That I learnt humanity and universal truths.