Cammy

My Queer Straight Alliance was invited to talk to the United States Representative Barbara Lee about our club and what we do. It was really exciting because I remember there being a “Barbara Lee speaks for me” poster in my third grade science class. It’s weird to think about how big of a deal she is!

A few people from our club’s leadership came and we each prepared something to talk to her about. I talked about what’s so great about our QSA. I think since my anxiety isn’t so bad anymore I was really able to do a good job! I talked about why we’re titled QSA and not GSA (we chose queer over gay to be more inclusive), and our peer education presentations (we go around to classes to talk about LGBTQ+ issues and safety. I also talked about a gender-neutral bathroom petition the ninth graders made—we got gender-neutral bathrooms, too!!!

One of my friends brought copies of our peer ed script and gave it to Congresswoman Lee and she was so cool: She said that it was really good and asked if she could use it to talk to those of her colleagues who are ignorant on this subject. That was SUPER weird, because I just go to high school and have issues with this stuff, but she works in Washington, D.C. with a ton of government people. I can’t believe that she deals with the same problems as we do. She told us she was really proud of us for making the script—which felt good because every part of the script was written by the members of our club—and we’d done an amazing job of covering the acronym, the gender binary, stereotypes, and fluidity. It feels really good that something we put a lot of work into is receiving praise. Afterwards, we got to take a picture with her.

I’m glad I went, especially because I was considering not going because I have a bad history with someone else who attended. On the day, we ended up being totally fine with each other and it was actually really nice. They’re a senior and graduating in a month, so it felt nice to have this one last good moment to remember when I think about them.

It’s kinda scary to think so many of my friends will be leaving this year. My whole time in high school I’ve been denying that this day would come because, until now, it has been far away. But now that time is here. It’s bittersweet. I’m happy that everyone is going off to college to do what they love, but I’m gonna miss them tons—everyone is going so far away. I’m scared to lose touch with friends, even as I know that it’s bound to happen since they’ll be far away and busy and I will be, too. I think, though, that it’s best to try to stay optimistic and keep in mind that no matter how far away someone is they can still feel really close. ♦