On Community
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For a group therapy session a year or so ago, the therapist asked me and the other participants to choose five values that were the most important to us. Accompanying this assignment, he gave us an alphabetized list of over a hundred different values to choose from. One of these stuck out to me the most, and it was also the first to go on my list of five. It was community. The group therapist later explained to us that the exercise was for us to get an idea of what’s important in our lives in order to guide our focuses decisions.
I found this exercise incredibly impactful, especially when focusing on the first value I chose: community. As a part of the session, we were also asked to define what these values mean to us, to which I wrote in my dedicated therapy notebook, “We’re all in this together and it’s important to show up for others.” Today, I’d also add that it’s also about letting others in and letting them do the same for you. So often I see people being standoffish and denying help, and understandably so. We live in a society that values that good ol’ rugged individualism and acting like we have it all handled. Additionally, people may have let people in before and have had that trust betrayed. Being distant can indeed be a coping mechanism, but an unhealthy one if you don’t have anyone that you can trust.
Community has long been something I’ve yearned for. This is partially just because I’m human. We are a social species after all. Some may be born into a community they feel loved and appreciated in, but as a queer person from a mostly conservative midwestern town, this wasn’t really the case for me. I’m fortunate enough to have a mostly accepting immediate family, but even with them I often feel like the black sheep. I often worry that my family deems me as too much for using they/them pronouns, and have long been too exhausted to correct them bouncing back and forth between he/him and she/her. Along with this frustration, I simply don’t have a lot in common with my relatives. Conversations with them often feel forced and awkward while the topics remain surface level.
All of this to say, maybe I value community so much because I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere throughout much of my life. I chased that sense of belonging and found what you may expect a lonely kid in a conservative town to find: Jesus. I went to church and youth group meetings fairly regularly with friends in middle and early high school. Since my family never went to church, it was a new experience for me. I loved the sense of routine and how everyone knew each other. I genuinely enjoyed it at first, and was a full blown Jesus freak there for a bit. In high school, however, I began to challenge what the church was teaching me. By then, I already had a couple of queer friends come out (including the ones I went to church with) and was beginning to question my own sexuality and gender. Like most churches, the one that I attended was not cool with deviations from the so-called norms of being cisgender and heterosexual. After a youth group meeting where I argued extensively with the leaders about the “sinfulness” of same-sex couples, I stopped going to church.
While leaving the church was ultimately the best decision for my well-being, I still mourned the sense of community I felt within it. Of course, this was mostly a false sense of community as they wouldn’t have accepted me if they had known that I was queer. At the very least, they would have spewed some “love the sinner, hate the sin” bullshit that many small town queers are used to.
Besides for my handful of friends, I spent the rest of high school without a strong sense of belonging. Even as a theater kid, I felt left behind and disregarded by my cast-mates. I came out as bisexual my sophomore year, and then as nonbinary in my junior year. While I’m fortunate that I had friends and family who weren’t bothered by these things, I struggled with not having many folks to talk to about my gender in particular. I was mostly going off of what I had learned on Tumblr at that point.
After graduation, I moved with my mom to a neighboring city. This city, which is still quite small compared to others, at least has more to it than just corn fields. Although it has some of those as well. I attended my new home’s pride event in 2018, a year after graduating. While the crowd was a bit overwhelming, it was great to see so many people there. Most notably at that year’s pride event, I found out about a local trans support group. I first attended that support a few weeks later even though I was nervous as hell and went alone. The people there were more than welcoming and kind, and I then attended regularly for about five years. This support group gave me a truer sense of understanding and community than any church ever could. It is there where I first befriended my amazing girlfriend, who I’ve now been dating for two and a half years. It is there where I heard other trans folks share bits about their stories and got advice on how to start my medical transition. While I don’t attend this group regularly anymore due to my schedule changing and the original facilitator moving away, I’ll forever be grateful for its existence and how much it helped me in my late teens and early twenties.
Where does this leave me with community now? For one, I live with my girlfriend now and am of course very close to them. I’ve also been attending book clubs, one queer book club at my local LGBTQ+ center, and a non-fiction book club at the library. The latter will unfortunately be disbanding after this month’s meeting though, which I assume is because it hasn’t had a ton of attendance. I will continue to look for interesting events and groups to attend in my area, and encourage anyone reading this to do the same.
I’ve also been prioritizing my already established friendships and am doing my best to foster those. I’ll send lengthy emails to one of my high school friends – one that I went to church with, ironically -- and get lengthy ones sent back. We’ll also video chat when we’re able to. I feel like we’re closer now than we ever were in school, and she was one of my best friends.
There are also four of us that try to meet at the library every Tuesday. I say “try” as there are various disabilities, health conditions, and general scheduling stuff that can get in the way of this, but we do all make an effort. We dub this group the Library CrewTM and it consists of me, my girlfriend, a friend we met at the queer book club, and a friend that said book club friend introduced us to. We usually just reserve a study room for an hour or two and play board games or just chat, and it fills me with so much joy every time.
Recently, I and one of the friends from Library CrewTM met up and made a couple batches of cookies and so much pasta. We did so to share between us two and the other two members of Library CrewTM. We each had pasta for a few days, although the cookies didn’t last nearly as long. While her and I both agree that we over extended ourselves on the day that we did all of the cooking and baking, I still had a lot of fun doing it. Not only did it make me feel closer to her, but it also gave me a greater sense of purpose since I knew I was doing it for others. Maybe we’ll have to do it again sometime and pace ourselves more.
I’m also starting to organize things here and there. A simple example, but one that I’m incredibly excited for, is my birthday party in a couple weeks. If everyone who has RSVP'd are still able to come on the day of the party, there will be seven of us doing arts and crafts in a used bookstore. Doesn’t that sound so fun and cozy?? I think so, and I hope that those that are coming think so too. I’m excited to have some of my favorite people in one area making collages and zines and whatnot, if only for a couple of hours.
Another thing I’m planning is a Little Free Library inspired bookshelf in the community center of the trailer park that I live in. Little Free Libraries, if you’re unaware, are those little boxes of books often in front of houses or in parks where you’re encouraged to take a book and/or leave a book. I wrote a letter to the board of the trailer park’s HOA a few weeks ago, and met with one of the members recently to discuss it further. There’s already a decently sized bookshelf in the building that's full of old books, but the board member I met with said that I’m more than welcome to swap them out for newer books if I want to. After doing so, I’m planning on putting a sign up by the mailboxes to try to get the word out. I’m not sure if many people will be interested in this, but I think it’d be a cool project to try nonetheless. I love to read and think it’d be neat to make books more accessible, especially since many of my neighbors are retired and may not get out much.
These are just a few examples of what community can look like, but I challenge you to find your own definition and vision of what it can be. I understand that making the effort to build community is difficult and that maintaining relationships can be also. I think that we’re ultimately here to love and support one another though, as corny as that may sound. I urge you to make an effort to find at least one person that you can be your true self with and start showing up for them more. Whether this means texting them a quick message when you’re thinking of them, helping them move, or simply watching a TV show together, just make a bit of an effort. I think that human connection is powerful and unfortunately is becoming more and more undervalued in western society. It’s lonely to feel like you don’t belong and that no one cares. Believe me, I’ve been there. Find your people, both for your sake and for theirs.
