Turning Over a New Leaf

Keeping It Queer
By Erica Chu


Turning Over a New Leaf

Congratulations! You’ve survived another holiday season.  It’s now several days into 2011, and as many of us switch out the old wall calendar for a new one, we often think of what resolutions we have for this coming year.  I am (probably like many of you) promising myself that I’ll eat healthier and exercise more, but I’m also thinking of what my priorities should be for the coming year.  I am taking stock of my attitudes toward the unavoidable in my life—school, work, family, relationships, friends, and volunteering. I don’t usually put so much effort into New Year’s resolutions, but this year, the calendar just happens to coincide with some significant changes in my daily routine.  As a result, I’ve also been considering the things I’ve not had time for, the things I’ve let slip away during the inevitable busyness of the last year.

I was once an avid journaler.  I recall being nineteen, and after many months of writing in the same journal, I reached the end.  I had bought a new one with a black cover, a succession of clean, white pages, and as I held this new journal in my hands, I wondered what words, what experiences, what stories would fill these same pages by the time I reached its end.  It was thrilling to open to the first page, uncap my pen, and make those first few notes into what I knew it would become—a worn, dusty journal containing the documentation of a life I once lived.

That journal sits on a shelf near my desk, and as I flip through this dusty book, I am reminded of how much I’ve forgotten of that time in my life.  On one particularly messy page is an entry about my concern for a friend’s well-being.  This guy is still a friend, and the worries I expressed in that entry are very much a continued reality, but I am presently less concerned because the past several years I’ve been so caught up in my own life and my own problems I’ve not often thought about how I could help this friend.  As I set the old journal down again, I resolve to call him and if I can, be of some support.

The more I think about making resolutions, the more I come to understand that taking stock of the present and making goals for what I want for the future is not enough.  I need to look at the future in light of the past.  What has been neglected that I can no longer ignore?  What have I wanted and why?  Do I like the goals I’ve lately been setting for myself, or are there goals from my past that I still want to pursue?

The LGBT community in Illinois is at a similar moment of reflection.  As the passing of the Civil Unions Bill gives same-sex couples a sense of local security and as the repeal of DADT gives us hope that federal change will come, it’s very easy to pat ourselves on the back and say we’ve made it.  We might take stock of our current situations and make goals based on what we’ve experienced lately—public validation for gay people through same-sex marriage or positive representations on popular television shows.  Yet what has been written in the journals of the struggle for LGBT rights?  What has been left out?  What do we want to be written?  What dreams have been forgotten, what priorities neglected? 

There are a lot of possible answers to this question, and though I won’t pretend to know the answers to these questions, I will say I believe our priorities need to be reassessed.  Passing the civil unions bill is a big step toward making life easier for many in our community, but what will make life more livable for our homeless youth? What will make life more livable for the poor among us, for those in need of safe housing, access to healthcare, access to legal documents, those contemplating suicide, struggling with addiction, or aging closeted and alone?

Whether it’s a new year or a new stage in the life of our community, as we look hopefully onto the blank page of our immediate future, it’s my hope we turn over a new leaf.  The immediate past has been full of activism that is progress, but it helps only some among us while many of the most vulnerable have been neglected year after year.  Next year, I want to pick up this messy page and read that we have worked for the most vulnerable in our community, so I pick up my pen, and start writing (and working) on my own personal priorities.


Erica Chu is a student at Loyola University Chicago and is seeking a PhD in English with a concentration in Women Studies and Gender Studies.  She manages the blog keepingitqueer.blogspot.com and can be reached at ericachu@msn.com.