![]() ![]() Finally, one of the students in the back of the room broke the silence. The students sat muted, some with folded hands, some with eyes turned toward me as if seeking a response. And now, for the first time in thirty-seven years of teaching experience, one of my students had simply faced an audience of her peers to say she fully understood the struggle of the character for she, too, struggled and had finally admitted even to herself that she was gay and that she could no longer remain hidden. In those moments of silence, I envied her courage and honesty knowing full well that, in a small rural school, being gay was a subject rarely discussed except in locker rooms and small hallway conversations safe from the prying ears of faculty. No one said a word as if in doing so, they would have diminished, almost profaned, her confession. She had been my former student in high school taking all five of my courses and, in one, after a discussion of a short story in which a principal character struggles with his own sexuality, had outed herself to a roomful of students she had known most of her life. In life, her smile had been warm and infectious. Just after midnight, Sarah quietly slipped the rope over her head, took that one step from the chair, and hanged herself in the dorm room of her university. ![]()
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