Maddison's Musings

As Pride Month comes to a close, I thought I'd share some reflections from the last 30 days. I haven't really done much this month, but I did end up going to my first Pride event and that was really special. Despite finally going to Pride after three years of being too scared to go, I've found myself annoyed with the amount of corporations involved that don't actually care much about the queer community. There was a great article about that topic written by Naveen Kumar on them. a few days ago, which you can read here if you want. But before I talk more about that, I thought I'd share some of my experiences at my first pride event.

Behold, my first pride event. Dallas Pride 2019. I'm not going to lie, even though I've been out for years, I was still terrified of actually going to pride. Not only because this is Texas and there's always the fear of becoming a victim of a hate crime, but because I had no idea what to expect. I decided to go alone for many reasons. One, the festival cost $10 and I didn't want to drag others there with me when they had to pay. Two, all of my friends live far away so even if I did want to go with people, none of them live close enough to Dallas anyways. Three, this felt like something that I just had to do on my own, you know? Like being gay is My thing and while I understand that there are people in my life who support me, I still feel as if I'm never fully myself with them. Therefore, I went to pride alone and honestly, it was one of the best things I could've done for myself. I was able to just walk around and be myself. There were so many rainbows and happy gays and I felt so much joy around me. It was so beautiful and everyone was so nice and kind. As time progressed and I had walked around the entire place, including the inside bit with vendors where I managed to snag some free things. I hadn't even been at pride for a full hour, but I felt like I was probably done because I had already seen everything. But, thanks to the magic of the internet and Twitter, I made a new friend and we ended up spending a few hours together walking around the booths, grabbing free things, and chatting. Before I left for pride, I had actually Googled "what to expect at your first pride" as well as "what to do at pride alone" and most articles I found were nice and mentioned meeting people. Being the extremely anxious introvert I am, I assumed that wouldn't happen to me and I would just continue to wander aimlessly, but thankfully I did end up making a new friend.

All in all, my first pride event was a very memorable and emotional moment. I really didn't think I would get so emotional, but as I walked to my car at the end of the day in the drizzling rain, I felt so overcome with joy and love that I ended up crying in the car.