By Eliza Speese
When approaching the noise and chaos of lining up for the pride parade, we are awestruck by costumes, loving gestures, dogs in rainbow costumes and friends all gathered together. We embrace and yell HAPPY PRIDE at least 200 times, wave and smile at everyone. We blow kisses and hand out stickers, we run from the parade to see friends who were eagerly waiting to see us marching.
We take those 4 hours in like they are the highlight of the year to boldly say, I am queer and I love my community.
We use these experiences as a marker for friendships, we talk about memories of pride past and the joys the entire month brings. We try to take naps in between. We dance to the speaker blasting our queer tunes and hold hands. We invite family allies to celebrate with us.
We block out a lot of the hurt to be in the moment of joy. We stand firm in taking up space and support our fellow performers. We whisper when we see our friend’s ex to avoid walking that way. We try to remember to take photos but are so wrapped up in the excitement, we wind up searching websites to see if they caught a glimpse of our joy. We sing Lady Gaga’s lyrics, “don’t be a drag, just be queen,” at the top of our lungs. We love hard always, but pride parade allows us to unapologetically be loud and creative and thankful for the community we continue to build each year.