Robert StGenis Voice empowered

This will not mean much unless you first read: Summer 1986. Part Two. In Liberty & Reality The lower right photo shows 2 bad decisions on my part. A horrible perm and smoking. I first started smoking as a freshman in Cross Country when my friend and I would sneak into the woods and smoke during a run. A few of us also tried chewing tobacco while cycling in the same period. Difference then, at my private school, they simply had designated smoking areas for students. We were told it was bad, not that we couldn't under any circumstance. Meanwhile, the video below was being shown during the school year in NYC public schools. It most definitely was not in the Morris School District.

Please be sure to read  AIDS 1. Junior year  and  AIDS 1-Senior Year. Part One  prior to this entry. It brings my story all together. You may also want to watch my short  It Gets better  video which is also a blog post on here as well. Then, you will have my years as a teenager, the fun, the sad, the good and bad. The collection of these posts bring together a formative part of who I am, as it is an important period of growth for all of us. You will likely find some of my story shocking, some entertaining, interesting, doubtfully boring. I didn't overall spend time writing about time on swim or soccer teams, or even much about going to school except a bit more in this last one. I wrote mostly about what you aren't expecting to hear from a teenager. My girlfriend Laura and I will also spend a great deal of time in New York City. Because Laura lived down the shore in Toms River, she was about 90 miles away. Getting together was never running up or down t...

As I start to write this, I again realize how quickly time flies and all the more so, it seems, as you get older. The It Gets Better Project was started in 2010 by activist, author and journalist Dan Savage and his husband Terry Miller following what seemed at the time to be an endless number of suicides of young gay kids throughout the US from varying backgrounds. As a gay man and one who never really was suicidal but definitely knows from being distraught, alone and in a state of despair, it definitively struck a cord. It motivated people like Dan and Terry to take on initiatives that I believe have helped many directly and equally shed a light and opened the minds and perspectives of many others. For my small part, at least in this direct "movement" I created this video. As you will learn about efforts I have made in the LGBTQ community, which are vast, they all should have some impact on a feeling of acceptance. Hopefully one that makes one feel less suicidal f...