[Vol. 54] Wrestling with Post-Pride Depression
:( , but also :)
Happy Tuesday, friends :)
Sub to the newsletter on this glorious Tuesday, if you will.
So goes another Pride weekend – one for the books, if I may say so myself. It was hot and sunny, naked and (un)afraid, a little blurry and a whole lot like a marathon.
My body is tired.
In the wake of this weekend, pretty much all I want is to sleep and remain horizontal for as long as I possibly can before the Fourth of July rolls around.
I didn’t take a lot of pics over the past few days (my camera roll is mainly filled with random blurry images my phone took accidentally) but here’s one I happened to take with two of my favorite newsletter readers.
Yes, I pick favorites – whatcha gonna do about it? 🤷♂️
Speaking of favorites, here’s a photo compilation of some “favorite” moments from the Pride March on Sunday that LGBTQ+ Nation put together. Thank god somebody took pictures …
Ok, Till, that’s quite enough sunshine and rainbows. Let’s talk post-pride depression.
To me, it’s a very real thing. And I’m not the type to make light of words that carry heavy meaning, like “depression”. I’m talking that feel-nothing, immobile, stay-in-bed-all-day-contemplating-your-existence-and-self-worth type of energy.
I was going through it yesterday (and a little bit this morning) and all my body knew to do was eat greasy Chinese food and watch hours of TV in bed. I almost didn’t want to write about all that here – honestly I didn’t really want to sit down and write at all.
But then I pictured myself getting this email in my inbox this morning – how seeing it would make me feel – and so I made my coffee, opened my laptop and got to writing. That pretty much brings us up to speed.
So, what is post-pride depression?
Since it cannot (yet) be found in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, here’s my own personal definition in tweet form (the drafting process of which took me way longer than I’m willing to admit)
Look, I love my life – I really do. I love my family, my friends, my city, myself – all of it. But the truth is we’ve all got beef with this world – with our world – regardless of whether we have love in our lives or not.
After a weekend spent feeling absolutely free and surrounded by my absolutely free peers, our business-as-usual world just seems a little less … colorful.
When all the rainbow flags are gone, when all those temporary tattoos you drunkenly plastered all over yourself finally rub off, what then? What now?
In our real world, half the things that fly almost under-the-radar at Pride are, to put it lightly, not encouraged.
At NYC Pride, you’d be hard pressed to show up in the most “out there” outfit. No one – and I mean no one – cares about your “bold” hat choice when there are three men in banana hammocks, a flock of topless women with rainbow pasties on, and gender-bending fashionistas of all kinds right around the corner (damn, that whole sentence sounded like a verse to a gay Christmas carol).
And while I’m not saying that I’m entertaining the idea of wearing a banana hammock on my next Google Meet call, I think there’s something incomparably beautiful about being surrounded by so much of what would normally be deemed “outrageous” queerness.
For that one weekend, the world transforms into a place you feel like one of the crowd, and instead of being told “that’s really too much”, you’re egged on with a “do more”.
So when Monday rolled around and my very hungover, very sleep-deprived, very gay-power fueled self woke up to business as usual, needless to say I didn’t feel like getting up.
I stepped outside into the sweltering heat of the day only to find that Pride 2021 had been power-washed out of the street. Sure, it was still NYC, it was still gay, but the audacity of Pride weekend was no more.
Now, I’m hesitating writing a “this is how I got over it” type conclusion – you know, the satisfying kind neatly wrapped up in a pretty bow – because I don’t think that’s how this all works. These feelings run deep, and even though I feel better, I’m not over it.
But here’s something neat I’ve thought about: Pride weekend is undeniably unique, that much is true, but the “do more” attitude I personally love it for doesn’t have to be.
It’s not always easy but reminding yourself that queerness is something to be celebrated, I think, is the key. Actually, surrounding yourself with friends, family, and loved ones that do so for you is even better.
When you look at the big picture, Pride is just a weekend in June. Its purpose isn’t to exist as an isolated event, but to remind you of your community; to remind us that even when queerness becomes less visible, we’re still just around the corner.
Find me on Instagram: @till_kaeslin
Check out the newsletter’s home on Instagram: @thatsgaynewsletter
And that was That’s Gay, Volume 54.
See you in Volume 55, folks!
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