Glee Is Over
Glee is over.
It started when I was 25. I was still in the closet about being trans, lying to someone who would one day later on ask me to marry them without ever really knowing who I was. I don't bring this up due to bitterness, but to reflect on the life I was leading when it began. I stayed up super late to catch the first episode online. A week before I had seen the pilot online and fell in love with the A Capella and the tween drama. As someone who always loved to sing, the covers and later mash ups and original songs kept drawing me in episode after episode and season after season.
Have you ever been in a relationship, platonic or romantic, where someone reintroduces themselves to you? Either you just start dating after having been friends for a while, or maybe they come back from a life changing event very naturally changed for either the better or worse and you are relearning who that person is? Well Glee was like that with me for music. It was Broadway and pop, it was rap and a touch of country. Soul and jazz and over the top performances. And it invigorated me. I started performing again even in little ways. I started singing again; in the shower, on the street at night when I was convinced I was alone (a habit that I still carry if you hear my voice drift by your window at night you didn't dream it I'm just a scared little dork XD). I would steal into an unused auditorium at STU and belt out songs that reflected how I was feeling about anything and I did that mostly alone. I was still hiding inside my skin, using my assigned at birth body as a disguise. I didn't really tell anyone I was singing. People heard and they saw from time to time. But I didn't talk much about it. Buy gosh did I rant and rave about Glee.
And even when it was bad. Especially when it was bad. And it WAS bad. All the time, two or three episodes even in the good seasons were bad. Even one or two from this latest season. But I ranted and raved about how great it was too. How strong I felt after watching these kids, who by all means were sometimes weak and terrible people, were still kids and finding themselves. And how I, a late-twenties adult just leaving university, was still finding myself. Characters both big and small of all kinds and creeds were finding hidden talent and joy in music and in each other. At the same time I had hidden myself so deep and far down inside when I was so young from watching how people looked when I sang Cyndi Lauper or Madonna into a hairbrush that I never wanted to know me. I was weird and strange and terrible. No one person made me feel that way either. There is no one person to blame. No easy target for a time traveling superperson to go back and remove from the equation that would have produced a happier, more open me. Every day I killed Kathrine inside me without ever knowing she was real or there because of the expectations society placed around and on me.
I ferreted out aspects of masculinity I could find that were flamboyant but never explored them. Always wondered inside about my sexuality because while that was finally becoming accepted and I was able to discover what that even was, being transgender wasn't an option. Not because it wasn't real but I lacked even a word for it. When I met my first transgender person she was accepted begrudgingly to some degree, though belittled in small ways by the friends we had in common. I'd like to say I was the perfect friend to them all the time but I wasn't. When they chimed in nervously with their own mockery I laughed and was a complicit part of it. It brings me so much shame to this day the way few other things do.
But for 20 some odd weeks every year, for the last six years, I got to see what it would be like being in high school if I had gotten to come out of my shell a little sooner and in a better place. Not a perfect place, but maybe a better one. Certainly better then the empty and forgotten pit of pity and self-absorption I was wallowing in for so long. A me I never knew suffered in silence and the juxtaposition of music against that has always been a balm for my saddest moments, and that was something that the imperfection of Glee leveled into me every time I watched. Even in the strangest moments of the terrible New York episodes, the awkward and strange way they sometimes fumbled through sensitive subjects like the way they mishandled sex work. But also in the terrible and powerful way they displayed the horror of a school shooting, the succinct nature of sexuality and identity. Suicide. Transitioning. Marriage and infidelity. Sex and race. Never perfect but always a mirror to my life. Or maybe my life was the darker mirror to it all along.
Glee didn't help me find myself in any profound way. It was a TV show, and I merely a viewer. Seeing Blaine and Kurt kiss filled me with joy but it didn't reshape my world. But the lives Glee did touch are. Glee has undoubtedly changed lives and indirectly altered mine. It was part of a kick off in culture for both Canada and the US about sexuality and acceptance. About the arts and identity and the basic decency that could buy wonderful experiences and rich friendships. Even when it was terrible it was still doing that. I love Glee and all of the crew and cast for the little joys it has directly and indirectly given back to me in exchange for a 60 minute format. For the courage it inspired in me and for the decency it inspired in others. For being part of the wider background radiation in the media making it more acceptable to be who I always was inside. For making me feel amazing when I open my mouth and sing, even quietly to myself in my room when my days are less then perfect. For helping me forget my anxiousness and fears. I am terribly sad to see it end and go.
But in the end it gave me a trite tidbit that I think will help give me positive focus in my life going forward;
"See the world not as it is, but how it should be."
Thank you Glee for reminding me that the later should have me in it as I truly am.
