Made me think of Shane & Ilya and their journey to each other now and in the future. Both went through growing pains in order to find the bravery to be vulnerable with each other. It’s not easy to entrust your heart to another person and even more so for queer people when we live in a world that says loving this person is wrong. Even before they said the words we could see they’d already surrendered to each other. When I read the book and watched the show I felt such rage for them. These young men spent their young adulthood afraid because of their sexuality. Because all these external factors (hockey, family, society) made them feel/believe they should be ashamed. That they were less “manly” for not being straight. Shane was drowning in internalized homophobia. Ilya had to live in fear of his home country destroying him if he was anything other than heterosexual. The struggles of these young men are the same struggles still in existence and it just makes me so furious. It took them so long to figure things out partly because of the real lack of safety to embrace themselves and then each other. When you are terrified it’s hard to recognize/believe in love. I hope all of us can mend one another and be mended by each other. I hope we can reflect on the layers in this show and with these couples that challenge us and how we show up in this broken world. Like can we make it a safer place for queer people to do more than exist! Let us come alive in all our beauty. We deserve sunshine too!
