Today I was thinking about the last couple years with this blog and how far I’ve come. I initially started ContagiousQueer a couple years ago after a particularly stressful college semester trying to fight for equality and justice on my alma mater’s campus. I was angry, hurt, isolated, alone. I felt betrayed by the people who called themselves allies or friends but seemingly had no trouble throwing me and others under the bus to get what they wanted.

It was that span of a few months where my most revolutionary transformation into the activist I am today began, where I learned about the structural institutions of racism, heterosexism, classism, and more. And I saw firsthand the interpersonal experiences and impacts of all those isms through my friends and mentors.

I know that there are plenty of people who would easily gaslight me over the experiences I had while at my alma mater but I know what I felt and when I started ContagiousQueer, I knew I couldn’t keep still anymore. I needed a place to vent, to be vulnerable, to learn.

And it was more than being angry and frustrated over the things I experienced or heard – I also felt like my own education was severely lacking in anything but the sociological classics (read: white cis straight men, the very definition of privileged). I felt like I learned more about society and the sociological imagination from the more marginalized and it was through learning about society from the people who actually experience oppression that I felt like I was learning more about myself as well.

So here I am. A little over two years after starting this project and it’s definitely grown into something that I love creating. Depression and life makes it difficult to write every day and this isn’t the biggest blog out there but it’s mine and I’m proud of that.