Monday, January 16, 2012

Another One: Eric James Borges

Eric James Borges, a 19-year-old gay filmmaker. who recorded his won “It Gets Better” video, committed suicide this week.
Known as EricJames to friends, he was a volunteer at the Trevor Project, an organization devoted to preventing LGBT teen suicides. Trevor Project spokeswoman, Laura McGuinnis, said, “He was a volunteer teaching suicide prevention, so he knew what counseling was available to him. Unfortunately suicide is so complicated, so rooted in mental illness, that it is difficult to know why he made that decision. It is very, very sad.”
He seemed like the last kid who would commit suicide, doesn't he? He worked with the Trevor Project, he made his own 'It Gets Better' video. He knew all about LGBT suicides.
But EricJames came froma  family  of "extremist" Christians, who called him "disgusting"and then kicked him out of their home last October.
For being gay.
His own parents, at one time, tried to perform an exorcism on him to make him straight, and therefore acceptable to their  "lifestyle". EricJames also endured emotional and physical abuse at school which caused him to drop out of high school. But, in his video, he said, it had gotten better for him: “You will love, be loved, and I love you...You are not alone.”
EricJames also created a short film called “Invisible Creatures,” in which he shows both gay and straight couples expressing their affection in similar ways because, let's understand one thing, love is love, no matter what gender the couple.
This was a young man who might have helped other LGBT youth to fight the urge to give up, to keep going, to know that it gets better,. but, in the end, probably for one brief moment, EricJames forgot all that, and decided it wouldn't get better.
We'll never know what he might have done as a filmmaker. 
We'll never know what he might have done to help LGBT youth.
We'll. Never. Know.


via Queer Landia and The Washington Post

10 comments:

  1. I don't think his *parents* deserve that title. They were given the gift of a child and they destroyed it.

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  2. Thank God my daughter has better parents!

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  3. Bob, that is the saddest part for me; all of that love, passion, creativity, and potential erased and for no good reason at all. He just felt alone and didn't feel he could go on. i don't even want to say what I think of his so called parents.

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  4. I hate these stories. I hope I never hear another one. Right? ...

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  5. This is so sad. Such a promising young man who probably felt trapped and no way out of his situation. Just last week I was talking to the former husband of a friend of mine who committed suicide in 1989, when she was 49 years old. She wasn't gay but she also felt trapped in her life situation and felt there was no other way out. What she didn't remember and what Eric probably didn't know was that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I had my own drama when I came out in 1963 when my family tried to force me to go to the hospital to be "cured". They literally were pulling me out of my apartment to take me to the hospital against my will. I fought them off and eventually (a couple years) they came to accept that I was gay and wasn't "sick." It is such a shame that Eric felt so trapped that he couldn't see the broader perspective and know that his situation would end. So sad.

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  6. I'm getting very fed up with this! Maybe we should start bullying back and turn the tables damn it! Nah, they aren't worth the time and energy, plus we ARE better than them.

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  7. Such tragedy and needless waste of life. This stuff (parental and religious abuse) needs to stop.

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  8. I've been waiting for this from you. I read it a day or so ago and it broke my heart.
    Bob, you are right when you wrote on your comment on my blog. No one gives a fuck because the kid is gay.
    Exactly.
    My anger can not allow me to comment anything sensible due to the shit that clouds my mind.
    We must start posting all these deaths everywhere and BANG THIS FUCKING DRUM FOR EVERYONE TO SEE READ IT.
    With that being said.
    Go in Peace EricJames

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  9. I'm shocked that people experience this kind of thing. I can only offer my condolences for those he left behind.

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  10. So sad. Suicide IS complicated, and there usually isn't "a" reason; there are reasonS, plural. Regardless, its still just so sad.

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