I’m From Middleburg Heights, OH.

by Michelle Kupiec

State Satellite overhead image from Google Earth 2022

I come from a quiet midwestern suburb of Cleveland. Hardly diverse and overall has a tone of intolerance just lurking below the surface for anything not white, straight, and moderately wealthy.

My parents’ close friend died of cancer several years back. At the funeral I met this wonderful man who seemed to know my parents and they talked. When I got home they told me he was their deceased friend’s partner. I had never knowingly met a gay person before and I wasn’t put off, I was sad to not have known him while he was alive.

He was no different from anyone else.

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