In a new PSA, transgender actress,
teacher and activist Alexandra Billings urges troubled gay teens to
reach out to
the Trevor Project, the California-based non-profit that runs the
nation's only 24-hour, toll free confidential suicide hotline for gay
and questioning youth.
The 48-year-old Billings first confides
that anti-gay bullying drove her to attempt suicide at 16, before
urging gay teens to “hang around.”
“There is something you can do, find
an LGBT group in your high school or your junior high,” she says.
“Talk to a couple of friends of yours, talk to your parents – I
know that it's frightening. If that's too hard, write them a letter
and read it to them.”
“You can also call the people at the
Trevor Project. There is someone waiting right now to talk to you.
And to listen. And who understands.”
“Look, I can't promise you that
everything is going to magically change – it doesn't. It doesn't
work like that. Everybody transitions. You just happen to be
transitioning into the real you. But you've got to find your voice
and you cannot leave the planet.”
Billings adds that she found the love
of her life because she “hung around.”
“And she loves me for who I am,”
she says. (The video is embedded in the right panel of this page.)