In Defense of Cope
Sometimes survival looks like delusion. That doesn’t make it less real.
There’s a certain kind of person who uses the word copium like a weapon. You know the type. They lurk in comment sections and group chats, waiting to pounce on anyone who dares to express a sliver of hope, a moment of optimism, a breath of belief that something—anything—might get better. To them, coping is cringe. It’s weak. It’s delusional.
But let’s be honest: nobody gets through this life without a little delusion.
I grew up in a small town in Western New York where it wasn’t safe to be myself. I was bullied for figure skating, bullied for liking Taylor Swift, bullied for crying about being bullied. In 2004, as gay marriage was banned by constitutional amendment across the country, the idea that someday I’d be shopping for wedding dresses would have felt like pure delusion. And yet here I am, anxiously waiting for it to arrive. I never would have made it here without a healthy supply of copium.
I ended up moving to one of the most LGBTQ neighborhoods in the country, but my hometown still isn’t safe. This year, it was the site of the brutal murder of Sam Norquist, a trans man visiting from Minnesota. And he is far from the only victim of a scourge of violent hate. Across this country, there are queer and trans people of all ages who know that it is not safe to shine their light in the place where they currently live—and that finding somewhere to bloom might take years. Getting out of something bad requires belief that somewhere out there, there’s still good in this world. Getting out requires copium.
Maybe your coping mechanism is checking your Co-Star, rewatching Legally Blonde, or whispering affirmations to your reflection in the Target fitting room. Maybe it’s lip gloss. Maybe it’s your skincare routine. Maybe it’s tweeting through the tears. The point is, coping is not the opposite of strength. Coping is strength. It’s what people do when they’re trying to survive something too big to fix all at once.
And if you’ve ever lived through a moment like that—if you’ve ever felt the world shift under your feet—you know that survival isn’t always loud and brave and beautiful. Sometimes it’s messy. Sometimes it looks like denial. Sometimes it looks like laughter at the worst possible time. Sometimes it looks like saying, actually, I think I’m going to wear pink today and pretend none of this is happening.
Good. You should.
We don’t talk enough about how much of queer and trans survival has been built on coping. Fantasy, deflection, persona, beauty, art—these have never just been accessories. They are life rafts. When you’re told that you shouldn’t exist, you build something shinier, louder, truer in response. Something fabulous. Something absurd. Something that helps you remember who you are.
And yet, people are so quick to dismiss these tools. To shame them. To laugh at them. Especially when they come from people they don’t respect. Especially when they don’t understand why you need them. The real problem isn’t that people cope—it’s that we’ve created a hierarchy of acceptable suffering. A gym membership is self-care. A nightly glass of wine is culture. But God forbid a trans girl have a Pinterest board full of cottagecore selfies and a dream of moving to the mountains.
It’s all coping. Some of it just has better PR.
There’s also something cruel in the way “copium” is wielded as an insult. It’s meant to say: you’re not living in reality. But the people who cope aren’t out of touch. They’re intimately acquainted with how hard things are. That’s why they need a way to make it feel bearable. Nobody clings to hope more fiercely than the people who’ve had it taken from them before.
Cope isn’t cowardice. It’s practice. It’s choosing to build a world inside yourself that feels worth living in, even when the one outside doesn’t. It’s the first step toward imagining something better.
So light the candle. Put on the sparkly dress, even if the only place you have to wear it right now is the comfort of your bedroom. Post your silly little affirmations. Believe that things will turn around. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that even the tiniest delusion can bloom into a future.
There is no shame in coping. There is only the soft, defiant act of staying alive long enough to tell your story.
Coping is a sign of hope. An expectation that life will eventually return to normal or even acceptance. It’s an excellent post.
What you are suggesting is healthy coping - it is positively reinforcing yourself to be ready to stand up and make change happen when you have the opportunity. While the internet, especially the queer internet, lacks a lot of nuance to determine the difference, where it is important to make the distinction is people who confuse “coping” with “avoidance.” I’ve run into far too many queer people who have decided not to cope, not to just say “I’m going to pretend nothing is bad for today” but rather “I’m going to pretend nothing is bad at all, ever.” We will all need healthy coping skills to get through the next four years…but if we want to ensure that it is JUST the next four years we need to eventually face up to the world in order to do something to fix it. Part of that is preparing to try and get control of Congress back to limit what horrors this administration can do, and I think far too few are thinking about that, and far too many who just assume in four years people will make good decisions and everything will be okay again.