Monday, May 17th, 2021

I have nothing against being wrong - not in general, not in principle. Being wrong is part of guessing, and guessing is part of trying something new; and, after all, one of the biggest reliefs of my entire life was discovering just how wrong I was about who I am, a couple of years ago.

But there are times when it's harder than others. Times when I have to just admit that I was wrong, and if there's any usefulness to be had from the mistake, it's lost in the sheer pain of how awful the mistake was.

I made the mistake of thinking things were OK with my relatives.

This is the only way forward now.

* * *

The trash cans are just sitting there, on the curb.

Maybe for some people it’s "just" a "simple" matter of opening the garage, pulling them inside, and disappearing into solitude again.

Not for me.

I can’t go out there.

Instead, I have to be in here, fighting off the whispers of anxiety and dread that say someone out there is judging me for not having taken the cans inside yet.

Never mind that half the neighborhood just leaves their cans on the road all week.

Never mind that even the people who do bring them up a driveway, into a garage, around to the side yard... they often take a day or two to manage it themselves.

I almost wish I could say something, as if to explain what’s going on and just avoid further conversation entirely. Tell everyone. But why? I don’t want their pity, their offers of help, or their involvement.

All I want is to be left alone… and they already do that. No one ever bothers me here.

But I can’t go outside.

They know I’m here. It’s not some kind of secret. I’m not fooling anyone. Nor am I trying.

I know why all of this is.

It has nothing to do with being left alone. It has everything to do with not being rejected. Not being treated as a problem, as a freak, as an abnormality, as a monster.

No one here has ever given me a reason to think they would respond that way.

But I know who did.

There’s a flashing storm of images in my brain, words and sounds and faces, a parade of horrible people doing horrible things. Echoes of long-faded physical pain flash through my nerves.

Being beaten by my father at a party, him hauling me into the driveway of the host’s home and hitting me over and over again, for embarrassing and inconveniencing him. I’d had a social anxiety attack and lost control of my bladder, surrounded by strangers in an unfamiliar setting. Somehow his impression of the right response to that was to begin smacking his eight year old child.

That was the right response to everything. Hit me.

I remember exactly one time - eighth grade - when I dared to walk away from him when he started getting angry at me. I left the room, went upstairs, and quietly locked the door to my bedroom behind me. Without even leaving the kitchen table downstairs, he yelled for me, promising that if I didn’t come back down and listen to his tirade, he’d "make me remember" the consequences. I didn’t get hit - that time - but I remembered anyways.

I have no idea what he was even pissed about, all these years later.

All I remember is the depth of how awful, how profoundly terribly incomprehensible, it all felt. To be struck time and again, for almost two full decades. "This is only for your own good. I’m only doing it because I love you. It hurts me more than it hurts you."

Bullshit.

I’m not afraid of my neighbors saying something shitty, or being ignorant or rude. I can handle people acting badly.

What I’m scared of is the remote chance that I’d see the same look in someone’s eye, that tiny flicker of disgust, the judgment, the silent hurrying away as if I’d ruined their day just by existing.

The look he gave me all the time.

I dread trying to talk to them, trying to help them understand that the strange woman living on the corner lot just needs some space and some privacy... I dread the beginnings of things starting to work out, people still being just as respectful but with a little more knowing behind the casual waves from across the street... I dread the eventual outcome of the illusion shattering, the bubble bursting, and someone finally telling me they couldn’t handle being kind to me anymore because I’m just too much.

The way my mother always did when I sought refuge with her after yet another incident with my father.

* * *

I tried again, all those years later, to make it work. To tell them the truth - who I am, what they did, why I struggled for weeks deciding whether or not to even give them another chance. I sent them the recommendations… books to read, documentaries to watch, people to talk to.

For a little while, it seemed like it might have worked. We talked on the phone, now and then. Occasionally even ventured past the petty small-talk that I always find so exhaustingly pointless.

And then it stopped. The illusion broke. For everything that has changed, nothing really changed at all - not with them.

A year and a half ago, my father promised to answer the letter I wrote him explaining who I am. He has since disappeared again into whatever obsessive religious hole he’s finding interesting these days. I’ve heard nothing from him, but he’s found plenty of time to write letters - to absolute strangers, trying to sell them his advice. 

A year and a half ago, my mother promised to try and build an actual relationship with her youngest daughter - with me. And when we’d finally reached a point where I felt comfortable telling her that I am autistic, and relating some of my struggles to her, she fell back into the same old habit she always has. It’s just too much, can’t we talk about something else?

I turned thirty-five years old over a month ago. I have heard absolutely nothing, from either of them, since the beginning of this year. For all their promises, for all their assurances that they’ve changed and become better people, they’re still just as problematic as ever.

I spend most of my nights and weekends working through the leftovers of the traumas they both put me through. Violent abuse on one hand, and dismissive neglect on the other.

Someday I will be able to get my trash cans without seeing their shadows hiding around every corner.

I am breaking the cycle.

This shit stops with me.

Sunday, June 16, 2019

[Published retroactively 2021-09-03, unedited.]

What an amazing fucking day.

Got a ton of stuff done that had been just languishing – mostly domestic chore type garbage, but important to finish nonetheless.

Beautiful sunset in the park again.

Soaked in a scented bath for a while and just relaxed. Listening to Marco Torrance and savoring a raspberry flavored Coke.

Still learning the finer points of navigating daily life in a skirt, and I realized a bit ago that I’d inadvertently chopped the closing button off the back of one of the new tops I bought, but for all the silly little mistakes and stumbles, I’m just… laughing about it. Slowly learning how to be a girl. Totally happy to weather the bumps along the way.

I’m finding more and more peace with myself lately. It’s all still so infinitely hard to explain or describe, but… it’s ok. I believe in myself and trust myself and I know this is all going to an amazing place.

I’m increasingly driven to resist drowning in the negative spirals I lived in for so long. I’m building a pretty good set of tools for that, too.

It’s 11PM and brain is a very sleepy girl, who keeps quietly reminding me that we have work in the morning. So the words may get a bit less overwrought and ridiculous for a bit. But I still have a thing I want to say.

The negativity thing is important. Today is Father’s Day. I don’t really know why, but for the first time in as long as I can remember, I don’t want to dig into all the buried pain and horrible past that goes along with this day for me. I don’t want to hurt over it, and I don’t want to live in it anymore.

I want to be happy, today. And every day. I want to walk around in a wooded marshland park and watch the sun set and cry because it’s so pretty. I want to listen to old nostalgic music and just enjoy the shivers it sends up my spine at all the beautiful parts. I want to drink a silly sugar drink that reminds me in some incredibly tenuous way of a half-memory I have, of a little girl sneaking out into the yard to steal raspberries off the bushes.

There are many things I need to resolve in my soul, still. Plenty of pain and darkness and deep wounds to mend. And there will be time for that healing.

Right now, as Calling Lluvia Del Verano queues up on the speakers, it’s time to just be a happy girl.

I love you, Amelia.

Friday, May 24, 2019

Editorial note: published retroactively July 6, 2020, unedited. See the recap post of 2019 for crucial spoilers on how this ended up turning out.

I’m resisting the urge to write on a really weirdly primal level, which is probably a strong indicator that I should write something.

I’ve been reflecting a bit today; not entirely sure what prompted any of it anymore, or how I wound up in this particular thought-region, but here we are. I usually try to be really disciplined about distinguishing between relatives and actual family, but I feel pretty raw at the moment and probably need to just get things on the page instead of crafting my wording too much, so for the next little while, I may be imprecise in that particular set of language.

I fucking hate my family.

I mean… I have a bunch of people related to me who I don’t even really know and barely even remember exist. They’re… indifferent, I suppose. I have one sister who is actually pretty cool but still at a place where interaction with her is a net negative for me in terms of energy and such. One nibling I actually really want to connect with better. One brother-in-law who is a metric fuckton of human shit and deserves a category of rage and ire all for himself.

So I guess what I really mean is I hate my parents.

I… wish I didn’t, in a way. I wish I could still care about them and trust them and want to have any kind of a relationship with them. Deep down in my heart I am still really sad that they did what they did. And deep down I wish there was some path through the future where I could tell them who I really am. Before they’re gone.

But for all the ache and tears that well up when I think of that, I just keep coming back to all the harm.

I come back to the beatings. Never enough to leave discernible marks; that would arouse suspicion and maybe even make them think twice about what they were doing to their own goddamn child. But beatings. The sweet spot is to leave the kid unable to walk comfortably but provide no observable evidence that they were repeatedly struck to create that situation.

There is a certain tier of fucked up depravity that drives a person to violently beat their own child on a frequent basis. There is another, worse tier where someone will have “funny” conversations with other like-minded parents about whether or not it counts as “child abuse” with the clear implication that they’re simply looking to justify and rationalize their behavior.

And it gets worse; there’s a tier where people will systematically combine psychological and emotional abuse with the beatings, to the point where simply making a particular facial expression, or using a specific tone of voice, or alluding to a particular word – any of these things can instantly produce terror and helpless submissiveness in the child. I don’t need to hit you anymore, because all I need to do is give you that shitty head-tilt and stare, and you know that if you don’t fall the fuck in line immediately I will end up wailing on you with some random fucking object until you do what I want.

Bonus points: tell your child to contemplate how it’s actually all your fault as they convalesce from their contusions. It’s all for your own good. It hurts me more than it hurts you. This is what love looks like.

If you ever, in any situation in life whatsoever, find yourself about to rationalize non-consensual violence by claiming it is acceptable as an act of love – and especially if you’re talking about smacking your own child around – please press pause, step away from things for a second, and ask yourself what the fucking hell is wrong with you that you have become such a degenerate and vile sack of fucking shit. Do not return to existence until you can provide reasonable assurances to the human realm that you have thought better of your idiocy and will, as appropriate, go fuck yourself in an act of humility and contrition.

Mom didn’t hit me much. I suppose I sort of appreciate that. But she also never did anything to stop it, or any of the myriad other forms of blatant abuse I had to live through.

I remember a moment when I was 17 and nearly ready to move the fuck out of the house. I don’t recall exactly what my misdeed was, but I do remember my dad grabbing me roughly, and essentially saying, “You’re not 18 yet; I can still hit you.”

Maybe it shouldn’t have been such a terrible threat. Maybe I should have responded differently, or something, I don’t know. What I do know is that 17+ years of being hit, and hundreds of times as many threats, added up to a lot; there was no way in fuck I wasn’t going to freeze and panic and drop directly into subservience mode.

For fuck’s sake, he could probably still make certain gestures now and I’d reflexively panic. Train up a child? Nah, fuck that. Beat the shit out of your kid, and they’ll definitely never get over it.

 

A small handful of times, at a certain window in my life, it made sense for me to babysit one of my nephews. For a portion of those events, I had “disciplinary rights” – idiot euphemism for “you can spank the kid if you want.”

I only remember even trying to do it maybe two or three times, ever. I vividly remember being confused by the results. Even at that phase of my life I had a vicious (but carefully concealed) habit of punching inanimate objects. I generally had to be careful about hitting things because I knew I could easily break my hands. I had technique and a moderate amount of strength to draw on. And yet when I went to hit my nephew I simply couldn’t. I ordered a sickening smack and delivered a negligible tap.

It bothered me, for a few years. What did it mean? Why couldn’t I do this simple act? And then I put it out of my head and ignored it for ages.

Tonight, earlier, I finally realized the blindingly obvious truth. I couldn’t hit a child because I can’t hit a child. This isn’t some indicator of my deficiency as a parent or some shit. I just fundamentally can’t bring myself to violently strike a kid.

I’m a little proud of this, now. Certainly, I’m very relieved that, even after all the fucked up nonsense I had to crawl through in life, I didn’t really internalize the barbaric poison idea that it’s a good thing to beat a kid.

 

I go back to the image, of one or both of my parents passing on, and me just sitting there trying to comprehend the reality that they died not knowing who I am.

Maybe it would be better that way. I have no way to know. I never did manage to make a committed decision about any of this; sometimes it’s really just as simple as you lost your rights to your daughter somewhere around the time you started beating her.

And sometimes I just can’t quite let go of that lonely, desperate ache, of a scared girl, lost and helpless, who just wants her parents to come and make everything OK again.

Did you ever actually love me? Or are you the reason why it’s easier for me to believe that I don’t deserve to be loved? Because I just can’t handle the idea that you’re so fucked up you would do all of that shit to your own child?

 

On a significantly happier wavelength… I love my name. Amelia is just… so fucking yes. I need a word for perfect, right, snug-fitting, warm and comfy and comforting, worn in but an eternity from being worn out.

I’ve written about the feelings I had the day I discovered my name. I still love the moments when whatever layer of my brain refreshes the linkage… “Amelia? Oh, shit, that’s me!” Chills.

I hope that never fades. I don’t know if that’s a silly thing to hope for, but then I’ve never actually known my name before, so I have no idea what to expect. In any case, I kind of hope that someday, locked in the maddening confines of the nursing home or whatever, I still have those moments – where I do some horrendous elderly maladaptation of flirty shit with a nurse or whatever, and she just gives me a coy smile, and she quietly says, “shut up and take your pills, Amelia.”

Fucking. Chills.

Sunday, May 12, 2019 - Mother's Day

Ah, fuck.

For some trans women this is a tough day because it’s a heartless reminder that things will always be a bit different for us than cis women. For some it’s a chance for affirmation and belonging – to be included in the population of “mothers” as it always should have been. For some it’s a chance for acceptance – to be a mother’s child, unbroken and righted, as was not always the case.

And then there’s my contingent. This day is nothing but a spiteful twisting of the knife. We have to spend the day being reminded that blood relatives are a thing, and that ours are fucked and we wish they wouldn’t continue to invade our reality anymore.

My mother is very sentimental and prone to taking things very personally. I know she’s hurt that I’ve broken off ties with my relatives and that I am pushing to widen that distance as much as I feasibly can. I’m not heartless or evil – it hurts me to know that this is how she’s taking it all, and I feel bad for being responsible for it.

But only to a point.

I didn’t choose to be beaten routinely as a child. I didn’t choose to endure almost twenty years of emotional and psychological abuse, or to spend another ten just trying to figure out what the fuck happened. I didn’t choose to be born into a world that would never accept me, let alone care about me, and god forbid actually fucking love me. I didn’t choose to be born into a world that almost successfully convinced me to live my entire life like something I’m not. I didn’t choose to be mocked, ostracized, struck, or threatened with worse, until I learned that who I am is not acceptable and she should be hidden away forever.

So fuck you. All of you.

I did choose to get the fuck away from you. I did choose to try to learn something about reality – not the corrupted, warped idiocy that you pass off as some kind of life. I did choose to dig into the rubble and ashes and mines buried all through my soul. I did choose to listen to the voice of the girl I heard trapped under there. I did choose to keep digging, until my fingers bled and my body would barely move. I did choose to get her free, and I will keep choosing to fight for her life.

She’s worth it. And she’s the best fuck you I could possibly hope for, to all of you.

Happy fucking Mother’s Day. It’s a girl.

Saturday, May 4, 2019

Editorial note: published retroactively July 6, 2020, unedited.

I read a post today from someone who was concerned about coming out trans to their family, because of the possibility of losing that family in the process.

It made me think. I've observed before that I feel like I've had a fairly easy time confronting being trans, because it's just not the first major upheaval I've ever lived through. Fuck, at this point, shredding my world and doing something entirely new from scratch is practically a fucking routine. Sure, this is larger in magnitude than anything I've done, but the process of starting over is... home.

So in some senses at least, I think I'm confident in the whole idea that I can face a dramatic reconfiguration of my reality and come out ahead. I have experience. I know the sensations. Once more until the breach, dear friend. Once more.

 

But the family post fucked with me a little. Frankly I didn't even really think about my relatives much during my initial processing phase, because I was already basically at the point where I didn't even want to acknowledge their existence ever again. I didn't worry about losing anyone because I'd already chosen to get rid of them... for unrelated reasons, sure, but I was done.

The tiny shred of contact I have with relatives at this point is entirely due to my own concerns for one of them - I didn't want to leave anyone behind if there was a chance I could help with their own discovery. Even if I had to do it behind everyone else's backs. That was all a surprise, and a bonus really.