No more silence

I hate discussing politics. Really. If you're a good friend and I know where you stand on things, I don't mind discussions about things. But in general? I don't like the arguments I know that it will cause. I don't like the hate that gets hurled back and forth on some things. I don't like the pain & the hurt it causes. So I stay silent. But the cost for that has become greater than I can bear sometimes.

In recent years I outed myself as battling depression/anxiety and being on the Autism Spectrum because these things matter to me. But I've stayed silent about a lot else, because I told myself that I couldn't bear the cost. Cost of losing friends, cost of losing opportunities...the cost of just standing. But those were all things that I put aside when I outed myself for other things. Because they mattered.

In reality, I'm scared. Scared of losing things that honestly...maybe I don't need.

So the first thing I share. I wrote last year that I was genderqueer. Which is true, but not the whole truth. I read this piece recently about an author sharing that she's a transwoman in the closet. And I shared on Facebook that I relate to his piece a lot. Actually I said:

not that my parents were that way, but the wishes. the desires. yep that's me. & i've had the same types of interactions from women that the author does. that i couldn't understand something because I'm "male" & it's made me feel afraid to say anything somedays. i've been disowned because of what my outer appearance appears to be vs how i feel. & this is probably as close as I'll ever get to talking about it. bc I'm afraid. bc i fear the loss that may come. bc i fear the backlash. i get why things are the way they are but it doesn't change anything if we can't listen & understand each other. there is still good in this world. but it will be lost if we don't listen to each other. & i know its hard but its worth. it has to be.

So I was trying to say what I really feel like, but chickened out. But I can't do that anymore. Hell, its part of a comic I'm finishing and I'm still almost to scared to put it in there. But I can't. I won't. Not anymore.

I'm trans. I think I've wanted to be a girl since I was 8 years old. I've never felt comfortable in my body or how it looks or how it feels. I just..I don't. It sucks that there's no magic wand or magic pill that will change it. I don't know if I'll ever go through the transition process, because honestly genetics was not kind to me and my body will never match my head. But par for the course. I am who I am. And I've wanted to be a girl for a long time.

I shared this with a few people a couple of years ago and then stopped talking about it. In part fear. But also in part, because I had a huge falling out with the first person I shared this with. Not over this, well not directly, but other things, like some of what I shared above. And it hurt. A lot. I lost not only their friendship and a lot more in the process because of how I handled the loss, but a lot of other people as well. I still miss them. But I miss not being open and honest. And I'm tired of being scared.

To family & friends, yeah this is a shitty way to spread the news isn't it? And I'm sorry. But I...I don't know a better way. I've been silent and scared for so long, because I was afraid of losing you. I mean, seriously I'm tearing up writing this because I don't want to lose y'all. And trying to have the conversations for me in person or on the phone or even in email would have been so much worse and I would have chickened out. But...this is the truth of who I am. And I can't keep hiding it.

If you were someone that I shared this with a while ago, I'm sorry being silent on the truth, but thank you for not deserting me.

If you're one I lost because of the fallout, I'm sorry and I wish things could have been different.

But I'm done apologizing now. This is me. Hi.

Trying to understand

https://www.flickr.com/photos/23170612@N05/8716024750/

I think in life we often look to make sense of...well everything. We want the world to make sense, we want to understand why people make the decisions they do. Hell, I just want to understand why my cats wake me up so early in the morning to demand pettings and attention. We just want the world to make sense. Its this innate behavior that I think we all have. It's why we try to organize things, put things into categories, etc. And...unfortunately life doesn't give a shit. It doesn't give us clean answers or clean stories to answer our questions. 

And this can be difficult for anyone to take. Its been especially hard for me a lot of the time, being on the spectrum, that I have to know why. There has to be a reason something happened. There has to be a reason for why someone doesn't want to talk to me anymore or something that I can do to fix a relationship that's been broken. There jus has to be!

But life doesn't work that way. And it's hard to recognize this, much less remember it. In my head I want to call these people names and call them out for their behavior. And then I remember the things I did or see in past communications where they were trying to tell me something and I didn't see it. And then I wonder why they were friends with me to begin with. And I fall into a hole of wondering how anyone at all can like me or ever want to be friends with me.And it's a hard cycle to break.

Why write about this now? Because its the cycle I'm in now. I want to scream and cry and shout out and beat my fists against the ground. I want people that stopped talking to me to explain why and to come back and talk to me. And at the same time I want to write to them and tell them how much I miss them and how much I was they could forgive me for the mistakes that I made and the hurt that I caused. And how I wish, oh how I wish we could just talk one more time.

But I can't do that. And I won't. Because it wouldn't do any good other than to bring up the pain for them again of why they walked away. And I don't want to do that to them.

And so I cycle. Wanting the world to make sense and knowing that it never will. Wishing that doors and opportunities and memories weren't closed off. Knowing that I'll have to move on past the hurt and pain at some point, no matter how hard it is. And how many times it comes back. And hope that new memories begin again.