I understand there’s some level of shock and denial that comes from family when you’re trans in the south. I understand people don’t just like... come around immediately. But I’ve been out to him for over a year now. Like since i was forced to come home because of the pandemic last year. I thought he was on my side and that he was coming around, but now I honestly can’t tell anymore. It’s been over a year and some defective part of his brain still thinks its either a phase or some problem that needs to be fixed.

Both my parents constantly fixate over whether I’ll still get married and have a family and be successful and believe in God as if all those things are somehow mutually exclusive. They’re controlling and undermine my conclusions as if I don’t really know. As if I haven’t had these feeling for years. As if I wasn’t well educated, put no thought into this, and wasn’t twenty fucking five. The fuck do I care what me 30 years from now thinks??? I’m only young once. I’m tired of it. Why is it so wrong for me to exist the way I want and not be treated differently for it?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ungrateful for the house and privilege I grew up in or anything, but this last year on the standpoint of my gender identity has been agony. Even the fanciest cage is still a cage. Their helicopter-ness strips me of any form of agency to move forward on my own. My mom’s straight up transphobic and my dad is only able to lean on “we’re in texas” or some bullshit. I don’t know how I’m the one with the attitude when I go out of my way not to start shit or make you uncomfortable at my own expense. The fact that it’s not the way you want me to be happy doesn’t mean I’m fucking indoctrinated. There was a shooting that happened in San Jose where I went to school these last few years. The better 2 years of my life and he tries to discredit it as a terrible immoral place he blames for taking his son away. He blames my fucking therapist for brainwashing me as if he knows better that both me and a licensed professional. Acting as if I “never showed any trans or gay tendencies until I went to to California. No one else is responsible for who I am. I’ve held these feeling for a long time and never showed them precisely because of the crippling fear you wouldnt accept me. Let me be a girl and live my life god dammit! That’s all I want and for you to have my back. It hurts and I’ as angry as I am disappointed.