Please do not reblog this post. I am pinning it to the top of my blog but I would like it to remain here where it needs to be.
I no longer want to feel like I'm being held hostage by my own uneducated, ignorant decisions and behaviours. Any behaviour I had in my early twenties or even just a year ago that caused any degree of ire in others is likely a behaviour I have long since left behind or am aware of and am working on steadily in therapy. I do not want to be a person who hurts anyone. It is not what I strive for as someone who has experienced terrible pain as well.
There are plenty of things I've done that I'm not proud of. I've done things to get attention and love from the wrong people over and over again. Through therapy I am learning to be a better person than I have ever before been and though I have hurt people I can never truly apologize enough to, I am sorry. I do mean that. I used to be quoted often as saying "apologize in action not in word" and I've been doing my best. Though I do not update my tumblr anymore with my personal life, I've devoted what's left of my blog to uplifting voices that aren't often heard at all as, rather than deleting everything, I would rather just use it for causes that actually matter.
My private life needs to remain exactly that and I regret making decisions in the past during moments of anger or desperation or just plain impulsivity and ignorance to talk to people in ways that could be used as snapshots of the person that I am and thus, to some people, will always be. It is hard to know that even in my mid thirties, the actions I took in my early twenties which I detest seeing most are still shown to me as if I haven't learned in ten years how to do better. Even old posts I see myself commenting on that remain forever floating around tumblr sometimes make me cringe.
Even just ten years ago I was still under so many terrible beliefs that I haven't held in a very long time and people will often tell you those things about me because yes they were once true. I used to believe in really terrible things like reverse racism or the notion that trans men couldn't have children or that you couldn't be trans without dysphoria. These are all really shitty beliefs! I don't believe them at all!
Reverse racism was something my primarily white influenced childhood imposed on me. The idea that racism was nothing more than "if you don't like someone because of their skin then that's bad." I knew nothing of systematic racism or of red lining or anything like that. Naturally I know and have known for years that reverse racism is bullshit.
TERF ideology subtly imposed on me by important people in my life when I was young made it really hard for me to even come out as trans and eventually settle into being genderfluid. The whole notion that "having a period and having babies is a uniquely woman gift" meant, to me, that if you identified as a man you needed to forsake "womanhood" which is ridiculous. I don't believe that and haven't believed that in a very long time.
Needing dysphoria to be trans? No. Dysphoria only comes from not being treated as you know yourself. If everyone acknowledged you and accepted the you that you put forward, you would feel joy. There is joy in identity, not misery. You do not need to be miserable and dysphoric all the time to be trans. I WISH I had known and believed this sooner. It's a wonderful thing to know and uplift.
Hell I even once believed that asexual people (such as myself) didn't belong in the LGBT community because "asexual people can be straight," nevermind the fact we're constantly made the victim of hideous attacks on our person, such as being coerced into sex to prove we don't like it, as has happened to me, or being judged for masturbating because the nuances of asexuality aren't fully understood and thus any kind of sexual behaviour is judged.
I'm exhausted by the fear of logging onto this site and wondering what new terrible thing I've done a year, three years, five or ten years ago is going to crop up and be the new topic. All I can do is go forward and try to do better than I've been.
My ADHD, though not an EXCUSE, is a huge reason for my behaviour in many, many ways. A lot of people think ADHD is simply behaviors when it is a physical change in the brain that limits dopamine creation and thus creates a mind always racing from one thing that entertains it to the next, creating obsessive behavior, single-mindedness, impulsivity and addiction.
I can think of many times I've neglected friendships simply because we no longer talk about things that my brain has latched onto. There's no defending that and it really sucks that I've lost friends to that but I'm glad they have the chance to make friends who will be there for them in a more concrete way then I can be. I've gotten better about this with age but it's been very bad and has hurt a lot of people. I've gotten addicted to Facebook games and spending money I didn't have in the past just because I was so miserable and it was something I could find even the smallest happiness in. I remember at one of my lowest points when I was suicidal I was spending $400 on Facebook games. This was about ten years ago.
I don't do it anymore, obviously. I've found people who I've become very close to who have the patience but everyone has to be able to sit me down and talk to me when I'm doing something destructive and to say hey, look, this needs to stop.
I cannot thank those people enough.
I've been with my partner for eight years now and we've grown and learned so much through therapy and communication that I feel like I'm finally growing out of this stagnated, defensive, paranoid person I was for so long.
To the people who detest me, there is no apology I could ever give you that would make up for the hurt you've felt because of me, but I am truly sorry for hurting you with whatever nonsense I put you through. I am well aware I am capable of it and am only trying day to day to be better than the person I've been.
