7.15.24 / day 22 of romanticizing my life until i love myself again
today was my dad’s birthday, and it marks about 4 years since we’ve been in each other’s lives. and it’s still so hard for some reason.
i say some reason, yet i know why i cry on days like these. i spent so long being angry at him, and i think i needed to, in order to get out of that situation, i just never really spent any time actually mourning our relationship, feeling sad for the fact that i don’t really have a dad anymore.
it feels stupid to complain or even be emotional about it because i know people in my life who don’t even know their dads, and plenty of friends whose dads are dead. my dad is alive and an hour drive away from me, and i’m the reason we don’t talk. and going no contact with him was one of the best things i could have done for myself, so why do i still feel empty in the place where family used to be?
why does it still feel like the relationship i have with my mother is more akin to that of a distant aunt or a college, rather than a mother and child? why is it that i still feel like i’m walking on eggshells trying to prove that i am a functional, moral adult every time i talk to my brother, who i swore would never grow up to be like my dad, but straw man argues me every time i say something contradictory to the acceptable opinion of all the other fuck alls in our family just because he can? he’s “just playing devil’s advocate” but that’s exactly what my father would say to mask his shitty opinions too, or when he just felt like shitting on me to make himself feel better.
i know i did the right thing, i never doubt this, and yet, i wonder if there were other options. if there are, if there ever will be. i miss having an adult in my life i could go to for advice and wisdom, even if that advice and wisdom was not very good for me. i’ve somehow become that person for people, and i feel so lost not having someone like that myself.
you become a trans/queer elder by surviving, by growing, by living. by refusing to give in and become a statistic. i know this. and yet, i am still such a child, such a baby in this world, in my journey. af expects me to be empowered unapologetic tboy number one and im sitting here, shaking in my shorts like, 2.5 years into being out, 1.5 years on hrt, and i know that might seem like a lot for my eggy friends who are just starting to hatch, but that is not!! a long!! time!! like i am literally not even done with my second puberty yet. i am still figuring this shit out. and i love how i have been there for people in their journeys, but i need a sage wise trans wizard elder to help me too. and if i don’t i fear i will literally imprint the wrong wisdom on people, thoughts borne of dysphoria and fear, and yet, i also want to teach them to be safe and cautious because life is so different when you are no longer cis passing, and that i something my early egg cracking friends just don’t understand yet. perhaps they will, and perhaps they never will. and perhaps their journeys aren’t my responsibility and i should truly just be focusing on my own.
