#beardys writing

[thorinsbeard]

Writing

Everybody will probably yell at me for not meeting with my mum and aunt and cousin, and my nana today. I couldn’t do it. I got halfway there and knew there was no way I wanted to sit there while they asked me questions about what I’m doing in Wellington. I don’t want to be the one saying I haven’t gone anywhere in Wellington, I’ve gone backwards. So far back that now I can’t talk, I can’t even see a person without running away. And of course they’d blast me for being “negative” when the reality is so much more complex. I can’t control the things I hear that don’t exist. Or the fact that I feel so isolated and alone. 

I wasn’t alone in Nelson. I just wasn’t. I had friends, I did things. I could go out. I can’t here unless I;m with someone or I go somewhere designated “safe”. People will still tell me to keep mum in my life. She needs me. Where was she when I needed her I ask them? 

My mother didn’t raise me. I barely saw her from the age of 13 to 24, she wasn’t there. Because she was declared unfit, due to neglect and violence, and her desire to marry an abusive man then, I was sent to live with my dad. Dad taught me a lot. God I resented him for it, but he was trying to help me. I just died inside a little every time his girlfriend tried to make me a girl. Because she never had a girl of her own and deep inside there was a genderqueer boy trying to fight his way out. 

So when people try to tell me my mum did a lot for me....I wonder what they see. Dad was the one who cared for me for so many years. I learned how to take care of myself because of him. And my mother, she was always flitting off here and there like a schoolgirl to go out with men.

And then the hell I endured last year, where she let that abusive, drunk creep inside my house. Police coming, drugs, the stench of alcohol and cigarettes and she told me her own child, that there was no way the guy was leaving. But I was. I had to. She kept letting him abuse her and emotionally manipulate her and I....I was forced to come here. I didn’t want to leave my cats or my home. I didn’t want to leave. I ran here, without looking back. 

I’m afraid my mother lost me that day. I spoke to her once in April then decided no more. She’ll marry that idiot she thinks and I just know...my intuition tells me he is bad, and I trust my instincts. 

I got help from my dad then to escape and he let me. I was safe for the last night in Nelson because Dad offered me safe harbour. I don’t think I’ll ever see my mum or my cats again, and my heart breaks all over again. 

I just want people to know I didn’t do it to be cruel, I just did what I had to to protect myself, because if I didn’t I’d be caught up in violence and arguments again and I wouidn’t be safe.

The saddest part isn’t that I can’t stay here either, it’s too unsuitable for my mental illness. It’s not that I don’t have them. It’s that it isn’t my mother, or my family who offered me a safe, quieter place to stay. It’s someone else, someone who isn’t even related.

And yet they;ll probably be more family than my own ever was. 

[thorinsbeard]

61A

   61A where I live, is a bit like living in a basement or a bomb shelter.  If a bomb hit,  the house on ours would come crashing down into what could also be a prison.  I came here at the end of January, unsure what to expect.  I was afraid --people  were not my thing  and I was going to be living with 9 of them.  It was a horror story at first.  Paper thin walls,  dead fly bodies on the bench, flies in pans and on the handle of the wok in the kitchen.  Overflowing rubbish bins.  stolen towels,  and stolen food.  Noise at nights, music from down the hallway, people talking through the paper thin wall  and washing machines beeping and thud thudding after midnight.  I feel trapped here sometimes,  in this dark house  I jump when people say hi, and I feel the anxiety clouding my thoughts even with the pills.  I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to leave,  or whether I’ll be stuck here, but I do know that I could be in a more dangerous situation, filled with violence and alcohol. And it isn’t all bad.  My friend comes over with pizza or fish and chips in a newsprint parcel.  We share movies and t.v shows and make sims versions of ourselves who have better lives than the ones we live. 

[thorinsbeard]

30 day letter challenge #2: Dear Crush

Dear Crushes  I don’t crush on real life people very often, so you’re all fictional. The nice thing about having a crush on a fictional character is that you don’t have to worry about anything, you can have a fantasy inside your head. Only,they’ll never really love you back. So I guess I should say to them. thank you. Thank you Poe and Bucky and Kili and Fili and Thorin, and all the people I’ve had crushes on who weren’t in the real world, but that didn’t mean they were any less real. I just thank you for being there, when no one real was. I could go to fictional worlds, admire you on my dash, reblog pictures of you and just drool. That was the only kind of crush I could handle. 

I suppose it’ll do. 

[thorinsbeard]

Writing: I wonder why

[thorinsbeard]

Writing

I remember being very small. And my sister, pushing me around in a cardboard box. If I’d only known then what I know now. Looking back, the childhood I’d forgotten isn’t exactly like the other stories I hear about people like me. People you see in magazines and on the news, or on those documentary shows.  Back then, I probably would’ve told you I was a girl. I would wear the dresses and other clothes my mother bought. I was probably like my gay friend back then. I played with mostly girls’ toys but I would also play with boys. Others would refuse to, but me. I loved their world. The playing with trucks and cars, and the games of fighting. But still I didn’t feel like anything was wrong.  The wrongness came later, in the form of my body starting to change. I was so confused, a confused 12 year old boy was emerging, inside the body of a 12 year old girl. As my chest grew, as I got periods, I started to hate my body, and I desperately wished to be a boy. I felt like a boy in fact. I never noticed how much he was there, until I transitioned. The refusal to wear a dress in a school play, the feeling of being male, and thinking that my extra testosterone was the cause. But then I felt more and more like a boy, but I trapped him, and tried to make him go away.  Oh I tried. I tried, for years to let go of the maleness in me. He appeared so often, in my refusal to be called a lady, in my declaration that I was a man, and that I wished to be called sir. Yet here I was wearing a dress, at a school ball. “Why are you wearing a dress?” my friend asked. “Why did you just ask me that?” I wondered. I hadn’t told anyone that, so how did he know? Or when I was asked to go “male” or “female” and I wished to go so badly to the male side. I could’ve gone in the middle but that would raise questions.  And then I remember transitioning. I remember my grandparents reaction after they watched me leave. How I became estranged, and how they clung so much to the person I used to be, the granddaughter they had lost. I cut my hair off and threw all my clothes away and made a new me.  Yet...it wasn’t all perfect, not the way they thought it would be. I was confused. I became paranoid that people were looking at me, that they could see the girl I used to be and I desperately wanted them to see the boy I had become. It was hard with my girlish voice, and the fact I had to fight for a year just to get on hormones.  I’ve been on them for five years now, and I feel a lot happier. At least, I feel like part of the pain has gone away. I don’t have to identify as either now. If I want to be a boy, I can, and if I feel more like a girl I can, which is interesting when the behaviour decides to shift.  Most days I just want to be myself, and that means just ignoring the binary people put in place, the black and white they try to paint on me, when I would rather dabble in shades of grey (not the book though). I feel free, from those restraints and I learn fast who my real friends are, the ones who come with me on this journey, until the end. 

[thorinsbeard]

Writing: My life

But it's not just that. I'm in so much pain, constantly. I wake up pale, and feverish, with constant cramps. I eat something and a minute later, my stomach and sides are in so much pain that I wish for mercy.  Most days are spent in my own home, trying to stop throwing up, or other things. Too afraid to go outside. And as soon as I walk even a little, no matter how fit I am, I am tired again. 

Somehow in all of it, I lost myself. Somewhere along the way. I used to be such a brave person, I could go out by myself, I could do my own thing. Now I lack the confidence to even tell my mother something pressing. "I don't want to do this anymore," I want to say. But it hurts to say it. I know I am not the daughter or the son she wants, though, strangely, I feel more like her daughter than ever. 

And I feel okay. I feel my heart swell. I can wear clothes I like again. I can grow my hair out. And it won't matter if anyone calls me either, because as long as I know, I'll be okay. But then there is the road ahead. 

The road is difficult. Full of transitions and pathways, and stupid people. I met this bitchy MTF once upon a time, who insisted I wasn't genuine. And well, girl, I've got news for you. I'm more genuine than I've ever felt. I feel like I can be brave. 

Like this is the best thing I can do for me. Not for anyone else. 

And there will always be my friends, to help show me the way. 

[thorinsbeard]

Writing: There and Back Again

And when it got too much, I transitioned and changed my name to Adam. However, despite my constant outer reassurances, I was never satisfied. In fact, the more I went down that path, the more I began to see who I actually was. It was like there were two forces inside of me: one male and one female, fighting for a chance at survival and neither could win. 

I started the Testosterone therapy in 2011, so I've been on it just under 3 years. And the more I took it, the more the girl side began to emerge. I spent so much time in confusion, in the closet, not understanding. I didn't want to be either. I felt like a girl, more often than not, but still I'd insist 'oh yes, I'm a boy,' and force myself to act like one. 

Now, shedding that skin, I feel like I've come into myself. Like I've hit on some wonderful discovery. Like I've pushed through the iceberg. It feels like the butterfly emerging from the closet. There are days when I feel more male and days where I feel more female, and that's okay. 

Soon, I embark on my new journey, I have to come out of the closet (again), and tell my mum I don't want to be called a daughter or a son, for I am neither one of those things. I have to tell my dad, that my decision to stop these hormones, wasn't brought on by him, or his views on me, but somehow I know this decision will please him, which is stupid really. But...I've missed him. 

I feel like that little girl, who sat on her dad's knee, begging to be told stories of Forrest Gump, and other movies, he always made me laugh. 

And now, I know there are tough times ahead. Difficult changes, as I try to adapt to life as I know it, but going there and back again is the best thing I can do for me. 

And I am quite ready for another adventure.