👋🏼

I recently came out to my mother's side of the family who are majority conservative christians and it went much better than I expected. Like, they were weirdly supportive. I only got one comment insinuating that I might possibly be going to hell but it came from my aunt and she's dying soon anyway so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Anyway, I'm telling them how shocked I am and that I honestly thought that they'd have more of a problem with it when my grandma is like "Well you know we've been through this before with your uncle Nicky" and I'm like "what" and so it turns out that my uncle Nick was born a Natalie, came out as a boy at 19, and my great grandma proceeded to pay for his top surgery and hormone therapy. In 1974. And I just had to process for a bit because my entire life no one has referred to him as anything other than he/him and his chosen name. I ask why no one ever thought to mention this and they're just like "tbh we forgot. It's been so long that he's been a man" This man is married. He has a wife and three kids. I ask my relatives how they went about having kids, whether through adoption or sperm donor or what and none of them know. Apparently he just told everyone that they were gonna be parents and then one day showed up at my grandma's house with a baby. No questions were asked. Just. He and his wife had a baby now and that was that. Three times. Weeks later when I finally talk to my aunt Sarah (Nick's wife) all she tells me is that neither of them have ever been pregnant and, I quote, "sometimes you just come into children". She phrased it like people use the phrase "come into money". Like children are something that just happens to you. I ask my relatives if any of them had a problem with Nick being trans at the time, saying I'd understand if they had negative feelings about it, as it was the 1970s after all. They were like "nope" and i was just like "you didn't think anything of it?" And my grandfather was like "these things happen" while the other adults nodded sagely. So I guess the moral here is that if my conservative christian relatives could accept my uncle as trans in the 1970s then there really isn't any excuse for anyone. And also my family needs to ask more questions because I'm fairly sure my aunt and uncle stole their kids.

bonus:

so there’s no hot evil villain in love with me?

This scene hit me like a brick. My parents were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt when I was 16 bc I’d had cancer the year before (my treatment ended up being free but the initial ER bills and such were not).

Okay but like yeah, that is actually a thing that happens, albeit not exactly like this. I don’t remember the exact process but basically there’s a booming industry to sell peoples debt - the business you owe money to sells it to someone else for a fraction of the money owed, wipes their hands of the whole affair, and now whoever bought your debt is riding your ass to get you to give the money to the. But it’s also entirely possible for people to just… buy up massive amounts of debt for pennies on the dollar, and then just. Forgive it. Because capitalism is a living nightmare, but the system is broken enough that it’s possible to exploit it for good sometimes.

A charity where you can do this, right here.

RIPMedicalDebt was created by John Oliver to do that giveaway. They’re amazingly effective and efficient with donations

“I think it’s important to realize you can miss something, but not want it back.”

How does it feel to be an adult?