#cocsa implied

I still remember when I was younger, I can't remember how old though I estimate somewhere between fifth and seventh grade, coming home from school after having the everloving hell beaten out of me in the locker room and just staring at myself in the mirror. It felt like I didn't even see the bruises, I just saw everything wrong. I didn't know what was wrong, why it was wrong, didn't really know anything because no one had told me what dysphoria or being intersex was. No one told me I was intersex, thought it better I just thought something was wrong with me, no one told me what I was feeling was... Well, not normal, but not abnormal either. How am I even supposed to word that? Dysphoria is awful but it's not in itself ??? I have no idea so I'm just going to leave it like that.

Anywho. I just remember wondering if they'd hit me hard enough if it could have forced my body into proper shape. Not fitness, but as in if they kicked and punched, smacked me with their shoes hard enough if it would be like those cartoons where they get hit and shake and then they're magically fine. But, I'd look like I wanted to... And then I realized what I was thinking, didn't know what it meant but it felt like an alarm bell, and then I just got more upset and started punching myself as hard as I could everywhere I hated where I looked until I cried. No one cared, not that I can remember, no one had even checked up on me when I got home despite knowing I was beaten. No one checked to see why I was in the bathroom for so long. Nothing.

I never got my sex reassigned, or hell, maybe it was and I just don't know because no one will tell me anything (given the CIMI? Highly possible. Also highly possible I just don't remember a la cdd) but they kept switching which locker rooms I was allowed to go in. Over and over, multiple times until finally they told me to just go to the nurse's office because I refused to change around anyone in either locker room unless I was able to use a stall. I often couldn't, so I'd miss class waiting until after gym to change in the ball bathrooms, or just wear my dirty clothes all day if that wasn't an option. I got points docked and didn't care.

Sometimes I still want to do that, I hate this body and I hate that I'll never be safe in it, especially not anytime soon where I'm stuck. I don't even really want a body at all. Or, I want to be able to choose when I do, or when it's touchable and not just going to be phased through like a ghost. I want to look how I do in my head. Body and face wise, I look in the mirror and obviously know that that is my face, but it looks nothing like me. Seeing myself there can be anything from mildly unsettling to fully devastating and distressing, changing day to day or throughout each day. And I wonder if being allowed to know I was intersex from the get go would have changed anything, made it better or not. It certainly couldn't make it worse.

And in hindsight, now that I know and am able to learn more about my variations and presentations, some things from back then that I can recall or at least have been told about make much more sense for better or for worse. And some intersexist peritrans bozo will read this post and still think I'm privileged for it all... Obligatory I know not all peritrans people are intersexist, but if you read that line and started fuming maybe you are even if you try to act like you aren't. Even if you've gaslit yourself to believe you aren't. Why so angry if it not about you, eh? Now moving on.

The frequent UTIs (though this one also was likely worsened by other awful things which I think you can infer from the tags... That probably plays a lot into, intertwines with a lot more as well than I realize or want to think about), MRI scans they put me under for most of the time, the time when I was little and had to take a bath at my friend's house and I was too little to be left alone to it so she had to help. The horror on her face looking at my little body, and further horror when I started to panic. My sex ed questions in school never answered when we went over it in school, I was scolded for being inappropriate or ignored entirely, or some took it as me trying to be a class clown despite never being the type.

I'm just sort of looking at my life tonight, how little of it I've actually gotten to live not just survive, things I missed out on and was denied be it to do with being intersex or not. To do with being trans or not and am just really, really sad. I said this was half a vent half not but I supposed it just is a vent after all. I see the holes, some will always be gone I think, some though it's just blank I can connect dots. And then with those realizations pop in ones that make me think of other issues, more dots connected, and then before I know it I am thought spiraling about other aspects of my situation that are just awful. The fact it's likely never going to get better for me. I'm not going to make it to another birthday and I've never been able to go to pride, never had love (or at least not love that wasn't abusive or manipulative), never made a family, never truly got away from my abusers, never got to do pretty much anything I planned to do with my life, never amounted to anything.

i used to never sleep

i built forts out of blankets and treadmills

and tents out of a dozen pillows

when i was little

i used to want to be the center of attention

i waited until my dad was getting ready to sleep

and i'd lay in front of the door so he would carry me to my room

i didn’t feel lonely at night then

it helped me sleep

it made me feel safe

when i was little

i used to do dirty things

everyone told me to play with building blocks

but i got muddy and sandy and wet

i built sand castles and played with boats

i had to change into extra clothes before my parents picked me up from preschool

i'm big now

i still can’t sleep

i build mountains out of molehills

thinking about things in the past

i'm big now

i don’t try to be noticed but it can’t be avoided

i listen to the things around me

keep my head down

pretend to be unengaged

i don’t feel nervous

it helps me get through class

it makes me feel safe

i'm big now

i did dirty things

everyone told me to not do it

i told me to not do it

but i got scared and rash and panicked

(i don’t even know if i said no

on that dirty stairwell)

i built relationships without foundations

and played with my hair

i had to scrub my hands and face raw before I could feel clean again

twenty-one. It’s not just a number, not just nine letters to me. It is more than something that tells me how old I am or what I’m allowed to have as a drink. I mean, I never cared much about that anyways, and since I live in germany this is not the reason why I chose to write this.

twenty-one. they say that the human body replaces itself every seven years, or at least the cells do. I like to believe this, that I’m no longer the fourteen year old girl, or have anything to do with her, that I once was. no longer the girl who hated herself, who cried out and was not once heard. who tried her best and hid what she had done wrong to herself. It’s not that I’m not linked to her anymore- I always will be, I remember all of it and cry and flinch at the tiniest memory, then shrug it off. I’m okay, I say. She’s okay, they say, she always was like this. and they shrug it off too. little do they know why, and never once seemed to ask or even consider it wrong.

twenty-one. a cycle, three times. first 7, then 14, now 21. It gives me strength and the courage to hope and to breathe and to write. to put my thoughts into words, about how I’m no longer the seven year old girl that I once was. no longer the girl who had to endure pain and love from the wrong people and loss. especially the loss of herself. I remember hopelessness and not fitting in, not only not fitting in with others but also clothes. I do not remember being called names, but the flashbacks. they can’t just be here for nothing, can they? it’s not all in my mind, it is not. I mean, I remember the parts that were worse, that were so much more than bullying. I was hurting. you were hurting me, I was hurting me.

tonight I dare to say goodbye to the years I was hurting. I dare to leave the last twenty years behind me - symbolically - and move forward. I welcome the night with open arms, to take my pain and my sin. as of tonight I dare to feel free and loving and brave. two more hours, just onehundred and twenty minutes and I will turn twenty one. nine letters, that might save me.

I am a survivor.