#iwillnotpretend

***DISCLAIMER: IF YOU HAVE PTSD FROM BULLYING AND ARE EASILY TRIGGERED, DO NOT READ. IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR INSIGHTING INTO BULLYING AND A PERSONAL ACCOUNT FROM AN LGBTQ PERSON, ENJOY! THANK YOU IN ADVANCE.***

At some point in life, a kid will experience bullying. It isn't something that is uncommon nowadays. In the 1950's and 1960's, it was seen as "toughening kids up", especially for boys who were seen as "wimps". For girls, it is about degrading someone that is different from them. For the popular crowd, it is seen as the hierarchy of things to pick on those who aren't as talented or pretty. I was unfortunately one of those people who fell victim to the alienation of bullying. This is my story.

It started around twelve or thirteen. It was when I first came out as bisexual. I initially came out to my cousin Emily. She was older than me at the time (an eighth grader. I was a sixth grader). She didn't have a problem with it at first. But as I got older, she started to become more enveloped with her faith and said that it was wrong for me to feel that way. Naturally, I distanced myself from her. Despite this initial positive reception, I decided to come out to my classmates at school. That was by far one of the BIGGEST mistakes I have ever made in my life. The initial shock was felt around the room and majority of the girls looked at me with disgust. The guys didn't exactly care. So it was a mixed bag.

But for the rest of my junior high experience, I was subject to rumors and ridicule. A lot of the rumors centered around me liking certain boys in our grade. One was a guy with the same last name as me, his name was Rolbis. Although it wasn't true, a lot of the girls would make me feel self conscious by saying that I was just denying it. They kept saying I was straight and that I didn't really like girls if I found a guy attractive. The more I denied the rumors, the worse their accusations became. Eventually, I just grew thick skin to it and was like yeah yeah yeah, I like this guy. But when this got old, the girls switched to another tactic. Some of the girls would come close to where I was sitting, in a group usually, and ask me what girls in the class I thought were pretty. This made me feel awkward about myself, seeing as I didn't really look at a lot of the girls. Though I thought a lot of them were pretty, I wasn't going to give them more ammo to ridicule me. So I would say that a lot of them were pretty or I would decline to answer them. When this was unsatisfactory, they asked which girls I'd date. This I refused to answer altogether. They thought my silence meant I thought the girls weren't worth dating. Succumbing to guilt, I'd be quick to answer them to avoid backlash. Nonetheless, junior high wasn't a fun time.

When I got to high school, I came to the realization that I solely liked girls. Mostly became of my history of guys being jerks to me in the past (thanks Dad). I told a few friends I had made my first week at school. By week three, it was all over the freshman populous that I was a lesbian. That's when everything started. I told the stories of having my clothes and shoes stolen at gym, the guys dumping me in trash cans and holding me in closets and the men's room, and I talked about the story of Samantha how many times now? But there were little things that I haven't talked about like the fact I would get pelted with textbooks by people who passed me in the hallway. I was hit with paper balls, spit balls, pens, pencils, small cartons of milk or containers of juice, I even got hit with a few apples and oranges. If it wasn't physical or psychological, it was mental. I'd get anonymous notes, slipped into my bag or put on my desk during class, saying things like "You're ugly", "You are not normal", "You are unnatural", "No one will ever like/date you", or "All fags will die". As a teenage kid, it brings on a lot of emotions that were hard to combat. I talked about how depressed I would get and not want to go to school because I wanted to avoid the torture.

School wasn't the only place I didn't feel welcome. Among my own family members, I didn't feel welcome. For those that know me, they know that I don't exactly proclaim religion. I was Agnostic for a long time. As I studied religion in some of my required courses, I leaned more toward a Buddhist philosophy with Christian morals. It's not "ideal" by most standards, but it makes me happy. Anyway, I come from a religious family. My maternal grandfather is a pastor and has been recognized by Spanish rectories since 1983. So I was fearful to come out to my family. But when I was twelve, I told a friend who could not keep her mouth shut and she outed me to my mom. My mom didn't react at first. But on the drive home that night, she did enough to make me uncomfortable about coming out. One of the statements she made was, "Just because I tell my friend she looks pretty and that she has nice lips doesn't mean I want to take her to bed." I was already upset and this further distressed me. At one point, she started to hit me from the driver's side at a stoplight. I started to cry again before she stopped to continue driving. Throughout high school, she wasn't supportive of the bullying but said that these were the consequences of my choices. This was after I walked into the house with a black eye, bruises, and cuts one day.

It may all sound bad but my mom just didn't know how to handle it. She had gay cousins and friends. But it's different when it's your child. Although she doesn't understand fully that I am transgender, she still loves me as I am. I am grateful to have her. I hope that with time, she will open her mind more and come to accept and respect my decision to transition later on.

However, my father was a different story. He knew I was struggling with my sexuality when he and my mother first got me a therapist as a teenager. Or so he claimed. So when I came out as lesbian, he became more disapproving. Whenever I would talk about a girlfriend I had or even hanging out with a girl, his tone would change. He has said to me multiple times that it was "ungodly" and that "I need to pray to God and find a man". My dad made it clear to me by sixteen that he wasn't going to accept me as a lesbian. But I still gave him a chance. A couple years ago, a former friend invited me to be her date for Junior prom. I was excited about it because I didn't go to my own proms in high school. But when I told my dad, I was again met with disapproval. After that, I stopped trying. I made an effort to distance myself from him and his rigid, negative comments. He claims to love me. But he doesn't love the parts of me that make up who I am. I didn't even bother to tell him that I was transgender because I already knew what his reaction would be. When I was growing up and after I came out to him, my dad would always bring up this gay friend he had. It wasn't his friend, it was his gay friend. He talked about how his friend struggled and how his friend was always depressed. I now understand that he was trying to deter me from an LGBTQ lifestyle.

Dad, if you happen to read this, I am not your friend. I am your child. I have struggled to be who I am. I have tried to deny who I was for a long time. I was honestly more miserable pretending than I was being who I am. So if you can't accept me as a man and your son, then you can stay out of my life. I have no room for your oppression and false sense of love. It is not love if you are making it a requirement for me to change and be a "woman". That isn't the life for me. I am happy to accept myself as a man and I plan on taking the steps to become who I am meant to be.

For my brother, it was kind of the same story as my father. I officially came out to him at fourteen. He didn't have a reaction. So I assumed I was okay. But when I did get into relationships with girls, he would always ask who the guy in the relationship was. That would always irritate me because when I said I was, he'd laugh at me. I told his girlfriend that I was transgender. In return, she told my brother. She told me that he laughed at the idea. This again irritated me. He wouldn't and doesn't understand. He is a cisgender male. He was born into his body. He did not have to spend his entire life questioning who he was. He knew who he was as he grew up into what is now considered a man. He has never had to deal with rejection from girls because of his appearance, feel uncomfortable with his body, or feel conflicted between what he should be and what he feels he should be. I am not saying that all cisgender people don't know or cannot relate to their transgender counterparts. I am saying that my brother does not understand anything about me as a transgender man or anything about the LGBTQ community. He has a similar, if not the same, attitude towards LGBTQ person as my father. He's the apple that didn't fall far from the tree.

After graduating high school, I thought that college would be very different. It was. But the homophobia didn't exactly disappear. I didn't encounter it a lot, but there were two people I encountered that infuriated me. The first was a girl by the name of Danielle Maguire. I had met her when I was taking placement tests at my school. We became quick friends. She said that she came from a single parent home and her father had passed away when she was young. She also told me that one of her brothers had autism and that she wasn't exactly in the best place financially. She would have fainting spells from not eating. Being a nice guy, I provided a listening ear for her problems and some food to keep her going. But when I began to struggle financially myself, she would ask why I didn't buy her food anymore. I told her why and it didn't satisfy her. That should have been my first red flag. But I ignored it. As time went on, I went into personal struggles at home. Being friends, I felt I could tell Danielle my problems. But she shoved them off, saying I was being a drama queen. In the back of my mind, I was pissed off. You're supposed to be my friend and you're telling me to get over it? Damn. Some friend. After a year, I was fed up with her behavior. So I cut her off and went on my way. I'm glad that I cut her off. Because after I did, I found out more about her. I found out that she was a homophobic, racist bigot. She makes remarks about different ethnicities and is prejudicial against anyone LGBTQ. I'm sorry but God does not like ugly.

Another person I had an encounter with was actually a teacher. He was a priest named Father Mark. I was struggling at home and fell asleep in his class once. I wrote him a letter about why and told him what I was going through. In that letter, I revealed my sexuality and the trouble of my relationship at the time, along with the fact I was struggling at home. From that day, everything changed. He treated me differently from every other student. If he asked a question and I raised my hand, he would wait for others to raise their hand and call on them instead. When he did pick on me to answer a question, he would pick it apart and find everything wrong with it. It went on like this for a while. I considered dropping the class. But I toughed it out. Come finals day in his class and I made a joke about how we were all about to die. Some people laughed and Father Mark took off his glasses and he said stop. The room fell silent and I grew irritated. I couldn't even make a joke? Wow. After I finished, I left the room. When I did, I turned around and flipped off the door. I ended up getting a B+ in that class. In your face Father Mark.

I have told a couple of my cousins about me being transgender and they are accepting. I have a lot of friends that accept me as Allister. I have some friends that have met me as Lucas or Luke. Needless to say, I am surrounded by a lot of positivity when it comes to my preferred names and gender pronoun preferences. For my family, I know it is going to take time. Everyone knows me as my birth name and it's been my name to them since I have existed. But I hope they can adapt to the new me.