#lowkey depressing

Every once in a while I think about what it must feel like to be loved.

And I know in a lot of ways, I am but it feels like there's always something that I'm either withholding or that's being withheld from me.

I think I just crave to be loved in the way that I love.

I want someone to be distracted by me and notice little things and habits that I may not even be aware of.

I'd like for someone to remember my interests the way I remember theirs.

I would like to spend hours with someone and not feel lonely at the end of the day. I would like to hold and be held. See and be seen.

I want to be known fully and truly as who I am and who I want to become and not live in fear of being abandoned for that truth.

I think that a lot of this stems from the fact that I'm queer. Something that only people I feel safe with know.

My mom knows I'm not straight, and my grandma only learned about that particular aspect of my identity shortly before Christmas, and they're accepting in that "We love you but we still hope that you'll date someone of the opposite gender so that we can still pretend that you're straight" kind of way. My mom less so I think? But she's also had the longest amount of time to get used to it I guess.

But I'm also trans. And this is a statement that I still struggle with saying or even typing like I did. I can say it to my other trans friends and to my non-trans friends, and to my sibling and a few cousins, but when I think about being trans, I get a mix of complicated feelings.

I love being trans. I love being queer. But for obvious reasons, it terrifies me. I neglect myself and who I am so that I can make myself more palatable for the people around me.

I wonder sometimes if I ever came out to my mom as trans if the love she has for me would go away. I wonder if I'm just destined to disappoint my family no matter what I do.

My mom doesn't even want me to date a trans person. Not that she could ever stop me, but I feel like that fear of disappointing her by simply being myself is something that keeps me isolated.

One time when she thought I was dating a friend of mine (who is trans and no we were not), she just straight up asked if we were and I said it wasn't like that. And her response was, and I this is a direct quote because I'll never forget it,

"Good. You can be friends with them ("Them" being trans people, of course), but don't date them. You can do whatever you want when I'm dead, but I think you want me in your life."

Even before this, after my sibling came out as nonbinary, I was the one who tried to calm her down and she asked me point blank, in tears, if I wanted to change myself too and obviously I fucking lied because who the hell would see how she was acting and decide that THIS was the moment to tell her my secret too????

She wants to badly to be involved in my life and to know everything but I do not feel safe enough to tell her the important things. She calls my sibling by the wrong name and the wrong pronouns, saying "just because you want to change something about yourself, doesn't mean that I have to change what I do" and shit like that.

And it's all just so frustrating, and sad, and like I said before, it's deeply isolating.

No matter how much I want to love and be loved and be seen and accepted, I'm so scared of getting the chance to experience what other people get to experience only for my family's expectations of me to ruin it.

So I don't get out much. If at all.

I go to work.

I go to the store when I need to.

I go home.

And I close myself off in a room where I can write stories about my favorite characters getting to experience what I'm too afraid to take for myself.

I can't even bring myself to go outside and take a walk. (which might be a separate issue but the point stands)

I feel trapped. Only the prison is built from my own fears and insecurities. The prison is my inability to forget about how other people feel and just allow myself to exist.

and even still

i could never imagine flying as high as you tell me i do.

i lay in the dirt—

six feet below a grave i dug myself

a lifetime too early;

blood in my fingernails

from caressing my skin the way you used to;

the remains of a heart i found the key to

strewn across my rotting body,

an empty corpse, eaten out by the guilt

of having to let you go;

the only angel i’ve ever known

brave enough to hold my bare,

and dare to call it gold.

let my absence lighten your bones;

i only ripped my body out of your gentle grasp

so yours could fly higher than you ever could with

burdened wings;

It was so surreal and far away 

at the same time. 

Lying there,

hot air blowing around the room, 

lips mouthing the music echoing in my mind, 

flipping pages of a book that I was barely reading, 

all in a dimly lit room 

filled with people. 

And yet, 

I felt so alone. 

Not in an isolated way, 

but one of contentment and peace 

that can only be properly described by 

feeling it. 

And yet, 

few lucky ones can feel it 

all at once. 

To be suffocated and free, 

flying yet confined, 

tangled in my thoughts. 

And yet,

I wasn’t joyful or upset.

More overwhelmed in apathy.

Unexplainable,

extremely believable,

and awkwardly unpredictable. 

Yet contradicted by it’s predictability.

How could I not see it coming? 

They speak of calm before the storm,

the chaos during,

but the aftermath?

It leaves nothing but silent ruins

and no more room for thought. 

For emotion.

but here i am making myself sad again

self-induced pain

i feel is necessary to feel

or what was the point in it all?

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