#notbomb

Let me give some backstory since it's been a while since I've written any meaningful status updates on myself. I officially began living fulltime over memorial day weekend, May 23rd to be precise. I can pinpoint the moment exactly. We were going to Animazement and we were staying with a somewhat close friend of my roommate's (HI GARMAFASHION :D). My understanding is prior to Katsucon they had known eachother, but that meeting at Katsu had rekindled the friendship. She had offered to take us in for the entire weekend, saving us the expense of having a hotel room.

I was still in a really bad funk, I had just crashed off my last manic episode. I got my hormone approval but I couldn't do it, because once again it was going to bring up the question of "Do I choose me knowing full well this could end things with my parents?". It had taken a lot of soul searching and an enormous amount of effort but I made the call and had an appointment scheduled for the Thursday after I got back. But between that moment and the appointment laid the weekend we were spending in Raleigh with someone I had just barely met a few months prior to.

We drive the 8 hours and we get up to her door and well, I realize I had never been properly introduced to her. We had met briefly at Katsucon but that was about it. I hadn't driven down in girl mode and when she asked me my name I froze up and I went "umm... that's complicated..." My roommate deftly stepped in and went "This is Gwen." And then proceeded to hassle me about how I shouldn't be so worried around her. Yeah yeah yeah... I can hear him chuckling now when he reads this :P

ANYWAYS. So we got settled in and we gabbed and messed around for the night. Our hostess normally works overnight and we had arrived around noon so we were staying up to try to get some semblance of a normal schedule for the convention and she had a few final touches to finish on her cosplays. Now mind you, at this point I hadn't slept since about... noon the day prior and I had just driven 8 hours straight so I was rapidly approaching 36 hours of no sleep. So all sense of inhibitions had left a long time ago. And what ended up was one of the most candid conversations I had ever had with anyone. I had pretty much just met this person for maybe a half an hour at most prior to this and here she was listening to me pour my heart out about myself, and she was being totally non-judgemental. She simply accepted me for who I was and that was it, there was no question of "oh well is this really you?" or "that's not right... you're born this way..." Later that evening we slip over to meet one of our hostess's local friends (HI NOTBOMB :D) at her work. I timidly introduce myself and I'm still kind of really shy, and then I find out she's going to cosplay Fiona for our Adventure Time group. "Great, that's the cosplay I'm doing too... this is going to be awful ;~;" is essentially what I'm thinking, When she finds out I'm doing Fiona too she gets really excited so I felt a lot more at ease.

The rest of the weekend plays out amazingly. I spend the entire time in girlmode, had an absolute blast and the people I hung out with were amazing. So amazing, we coined the term "awesomenauts" to describe us. We spent Friday and Saturday at the con and Sunday hanging out with another friend (HI SMALL-ANGRY-BAT13 :D) and her fiancee. Since she couldn't come to the con due to work, we had a cosplay dinner and ran around like little kids scaring the normals at the park. I don't think I squeaked and squealed any more than during the time I spent with them. I had found it, acceptance and friendship! It was hard saying goodbye but we quickly made plans to reunite a few months later, cancelling Otakon to spend another crazy weekend with them.

I rolled the confidence I gained off of that into my appointment, and then I worked up the courage to do what I had been wanting to do for a very long time. I got my act together and I submitted my paperwork to be readmitted to OSU after 6 long years. This is it, I told myself, the moment I had been waiting for. And this time, I submitted my paperwork as the real me, Gwen. And when the acceptance notice came a few weeks later I was beside myself. If I had asked myself where I'd be after I had been unceremoniously kicked out, I had pretty much told myself my life was over. And now here I was, not just back to where I was before, but much further than I had ever been.

And... that's when things started getting slippery. Shortly after my acceptance letter came in, I knew the clock was ticking. It was only a matter of time until I couldn't hide my transition anymore. I was going to school as Gwen, I had been fulltime for almost 2 months at that point. So, I steeled myself, and I made a surprise visit to my parents for my birthday. I did this less to visit them, and more to get one potentially last visit in with my siblings. I had only seen them on holidays since they left 2 years ago, and each visit was only a few days. Here I was planning on spending nearly 3 weeks with them. I pretty much told myself this was also going to be the time I was going to break the news to each of them individually.

And as I spent my time there, I realized how much I missed them, and how much they loved me and looked up to me. Outside of the holiday visits we had pretty much fallen out of contact for the most part, mostly talking sporadically on the phone but not really doing anything. During the time I spent there we did so much together, and we started reconnecting again. I really wanted to tell them about who I was and what I was going through, but I couldn't bring myself to tell them. I wanted to, I made myself opportunities to, but I just couldn't find the words. I left my parent's house with a tinge of regret, feeling like I had just blown my last visit.

I get back here and quickly I'm thrown into the chaos of getting ready for school. But while I'm doing that I have my own struggles with deciding who was going to show up, me or my persona. I eventually chose me, but it was still hard because not all of my paperwork had my chosen name on it, and I couldn't get it all changed until my legal name change went through. I couldn't get my name changed though, as I still had to present male to remain employed and employable. Still, I readied myself and pushed as much as I could to get my name corrected, and thankfully for the most part it's been pretty smooth sailing minus a few bumps here and there. I got along with my classmates, I met a bunch of awesome people at a couple of club meetings I went to, and even had plans for a few of them to visit this weekend. Still... it started nagging in the back of my head again, are my parents proud of me? If they're not then what good am I? I also really wanted to get closer with my friends in Raleigh, but Tumblr wasn't working too well. They all had Facebooks but I had a long standing ban on it out of fear of my parents finding me. But I was tired of doing the dance and setting up walls keeping people at arm's length because I'm afraid other people might find out about me. So I call my mom to just get it all out there.

I tell her I just started school and stuff, and then I let her know I've been fulltime since May, and that I'm registered as Gwen. She pretty much told me that my dad's probably never going to accept it. When I started going off on how much it hurt me that he couldn't look past it, she flatly told me he's entitled to his beliefs, and that I didn't have the right to change them. Really? I was dumbfounded. She compared my "change" to the nipple ring and tattoos my brother had. I tried to explain to her I wasn't changing anything, just asserting myself, but she wouldn't hear it. She kept on telling me even though she "accepted it", my dad wasn't likely going to and he had every right to refuse to talk about it. That's what frustrated me the most, was that I tried during my visit to talk to him about it, but all I got was either "I didn't raise you like that, your broken friends and that liberal school must have twisted you", or he would simply walk out of the room, a look of total disgust and disbelief on his face. Or better yet, he'd get antagonistic. I was thankful he was only there for a short while, but I couldn't help but feel threatened by him. And here's my mom not only defending him, but trying to guilt trip me into making me feel bad for trying to "change his beliefs".

I was devastated, but I didn't share my feelings with anyone, and even internally I didn't quite accept it. I told my roommate bits and pieces that it hadn't gone over well. I told him about how my dad's not likely to accept it, but I didn't tell him about how my mom was trying to shame me for even trying to convince him. The same woman who had a few months prior told me I couldn't tell my youngest brothers because they saw me as a "role model" and hearing about me might send bad messages. Messages about what? That I'm an awesome person who beat the odds, and not only picked my life back up, but got it further than I was before and I'm reaching every dream I've put my mind towards? That I have an awesome circle of friends who love the real me, not the facade I put up? I brought up the part where she told me not to tell, and how I had wanted to tell them during my visit but couldn't, and she flatly dismissed that as well. "Oh everybody already knows at this point, why care?". This isn't a tattoo mom, this is me, who I am we're talking about.

I had naively thought that had I just shown how successful I was becoming, they'd learn to accept that this was the right thing for me, that this is really me. But here I am, at the pinnacle of my life, and they still look down on me as a failure, that I'm lesser of a person for having embraced the real me. Yet I continued to tell myself maybe if I just did this one more thing it'd work, but I knew in the back of my head it was never going to. And with that my self-confidence was sliding again, and I started to slink into self-loathing. I slipped into my cycle of seeking approval from others, and after having a long hard talk with a close confidant of mine, I realized, I can't do this anymore.

I was fighting a battle I could not win, and by doing so, losing the war. I was burning all of my energy trying to win the heart and minds of a pair of knuckleheads that did not deserve me. Just because they bred me didn't mean they automatically deserve my adoration. But abuse is a funny thing, a powerful thing. It makes you feel powerless, it makes you doubt yourself, it makes you doubt you even have the right to question your abuser. So at this point, I have divorced myself from my parents.

They mourn and love the son they never had far more than they'll ever accept the daughter that desperately just wants to be loved and acknowledged she exists. That's all I ever wanted, to be loved and acknowledged as a human being. But that's never going to happen. Even if it were to happen it's not my fight anymore. I'm spending far too much time and energy in this vain hope I can undo the blinders of bigotry, but I can't fix what they don't see is a problem. I've got to learn that giving up and walking away isn't a sign of weakness. Sometimes it takes more strength to realize the battle is lost and it's best not to lose the war just to win a ultimately meaningless battle.

I can't do it anymore. I keep on trying to keep this vain hope that I can keep them in my life and that we'll all be happy family in the end but we won't. My dad's going to look down on me and my friends and everything I accomplish will be tainted with this false belief that I'm making some huge eternally damning sin, and my mom is going to sit there and tell me I'm wrong to call him out on it. It tears me apart because all I ever want is for people to be proud of who I am and what I do, and I feel like I will never ever measure up. All because of who I am as a person.

For the longest time I was made to feel bad for having any pride in myself. I was raised to feel bad about this aspect of myself. I was raised to feel like I had to prove to the world I was worth something, otherwise I was shameful. I used self-loathing in a misguided attempt to repress who I was, to try to make myself adverse to my own nature. And when I feel really bad I have a tendency to whine and complain to make sure other people hate me as much as I hate myself. I realize though that hating myself accomplishes nothing except making sure other people will hate me too. And that I have two choices, to sit here and wallow in self-pity and eventually drive everyone off, or cut out the people who truly make me feel miserable or drive me to hurt myself. I may still whine, I may still get mopey, and I may get cocky and arrogant and condescending sometimes, but as long as I'm showing real effort towards fixing it, then people will be willing to let it slide or at least help me get better. But I can't hope to begin repairing the damage if I don't cut out the source in the first place. I naively thought I could reform my abusers, but in the end all it's doing is preventing me from moving on.

As for my siblings, I will always be their sister, and I hope I can keep them in my life. I really do. I know I've blurted bits and pieces to them over the years, but I want to sit down and have a heart to heart with them. And if they're truly good people, as I believe them to be, they won't let the bigotry of my parents get in between us. They all almost grown anyways so at worst my dad stops me from talking to a couple of them for a few years. I'd like to see him try too, it'll just backfire in his face. My mom thinks I shouldn't tell them because they see me as a role model to them and it might give them bad ideas. Yeah, that you can be yourself and do what your heart desires and there will be good people cheering for you? That I beat the odds and I'm making something of myself in spite of society being against me at almost every turn? What isn't there to be proud of again?

My parents have been the source of all of my troubles. I'm afraid to expose my true self because I'm afraid they'll find out and hate me for it. I was afraid to get a Facebook for a long time because I was afraid of my family stalking me, despite desperately wanting to keep in touch and get closer with the friends I have. I keep people at arm's length out of fear of bringing out my bad side and hurting people. But that "bad side" isn't me, that's the persona I was forced to wear to protect myself around my parents. The only way I can get rid of it though is to finally cut those people out, the ones that force me to put the persona on, and surround myself with people who genuinely care for the real me. 

I really hope I get to know the "Awesomenauts", and all the friends I'm making and have made, as I really they're all amazing people I want to get to know better. I love them, I just didn't want to hurt them so I kept myself at a distance. I was afraid to get too close and then potentially hurt people by being a condescending arrogant angry jerk. I'm really not that person, and it bothers me to death when I act out like that. It will take time though for me to work it out, and I hope they will be patient and understanding as I unravel a lifetime of abuse and survival mechanisms.