On Enraged, Envenomed, Entangled, Indomitable

When I was a young girl, seen as a boy by those around and over me, I fought for my friends as they were thrown in the Trash.

I was told at the time that they were for children, and for girls, and I was to be a boy , and did not need those friends that I had clung to for so long.  I screamed their names, tears running down my face, and reached out for them as they were cast away, these friends of mine, and I could not understand how so many things could be happening or why the fact they were happening was so deeply hurtful and where this fire and this venom and this unstoppable need to struggle against anything that dared hold me back was coming from.

When I was an even younger girl, seen as a boy by those around and above me, I had a baby brother. He was my charge, my responsibility, and I was trying to do my best. He and I could speak in our own language, and what he asked for I let those above and over and around know so that he could have.

I went to school, and I came home, and I made sure he was taken care of, in that way that very young girls who people call boys try to do, and it was a core part of how I existed and operated and was part of the world around me that I did not understand, the entanglements and intertwining of my thread with the threads of others.

One day, I was told I could not do this thing anymore.  I could not understand why this hurt that went so bone deep was so harsh, was not able to grasp why it was that it was birthed of frustration and resentment and did not observe how it could settle in the center of my chest as a hot and often molten core that no effort of mine could erase, forever altering the paths and tracks and trails of my life.

When I was a young woman, seen by so many around and above and beside and over me as a young man, I would find mind myself having to explain that I could not do this or that, because there was a demon inside me that cared not for life or aught else, but reveled in hurt and harm and despair.

I was young and did not have the reference, the skills, the knowledge, the personal power to face that simple thing, to even remember those moments when I watched my friends tossed into the trash like fast food wrappers and cigarette butts, when I watched my brother taken from me, to understand why these things happened and to find the strength to forgive or allow and grasp the reasons for these things.

I only knew the pain, the anger, the sadness, the frustration, the powerlessness, the resentment, the fury, the rage, the unholy and unrestrained ravaging need of it.

Little things, these events, to those who were above and around and over me, to those who saw a young boy or a young man instead of the young girl and the young woman that I was.

As I fought for my friends, without power, pushed back, already too late for the act had been done while I was away, doing something else, something that I would share with them as I shared my child’s wish every night, I screamed I was not a boy, and stop trying to tell me I was, and I was punished for it. I was struck for my defiance, my disobedience, my failure to be what I was supposed to be in the eyes of those above and around and over and in charge of me.

These little moments, they shaped me.

My brother had started school, and could not communicate with anyone nor be communicated with — our language was the only one he knew. It made it harder for him in school. I was over protective — or at least, for the time and place and for a little kid, I was over protective, and it made his learning and being taught more difficult.

My friends were my stuffed animals, hurled away for space and because, as I was told, I was “getting older”, “growing up” and did not need these things any longer — though today I might argue that I needed them more than ever at that point.

I knew they were just toys. But they were also my friends. And To my young and still learning self, there was no rhyme or reason to throw people into the trash, for there was no difference between my friends being tossed and the friends I had in school.

They were my friends.

Then we have that whole point about how in those horrible moments, I was told I was not, could not be, will not be, was not allowed to be, the girl that I knew I was while everyone around me seemed oblivious to it except when it came to the whole protein regimen and get a male role model and toughen that one up and they act kinda fey, don’t they, and what if they are gay and…

… and the shots that hurt like a son of a bitch because I just wasn’t producing enough Testosterone if I was acting like that and not being tough enough.

I am 52 years old now.  These are events from over 40 years ago.  To this day I am still dealing with the impacts, with the outcomes, with the ripples and wrinkles in time and space that they caused, the changes that became habits that became second nature tat became core elements of who I am, even as I spent countless hours trying to understand, to grasp, to figure out and to overcome the knot of fury and risk that had settled so deeply inside me.

Coming out to myself was so potent an expereince, that I still recall the sensation, the phsyical, internal feeling, the inexplicable sense that something was pulling on a string at my core and unraveling that tightly wound ball of pain and hate and rage and sadness, withdrawing it to the left, just below my breast there, and each day for weeks it was smaller and smaller and smaller until finally…

It was just a dried up husk of something that was never going to go away. Like some metaphorical pistachio half gathering lint in the corner of a room.

I remember being worried, terrified, really, tat as it was going away, I wouldn’t be left with anything to let me push on, push forward, because after so many years of having to deal with it, I had come to rely on it, as a coping skill, as a way to push my strength and endurance beyond their usual limits, as a way to keep it from controlling me.

I did indeed have to learn new things and new ways but that rage, that fury, it was gone.

I remember the first time I became super angry. The sort of super angry that used to feed that old rage ball, that demon at my center.  Just feeling it scared the crap out of me.

Then the anxiety about what would happen as a result of feeling it scared the crap out of me.

I was being attacked, held down, punished, and I was more worried about those doing me harm than I was about myself — not out of concern for their well being, but out of concern for the consequences of what could happen if somehow that demon returned and I acted on the fire and let it loose and holy shit, the blood and the screams and…

Yeah, the ripples are there.

One day, at a gathering of people, a man stood up and made promises and said he was with me and he would stand by me, and this was a time when those like me were struggling to get those around us and above us and beside us and over us to get the fuck over their personal bullshit and help us make it lawfully wrong to be a shithead on account of our being the way we were.

To stop being anxious and aversive and filled with animus towards us.  It was a rough time.

And less than a month later, that same man sold us out, betrayed us — and the org he worked for had done this before and would do it again, and…

That tiny kernel exploded in a way that encountering the hate of other women for women like me — a hate which made them do to me all the things they accused men of doing to them and made them feel like they could have some sort of justification for the falsehood of their having the power to decide for me if I was woman enough for them — seem like nothing.  Seem like just stubbing your toe.

The Demon stirred.

Threads were being wrapped around it.

Been a long time since that day.  I have learned to strip the threads before they can take root, before they can be woven into the warp and weft of my fury, my rage, my blind lust for revenge.

In those years, so very much has changed around me.

Yet now, once more, someone is throwing away my friends.

They are warning me not to organize, explaining that they will take my home and my belongings and my liberty to move and be a part of the world around.

They are telling me this is good or me and I should just accept it and support it and go along and be a good little girl, there there now and if you have followed me for any length of time one thing you know is that I am never just a good little girl, and that the worst thing one can do is to tell me that I am just a little girl.

Because I will remind you what one little girl really means. And why one little girl is more powerful than you can imagine, and how a million little girls will fuck your day up beyond recognition.

I am one little girl, warned and explained to.

I will persist, I will resist, but this isn’t about how I am doing this.

This is about how this kind of thing affects children.  About how even though the folks doing it might think they are doing it for the right reasons and the best intents, what they are doing will scar and change and affect and deflect the live of children for decades that cannot be counted yet.

Two events that to a parent are almost trivial — your oldest child needs to let your youngest grow a little, and its time to put your stuffed animals from when you were a baby away — are to children events of enormous importance, and can shape the things they find interesting and affect every facet of their lives from now until the end of time, for good and for bad.

And worse, we know this now — we have the science and the stuff to stop doing this, to end a cycle of abuse and neglect, benign and otherwise.

We didn’t know in my day. The parents had guesses and good ideas and they didn’t have the science and the skills and…

I am not an examplar — I am not a good baseline from which to study the diaspora of mixed race kids or of trans kids or of bi kids who needed to be living authentically in order to realize they were bi or whatever else.

The decision to throw away trans youth — to toss my friends — and to pretend like “oh, it will still be bad to be throw them away, but sure, go ahead and do it”…

Mother fuckers, I haven’t been this angry in a very, very long time.

This is not rational o even kinda rational and it certainly isn’t responsible or well adjusted venting and I will calm down eventually…

I never calmed down over my friends being thrown away — I just got less and less calm, but I only ever let it peek out once in a while.

When it wasn’t peeking out on its own, of course, in bloody, violent, and rather malicious ways.

I wonder if I would have marched into the recruiter’s office and said “Hi, I want to blow stuff up” as my pitch to join the Army had things been different.

Funny thing is that while I was trained at first to stop that from happening, I was also trained on how to do that. Old school stuff.

I’m not going to go around blowing shit up, mind you, but I don’t need to.  By attacking children, in this day, in this age, with this much science and knowledge and this much already present resentment and frustration and feeling powerless in the populace already, the administration has done that.

They have come for our children.

I am Indomitable.

And you have my attention, and that of my Demon, whom you have awakened.

My your God have mercy on you, for there will be no soul nor spirit left for them.





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