8/25/2021 0 Comments The Impact of KindnessToday, someone did something extraordinarily kind to me. They sent me $50 over Ko-Fi. I’m not used to kindness. I’m not used to someone doing something like this for me. I mean, sure, I have $52 in overdraft charges, almost out of gas, and can't pay my phone bill, but why would you do this for me? It always sticks out whenever someone does something for me (that’s not negative). Like, why? I don’t get it. I don’t see why I’m deserving of kindness to be honest. It doesn’t feel like I am, that is. Intellectually I know I do, but it’s not my experience to be treated well. My first instinct when seeing the donation was “how do I refund this back to them?” Kind acts like this just don’t happen to me, and growing up I was taught that if someone did, you refused them. I’m not joking. That actually was blatantly taught to me as a child to refuse kind acts. And to think I used to wonder why my life is without joy… But, anyway, growing up abused and trans you learn one thing quite quickly in life: “think life sucks now? Well, get ready, it only gets worse.” In my life, things only ever got harder to cope with. Harder to handle. The abuse worsened. My gender dysphoria worsened. My trauma got harder to cope with. Heck, it’s to the point I genuinely cannot remember much of my life. I’m not joking when I say I probably cannot remember 99% of my life because my brain is so used to being forced to block everything out because of how much trauma I have endured. That said, most of my memories are of traumatic things that happened to me. I remember as a child wishing to die young. I remember praying to God for me to be dead by age 25. I knew I could never live as a man. Life would never be worth it if I was forced to live as a man. As I got older, that and abuse made me want to die young. Nothing good ever seemed to happen, especially once my family moved to Indiana and I was completely separated from society to such an extreme that at one point I didn’t even leave my family’s property for about 4 months (not of choice, mind you). I didn’t even know anyone who really showed kindness to me. I remember the very first time someone actually showed kindness, and it was at my first job. I will never forget that person. They’re near and dear to my heart for that reason. I remember the people who accepted me when I came out as trans to them. I never expected acceptance, at all. I fully expected to kill myself. I only ever came out to people in spring 2019 because if I didn’t, well, I would kill myself. That said, I expected them to not accept me, so I would just kill myself because of that. I didn’t foresee a scenario where I would be accepted. I literally did not know a single person who was openly LGBT accepting. I NEVER knew a person who was. Thankfully, pretty much everyone I came out to really early on was accepting. Then, people started taking me out on shopping trips to find women’s clothing. One person drove me to the informed consent clinic to start HRT. I didn’t know, and still don’t really know how to accept these acts of kindness. People being kind to me, is well, new to me. It’s hard to accept gifts from others. It’s hard to accept that they do accept me. This is so radically different from what I knew my first 20 years of life. When someone does something kind to me, I don’t forget it. While the majority of my memories are of trauma, there is a slowly growing number of memories of acts of kindness done towards me. Just know, to everyone who has shown kindness towards me, I remember it, and you don’t know just how much your act no matter how small it seemed to you, truly impacted me. I am finally starting to see that maybe, just maybe, life isn’t just darkness that only gets darker. Maybe, there is some light.
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AuthorHi! I'm Anna, a currently transitioning transgender woman! I started my blog "Ramblings of a Trans Woman" as therapy for gender and identity issues and abuse from my parents and church. Hopefully, someone else out there can get something from this. If you want to talk, just get in contact with me, there's plenty of ways how and we'll discuss the best way to talk! Archives
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