7/29/2021 0 Comments Summer Nights...Or NotSo, I don't think I'm aromantic. For a few years now I have claimed to be aromantic, but some memories that had been previously blocked off have been unblocked and some stuff I didn't want to remember, but needed to be remembered are now, well...remembered. So, years ago, there was this girl that I liked. As in, really, really, liked. We were a part of a thing called "Bible quizzing." Basically, in short, you study specific sections of the Bible and then once a month you meet up with other churches and you sit on benches with triggers in them, and questions are asked, and whoever jumps first gets to answer the question. I was part of Christian Missionary Alliance quizzing (Great Lakes District, more specifically). I quizzed for a church called "Christian Fellowship." We had the most amount of teams in the district. Our arch-rival church was Bedford. Our two churches had a history of super-stars swapping between the two, so the rivalry was natural, plus, we were only about 25 minutes away from the other, our church being in the Toledo, OH area, and their church being just over the border in Michigan (which, of course raises the rivalry, because, you know, Michigan vs Ohio State, and for the record, I'm a Michigan fan, and to me the football team is dead and doesn't exist, but I am a huge fan of their hockey and men's basketball teams). So, I was one of the better quizzers in the league, and there was a girl who quizzed for Bedford who was also one of the better quizzers in the league. Her family was a "traitor" to Christian Fellowship as they used to attend CF but then switched to Bedford, and her family was full of super-stars. Anyway, my team for the three years I was in the league (as I was always with this one other quizzer who I will name Logan for his privacy), we were a dynamic duo, always in the running for best team in the league (and were two of the three years, not to pat myself on the back too much). Well, this girl, who I will name "Jane" for her own privacy was a part of the best team of Bedford. She was a part of her own dynamic duo, as she had a teammate named "Emily" (not her real name), and while they were the only two good quizzers on the team, they somehow managed to beat the best teams in the league rather frequently, especially my team. I didn't know that Jane even existed until more than halfway into my second season (the best veteran in the league, may I add, and my best season. Also, I was 5th, the only veteran in the top 5 because the rookies were so much better than the veterans it was genuinely laughable, so when I say I was 5th, understand, there was a very, very large gap between me and even the 3rd place spot, because the rookies that year were that good. To rub salt in my wound, my little sister who was a rookie was #1, and her team beat my team 27 straight times. No, that's not a joke. We quizzed against each other 30 times, we beat them once. It was bad.) Anyway, getting off track. So, my team was up against Jane, and we were quizzing in the cursed church (a church that was so broken down only one person could be on the stairs at once, wires were everywhere, they literally burned the soup, and I always put on my worst performances there), and I had never quizzed against her before. Her team beat mine easily. Didn't help that I had my first ever error out (when you answer three questions wrong. You leave the quiz then and the team loses 20 points), because she was constantly beating me to the punch and knocked me off my mental game. I hated her guts. I wanted her dead. Originally, I thought I did so poorly because her fast jumping was getting under my skin. Now, I know it was because I was jumping too fast in an attempt to impress her. I genuinely did not realize that at the moment. Well, we didn't go up against her until end of year tournaments. They trounced us. It wasn't close, and my team was definitely superior. So, that only led to further hatred of Jane, the best quizzer on the team who seemed to be my equal (ok, she was my superior, but I would never let myself admit that at the time). The next season, we quizzed against each other a few times outside of tournaments. Her team regularly beat my team. In the first half of the season, it made genuine sense. My team sucked. Sure, me and Logan were together, but Logan wasn't doing well, and the two newcomers on the team (none of these are their real names), Jacob and Sam were at times literally fighting each other (not joking. One time they literally starting throwing punches over who sat where) and neither were good. I was literally dragging the teams carcass across the finish line. We were third in the league, and I was the 4th best quizzer in the league. We were expected to be the best team in the league. Her team beat mine during that time. Well, mid year tournaments came up, and finally, I collapsed. I couldn't handle the mental stress of being the team's sole star and watching the team literally throw punches at each other anymore. I went from 4th in the league to somewhere in the 30's by the end of the season. I couldn't keep it up. Thankfully, Logan and Sam got their shit together and Jacob stopped fighting. During mid year tournaments, we quickly found our stride and became the team we were expected to be before the beginning the season. Unfortunately, during the mid year championships we went up against Jane. Her team beat mine in epic fashion. It was a schooling. Over in 3 rounds. It was bad. My team was the mockery of the league for it. We had literally the best day in league history up until the tournaments started (we had regular season quizzes in the morning, and tournament quizzes in the afternoon). We had been killing it. Then we collapsed in front of everyone. We lost to two teams we should have trounced. We lost to Jane's team. Me and Logan literally cried. All three years we made it to mid year championships. All three years we got beat soundly. Didn't help that this time we ended up as a mockery. I was pissed. I really, really, really, hated Jane now. I told her coach to his face, and I'm not joking at all about this, after the championship: "our two teams will face again in finals, and my team will show up merely to see who places second" (three teams quizzed against each other at once in this league). I hated Jane. She was the main reason for her team winning. I became obsessed with her. People started making jokes behind my back about how I was going to propose to her. I only know about these jokes because a people told me afterwards. At the time I had no idea, I didn't find out until a year or so later. Apparently, from what I have heard from others, she really liked me too, but didn't realize it at the time until it was too late as well. Today she is married and has two kids. So, how did I deal with all this? Kept it all to myself (to be fair, there was no one in my life at the time who I could have trusted to help me deal with it), learned to harden my heart, and block it out of my memories. Like, I genuinely had these memories blocked off for several years. Anyway, don't know if my anger issues come from this (I didn't have anger issues before this, so it's possible, or maybe part of the reason), but I definitely know my sarcasm and cynicism comes from this. That and a lot of the hatred I feel towards so many people comes from this. My hatred for romance comes from this. I didn't have the tools or anyone to go to for help back then, and to be honest, I still don't. Now, as an adult, when I already have more than enough to deal with (such as plummeting mental health), this comes back. To be honest, I needed to have dealt with this long ago, and since I didn't, this comes back at a horrible time for me to learn to deal with now. Problem is, I don't know how, and I don't have anyone in my life who I know who can help me through this. I have people I can just vent about this to, which is important, but how do you move past something like this? I don't expect to ever have feelings like that for anyone else ever again, I know it's not healthy to have this part of my heart closed off in such an unhealthy way.
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7/25/2021 0 Comments Run by FearSo, I have been thinking about a lot as of late. My life is driven primarily by fear, and secondarily by anger. How anger is in my passenger seat is a post for another day. Today, I want to discuss some of the ways fear runs my life. There are three things that I am fearful over, and the most relevant thing to my life at the moment is interviewing. I haven’t applied for a single job in over a month. I am terrified of how to present at a job interview, telling the interviewer that my name is Anna, not “Nick,” and how they will react and/or how uncomfortable everything is. Heck, it’s scary enough just the idea of walking in wearing a more androgynous/slightly feminine outfit and having to tell an employee “Hi, I’m Nick, and I’m here for an interview.” I can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t want the discomfort and I cannot bear to hear anyone call me that deadname even one more time. I’m Anna, and that’s the only name I ever want to hear, and unfortunately, I can’t, not for a long time. Ugh. I hate being trans. Another thing that has me in fear as of late is the fear of being part of a community and finding a chosen family. I am so used to being alone and doing everything alone, being my own friend, etc. So, because it is tiring to be alone, I want to be part of a community and have a chosen family, but, it scares me. Being there for others isn’t a problem for me, I have always been there for others. Heck, I was expected to serve everyone whether I was equipped to or not. The problem is, no one was ever there for me. So, to be there and see people regularly who care about me, and I care about, have each others backs, get to know each other, as much as I desire it, it’s something that also truly scares me. Growing up, I never felt loved or cared about with my family. Never truly felt as if I was a part of the family, and to be honest, hasn’t gotten much better as I get older. I’m not all that close to my family today, or in the past. I love my family. Family means a lot to me, heck, family is probably the most important thing to me. I WANT to be part of a family. I have for my entire life tried to be part of my family and get them to love me. At age 22 I am still trying to do that, though I know it probably won’t ever happen at this point, plus, it’s just tiring. Let’s say I do find a family someday (not likely, but let’s pretend), it’s so radically different from anything I have experienced. I’m honestly scared of not being completely independent anymore. I mean, I’m not completely independent anymore, but outside of one online friend, I’m not particularly close to anyone. I’m scared of intimacy. Heck, even with that close online friend, I have to force myself sometimes to be honest, and many times I just avoid saying how I’m doing or what’s going on because I am used to doing everything alone, being my own support. Another thing that has been eating me alive lately is something I really, really don’t want to talk openly about honestly, that is, tell a single soul. So, if you are a long-time reader you probably know I have always wanted to a mom. Even though I know marriage is something that isn’t in my future, I still long to be a parent if I’m being honest. That said, I know because of how much trauma I deal with, how much abuse, I have no confidence that I wouldn’t just pass the trauma onto the kids. My natural instincts around people are to be abusive because that’s pretty much all I have known and seen in my life. The times when I have watched kids (with at least one of my parents at least being there) I always pretty much ended up abusing the children verbally and/or emotionally, and almost physically as well, but my parents being there prevented me from doing that. It’s all I know, and the only way I know how to treat kids, because quite simply, my parents seemed incapable of not abusing me emotionally and verbally. The desire to physically abuse the kids came strictly out of my uncontrolled anger. I have so much built up anger and resentment, that my desire to express it violently is strictly my own problem. Yes, most of it is a product of being abused, but my parents didn’t physically abuse me (outside of the time they spanked me as a baby). I couldn’t keep calm or cool around children. It would turn into a shit show where CPS would need to be called. Heck, I’m terrified of being asked to babysit for my oldest younger sister when she has kids (assuming that even does ever happen considering that she will be living in a city an hour and a half away from Ft. Wayne). Not only that, I was super sheltered growing up. It would be my natural urge to highly shelter the kids just as I was. Whenever I hear of kids watching movies I wasn’t allowed, heck, didn’t even hear of until I was an adult, such as Lord of the Rings when they’re only 10, I freak out. Then, how do I deal with school? I was homeschooled. I know literally nothing about public school, or a classroom setting outside of what’s shown on TV shows or movies, which from what I hear, isn’t very representative of real life school. I know nothing about what a classroom setting is like, growing up around other children (I was super sheltered and barely interacted with other children), or just anything involved with formal schooling. How could I be there for my child and help them through schooling and the challenges of school and friendships when I didn’t have much experience with friendships as a child and know anything of the challenges of school? I’d be useless. That, and the fact I’m trans. I can’t relate to boys one bit, and you know, take hormones to not be one, and I wasn’t a girl or raised as one, and I would be their mother. So, if one of the kids or the only kid is a girl, and I’m the mom, I’m the one the girl is instinctively go to, and yet, I know nothing of girlhood, or whatever she needs help with. How could I relate or be of help? She would need another mother, that is, a chosen mother to help her out. I would never be enough. This is something that has been eating me alive as of late as well. 7/11/2021 0 Comments A Life of ApathyI have come to really, finally, understand where my apathy comes from. So, what I am talking about when I say “apathy,” is that I know my life sucks. I’m in debt, jobless, no money, little food, etc. Yet, I just accept it and have little to no motivation to do better in life. I don’t really feel the need to improve my life by getting a job or actually have food, and I have been wondering why. I mean, some of it definitely comes from anxiety (such as how to present at interviews) and depression. But I always knew that those couldn’t be the full reasons why. Now, I understand. It’s another long-term effect from abuse growing up. As a kid, you really can’t do much, you don’t have freedoms or rights. You really can’t stand up for yourself. Well, you can, if you want serious consequences that you really don’t want to deal with. As a kid who was abused, my life always was getting worse, never better, because my parents only ever got more abusive over the years because no one was there to tell them “no.” Heck, I didn’t even recognize that I was being abused until I was 19 or 20. I thought the way my parents raised me was normal, not abusive. So, all this time I was learning to become more and more submissive, not only to authority, but to how shitty life could be. I had no other option but to accept a worsening life, to accept worse and worse abuse. I couldn’t fight back, because if I did, things would only get even worse. So, I had to learn to just accept it. To sit back, keep my head down and accept a horrible life. That’s what I have done my entire life. Now, I am being expected to just get back up on my feet and make a better life, when there is no part of my life where I was given the tools or even expected to make my life better. It’s like being expected to drive on the highway your very first time behind the wheel. It’s terrifying and you have no idea what to do. How do you gain motivation to make a better life for yourself when you spent the first 21 years of your 22 years of life suppressing any motivation for a better life just to survive? I was raised my entire life to be completely reliant on my parents, and now I have to just be completely independent. I was never given the tools for any of this. I was just thrown out into the world expected to know how to do everything, how to be motivated and how to be independent when I don’t. I’m scared. I don’t know what to do. I know I have to develop the tools though. I’m trying. I’m just worried that it will never be enough. I’m trying though. I’m trying to create motivation for a better life instead of just accepting this shitty life situation, but wow is it hard. It requires rejecting all the lessons that have been embedded into me my whole life. I guess that’s the story of my life though. Learning to reject everything I was raised with. Not easy. It must be done, but wow it’s not easy. 7/3/2021 0 Comments My Horrid Views From My PastI am not a good person. If I’m being honest, much of what I do (mostly on my podcast, which is be an advocate for trans liberation mostly, but also for other oppressed minority groups) is to try to make up for the horrible views I had in the past and advocated for. As you may know by now, I grew up in a fundamentalist church and family. We were super conservative in every way. Politics was everywhere around me as a kid, politics was important to my mom and grandparents on my mom’s side, who we saw quite often. I grew up watching Fox News, especially Bill O’Reilly, reading Christian conservative news magazines and evangelical talk radio such as “Cross Talk,” a right-wing extremist program that regularly pushed some of the most insane conspiracy theories ever and extremely racist looking back at it. I still remember it’s election night coverage and the things they said about black people. It genuinely was indistinguishable from rhetoric I hear from alt-right figures. This is what I grew up with. As I got older and got more access to the internet and became more interested in politics I started listening to Glenn Beck. I listened to the first hour live, then did school (I was homeschooled, so I could get away with it), and listened to the rest of the show via podcast. I don’t think I missed a single episode for several years. I was addicted to Glenn Beck. I can honestly say that no one influenced my political beliefs more than Glenn Beck from 2013-2019. Then, I started getting into some of the even more hardcore stuff. I got into Erick Erickson, Steve Deace, Michael Berry, and eventually, Alex Jones. I loved Alex Jones. I couldn’t wait for the day I made money to buy his stuff. That’s how lost I was. I genuinely took Alex Jones completely seriously (minus the Illuminati stuff, I never believed in the Illuminati). I only stopped listening to him when he started getting friendly with Trump because I was a Never Trump conservative (in 2016 I voted for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate). I started reading websites such as The Daily Caller, Townhall, The American Thinker, Red State, Right Scoop, The Gateway Pundit, Brietbart, Liberty Treehouse, TheBlaze, InfoWars, and some other websites that I genuinely don’t remember the names of at this point. I also read a lot of TruNews, and watched Newsmax TV and OAN. I remember going to OAN’s website the day it launched I was so excited for it. So, yes, I was quite well acquainted with both networks before the rest of the world took notice of them last year. Oh, I also just remembered: I was a huge fan of Caiden Cowger and was a supporter of the Constitutional Freedom Party (a conservative party trying to keep the spirit of the Tea Party alive after seeing the rise of Trump and it’s founders and members being terrified of it). I grew up believing that government needed to be extremely small, but the military needed to be big. In fact, the military was practically worshiped. Being a soldier was the highest calling there was in my family, that and being a cop, and we worshiped cops almost as much as we did military members. I remember being taught that any black person who didn’t act white (though those words were never used) or dressed white or talked white were a bunch of thugs and welfare queens. Black people were often the cause of the nation’s problems I was taught, especially because the black fatherless myth was instilled in my brain from an early age. I was taught that Obama was a Muslim from Kenya. I genuinely believed that. Just about everyone around me believed it, and pushed it regularly, along with the notion that Obama was a communist. I also grew up a “pro-life” (let’s call it what it really is though, pro-forced birth) and quite an extremist at that. I believed, and so did everyone around me (and most people I know are still in this position) that abortion should be illegal under ALL circumstances. The woman got raped? Too bad, that fetus in her stomach is more important. It’s a high school girl who got pregnant? Well, shouldn’t have been sleeping around the boys. I mean, that’s why you’re supposed to wait ‘til marriage. She asked for it. Terrible, sure, but this is the consequence of sin. Is the mother going to die if the baby isn’t aborted? Well, then the mom must die. Nothing is nobler than a mother dying for her baby. No, I’m not exaggerating or joking about any of those stances. These are the beliefs I was raised with. I was told that these are the only reasonable positions on abortion. Otherwise, you were worshiping Moloch. I was raised believing in the war on Christmas. I was raised to believe that gay and trans people were subhuman scum who chose to be queer for attention and to usher in acceptance of pedophilia. Heck, the reason 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, Boston marathon bombings, school shootings, all happened because we lets gays out of the closet. Once I realized that I was trans, it terrified me. I believed I was a hell-bound monster. So, what did I decide to? Become even more hard-line against LGBT people in hopes if I became more hard-line against LGBT people, then maybe I would stop being trans. I remember posting on The Daily Caller that gay people should be stoned. It only got worse once my parents found out I’m trans and sent me to conversion therapy. I made myself genuinely hate the LGBT community with every fiber of my being. I became obsessed with LGBT people and bashing them. I was so desperate to not be trans, to convince myself that being trans was bad and I needed to just choose to not be trans. The first scale to fall from my eyes was immigration. My dad got involved with a local ministry that worked with refugees and immigrants. I was a hard-line anti-immigration person. Well, over time, hearing about how broken the immigration system was and meeting refugees I became a pro immigration person in about the span of a year. This was probably in about 2015, I’m guessing. Then the next scale to fall from my eyes was to realize that racism was still alive and well in America. I didn’t believe in systemic racism until the Black Lives Matter marches of last year, but I realized racism was still a thing in America and the drug war was inherently racist in about 2018. Listening to rappers such as Propaganda, Derek Minor and Lecrae helped me understand that. Then in 2019 I couldn’t pretend to myself that I wasn’t trans anymore. My gender dysphoria got too severe. I started coming out to people. So, because of that, I stopped trying to force myself to be anti-LGBT and started trying to find community. The first thing I did was start this blog. Then, I started a Tumblr blog and became a part of the transmedicalist community. Then I got onto Discord and joined several trans Christian Discord servers. Blaire White and Kalvin Garrah were the trans figures I listened to the most as a transmedicalist. Eventually, on Tumblr I started finding people who weren’t transmeds and on YouTube I discovered the channel “Jammidodger” and Sam Collins. Due to these influences on Tumblr and YouTube I started moving away from trans medicalism. This was the turning point to becoming a pro-LGBT activist. Around 2017 I went from being conservative to libertarian. Figures such as Austin Petersen and Jason Stapleton were instrumental to becoming a libertarian, that and the radio show Free Talk Live. Even as a libertarian I still remained a loyal Glenn Beck listener. Stopped listening regularly to him in late 2019 and stopped listening completely early 2020. Eventually I started reading Reason Magazine and watching their YouTube channel. Then I got into John Stossel. Then it was Tom Woods, Bob Murphy, Dave Smith, and Michael Malice. It was a fascinating ideology to get into. Libertarianism was exciting, it was basically conservatism, but more open-minded. It was pro-immigration, something I already was, which was good for me, because I was tired of being the lone conservative fighting for immigration on conservative forums. Libertarianism seemed a lot more logically consistent than conservatism. It seemed like the only true response to the looming threat of communism in America. I was genuinely convinced that we were diving straight into communism and would soon look just like Venezuela or the Soviet Union, and libertarianism was the best weapon against it. Over time, I got even more extreme in libertarian beliefs. I ended up a Minarchist, borderline full-on Anarcho-Capitalist. For a brief amount of time I flirted with Objectivism due to Yaron Brook and being influenced by books written by Ayn Rand such as “Socialism.” Most of the libertarian intellectuals I was influenced by were Ludwig von Mises and Tom Woods though. I still own my libertarian books by Rand, Mises and Rothbard. I don’t really remember much about my exact beliefs during this time to be honest, outside of the growing misogyny I was feeling. I was getting more and more desperate to not be trans, so I decided I needed to “man up.” So, I started looking around the internet to figure out how to be manly. I eventually stumbled onto the MGTOW community (MGTOW is short for “Men Going Their Own Way”). Basically, it’s a hate group. They hate women, because according to MGTOW, feminism has ruined everything and it’s in women’s basic nature to be gold-digging whores, to be liars and psycopaths. Women need to be put into their place, according to this ideology, by being treated as sub-human. According to MGTOW beliefs, women are nothing more than sex dolls for men, who exist merely to suck dick and make babies. They exist for no other purpose and are overall, pretty useless. In fact, it is beyond generous that men would even put up with such useless creatures. This is the hate group I fell into because it seemed to me to be the manliest there was because I was so desperate to not be a trans woman. In the end though, there were two talking points I could not accept which allowed me to get out of MGTOW, and those were: that mothers hate their children, and I genuinely cannot remember the other one. My favorite fringe belief of MGTOW: the trans people exist because of feminism. According to MGTOW, trans women exist because they have been taught by feminism to hate being men, and trans men exist to water down what it means to be a man. It’s basically TERF beliefs, just in reverse. In 2019 I got introduced to 5G conspiracies. My dad bought into them completely and made the whole family watch a bunch of videos talking about why 5G is dangerous. Eventually, I bought into it completely. Heck, I was even pushing the conspiracy that 5G caused COVID on Twitter early in 2020. Not joking. You can still find those tweets. I don’t think I ever deleted those tweets. I genuinely believed it. I’m extraordinarily embarrassed about it now, but it’s what I believed. So, what helped push me away from such fringe hateful beliefs for good? It was finding a YouTube channel called “Philosophy Tube” late in 2019. I grew up not knowing a single person on the left who talked about their beliefs. So, I just assumed that it was impossible to be intelligent and be on the left. Abigail Thorne completely destroyed those assumptions. I was amazed at how well-spoken and well-thought-out she was. An intelligent leftist. I had just found a unicorn. I binged her videos and subscribed to watch future ones. Her channel opened my eyes so much. Single-handedly she made me an enlightened centrist. Before I saw her channel, I was on the verge of going full-on Anarcho-Capitalist. Now, I was a centrist because of one leftist. Eventually, I found other YouTube channels such as Thought Slime, Vaush, Xanderhal, David Pakman, Secular Talk, Actual Jake, and Majority Report. They pushed me over the edge to put me firmly on the left (to be more specific, while I call myself a socialist, I push more for anarcho-communism, but communism is still such a dirty word I just call myself a socialist). After finding more channels such as The Serfs, Contrapoints, The Young Turks, The Damage Report and Ring of Fire. I started watching Twitch streamer Hasan Piker. I became aware of hate groups and beliefs, and how they were started and how to figure out what hate groups are. So, with more awareness of hateful beliefs, I genuinely hope my days of bouncing around to different hate groups is over, but now I’m left with nothing but shame and disgust for my days of having such hateful beliefs. It’s something that brings genuine shame to me. It’s something I would love to just hide and pretend I never had such beliefs. That said, I know I can never truly move on until I shine a bright light upon the things I once believed. |
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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