Hey folks, Its yer boy zero.
I need to talk about something I rarely speak about, which is growing up the son of a trans person, because a wound I thought was healed in regards to it has reopened today.
Growing up in the 90’s (I am an old) was a pretty rough time, as my parent came out when I was 6, which is why my mom left. I spent the bulk of my childhood getting beaten up, ostracized and mocked with various homophobic slurs because of this.
I’ve watched my parent lose jobs over their identity, and seen people hurl insults at them and I from across the street, and seen people levy some pretty monstrous implications just because of them being trans.
To this day I struggle with making and maintaining friendships, and I’ve spent my entire life when building those connections hard as they may be prefacing them all with “So, my parent is trans, let me know now if that bothers you so we can part ways.”
Now I’ve always worked real hard to get past all of this, until today. During the most recent primary election, my parent was the judge of elections and did some questionable things. Well intentioned, but questionable, to the point they are considering criminal charges.
This would be heavy enough on its own.
Then today was the testimony hearing, and as it’s my parent I was super concerned, so I dug up a live feed on it. It was fine, even if people were testifying against them (Im a firm believer that if you mess up, own up, and deal with the consequences, personal accountability is a big deal to me) until I noticed the live comment feed.
The feed was full of misgendering and homophobic slurs, and I immediately was taken back to being this kid who just so desperately wanted friends, wanted some people he could be a kid with, and found nothing. Took me back to being that kid who was beaten up so often for being gay when he wasnt that he went to bed wishing that he woke up gay so the beatings would be “Justified” in some messed up way.
It felt like every ounce of progress I’ve made in the last 15 years or so working past my childhood was ripped away in an instant, and now I’m sitting here working, angry at everything, wanting to fight the world, and at the same time weep.
My wife, my rock, however has done what she can to try to help me, and I’m blessed to have her. She sees my temper flaring up over little things that wouldnt normally bother me at work, and come up behind me to remind me to breathe, and calm down, and that Im not mad at the things Im mad at, Im mad at the bigots, but its still real heavy.
