It took me four years to get to this point. It was a long, hard road plagued with self doubt, suffering, causing others suffering, wallowing in old things from the past, and running straight into a wall trying to be things I’m not.
Lalita, this entry is not directed at you. You don’t belong in these ranks. You’re better than these people in every way. Thank you.
This is for the people who tried to control me. Those who thought they knew better about who I should be than I. Those who used me as an emotional dumping ground, a scapegoat. An example of what being bad looks like. “Don’t be that guy,” one of you used to say.
Well. You didn’t know me.
I already admitted to my wrongs, to the ways in which I mistreated some of you. I came clean and accepted responsibility for my actions. I may even have apologized for things for which I didn’t need to apologize. I mean, how messed up is that? What the fuck kind of society do we live in where we have to apologize for who we are?
Well, now it’s my turn. You get to face the music now. Because I’m tired of it. I’m thirty-two, I got through a grueling interpreter program, got a real job, a real house, and a real wife. I think that now I’m entitled to put it back on you. I don’t care if you’re ready.
Here are all the ways in which you showed how little you know me:
You got mad at me for quitting baseball. You got mad at me for experimenting with gender. You got mad at me for seeking affection elsewhere after you refused to give it. You threatened to expose me to your friends in order to control me and censure me for, yet again, experimenting with gender.
You forced me into a double standard where I didn’t get to sleep with other people, but you could. You used me as your bank and house slave. You sought my help with a guy who never respected you, but refused to help me when I needed you. You cried in my lap when he came home to you, drunk and reeking of hard liquor, but you just mocked me when I cried from loneliness and frustration.
You made me think that I couldn’t be an interpreter. You locked me out. You overloaded me with stress, fucked up my wrists, and caused me to gain weight. You intensified my imposter syndrome by a thousandfold.
You tried to soothe me with vaporous images of fantasies that cannot exist. You sold me an idea of women that is toxic. You hijacked my sexuality and implanted craziness in my mind. You hurt my partner.
You tried to force me back into Christianity by whatever means necessary, some of them including: dragging me bodily to church, begging and wheedling me to go to Mass, shoving Christian music concert tickets and CDs in my face, ignoring me when I raised my hand in class, intentionally misplacing the homework that I worked on and turned in, shaming me and calling me a devil worshiper, telling me that I was just mad at god, making me go to an Easter Mass where the priest ridiculed me for subscribing to evolution, which is supported by far more EVIDENCE than any part of your bible, making me watch satanic horror movies and then telling me that I’m like the monsters in them because I’m an atheist. I was in therapy for years to deal with this. I am not your garbage can.
You didn’t try to understand me. Why do that when you can just crush me and pave over me? That option offers far less discomfort. My not believing in god, not being into sports, and definitely not fitting neatly into traditional masculine roles made you too uncomfortable, oh no, how could you ever have faced that?
How do you think it feels to be told you are wrong–like fundamentally just wrong? To be asked “What will my friends think? What will the church people say?” You said that you were a failure as a father just because I didn’t turn out to be a normal boy. Instead of understanding me, instead of meeting me at my level, you hit me, slapped me, embarrassed me, scared me, yelled at me, lectured at me for hours on end, took up all the emotional space, accused me of hating you because you’re deaf, held back knowledge and skills that could have helped me become a functioning adult, used me for unpaid interpreting services, let my authoritarian sister laugh and screech at me while you knocked me over and kicked me while I was down, pulled my hair, threw away my toys, demanded rent from me when I was barely making any money just to live in your house, mounted a years-long campaign to shame me back into church.
Moreover, you turned me into a self-hating, self-harming, dysfunctional wreck. Kinda makes it hard to just be a person, let alone be a husband and to do my job or even just to have fun. There’s a little acid-laced voice in the back of my head that tries to ruin everything. I thank you especially for that.
And then you waited until my wife was asleep to tell me, finally, that I didn’t spend enough time with you when you knew I was busy. You love to set me up to fail. I have to play the villain in your narcissistic little dramas or else the world just doesn’t work correctly. You went behind my wife’s back to say those things because you’re a fucking coward.
I’m too far along in life to continue fearing you.
I know who you are. But you don’t know me. And you never will.
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