Sickmore

this letter is addressed to you.

You say you like missionary now. I don’t get it, like you know that’s not what I like. I like down and dirty, on the knees kind of weird stuff like that.

But maybe it’s because I told you how I’ve been struggling with my body dysphoria for years now, and you constantly tell me now how pretty I am and how I don’t have facial hair. How is that a compliment, exactly?

How for several years, for our whole 14 year relationship, you hated who I was. This wasn’t a guess, or an inkling, or a feeling. You told me this often. How I was ugly, not feminine enough, fat, stupid, a parasite, a whore, a slut. To shut the fuck up. To sit the fuck down. To kiss your feet or there will be hell to pay for weeks or months.

To make dinner and be quiet.

How you just kept me around to do chores. And as a pity. And because no one else would care enough to help me. And how my family were treating me just as bad, so I might as well stay with you.

It’s funny now if you do a few chores how you complain. Remember when you’d beat me, throw the crockpot I made for dinner (I started the stew early in the morning to get a head start)with the stew all over the floor, and make me clean it up, throw out the trash, the heavy heavy trash full of the broken crockpot of nasty dirty floor stew, and then, after I got a pounding headache from the beating, you’d force me to cook still? Why did you do it? Because I got your McDonald’s order wrong. Or did I remember it wrong? Hmm?

You beat me into submission with your words, your fists, your furious anger, your cheating, your hatred.

Do you see the ways your hatred killed me inside? Now you see me trying leaving our trauma house you built up now that it’s safe to do so and you can’t stand it, you keep adding bricks to make me stay. You think because you don’t hit me with fists anymore you don’t hurt me.

I hide my dysphoria from you and you are disgusted by my feelings.

You say you aren’t but you told me so many times that you find it disgusting,

Thank you for sharing this, and that you like missionary so much.

Because I think looking into your eyes while we have sex gave me a new word. I made it up.

Sickmore.

You must be sick to make love to me, and throw up in your mouth a little secretly —-if I tell you I believe I am a man—-this must make you gag. Like I gag, the good sort of gagging, the kind I like, but you hate. But yeah, sure, let us keep doing missionary while we slowly die inside, carting around the increasingly decaying corpse of our dead relationship.

You called me trans before I even came out to you. How could you know? How could you tell?

You insulted me, you belittled me.

“You are such an ugly transsexual freak! I’d never be with you!”

Is what’d you say. You are such a bigoted person, and so cruel. How could I not see that before we dated?

You tore a deep wound inside of me.

Missionary. You want us to be man and woman, of a holy union, of God’s divine?

How about trying to be a real man first? Treating me like person? Treating me right? Not ripping up my nice clothes when I made a simple parking mistake or said something wrong about the thermostat or sighed too loudly and how about not making me cry off all of my makeup from my face before we went out every single time?

How about not destroying all my property and gifts and art? How about not making Sickmore a new extension of town, and making me live there for 14 years?

Well, that’s really strange…

Because I realized that missionary helped me understand you today. Your heart is trying to find me, even though you are selfish in your motives.

“I’m so bad, I’m a terrible person blah blah blah” is how you’ll respond to all of this. “And you’re great. You never ever do anything wrong. Blah blah!” Is how you’ll finish the response.

The intense, well versed sarcasm is palpable even in your honesty. You admit your abuse to me, yet you can’t be serious enough not to roll your eyes.

Yes, I was loyal, loving, sweet and a good girlfriend to you for 14 years. You treated me like shit.

I won’t mince words. You cheated on me, you beat me, you never let up, you never gave me mercy. You turned my identity into your own sick trash ideas of regurgitation for your traumatized childhood. You put on a spotlight on my past so your family could mock me. You mocked me when I trusted you to love you me and keep me safe.

Now, you locked me up and won’t let me have real friends anymore. You took my best friend away from me and she’s gone forever. You did that. If I even have a conversation on the phone for more than five minutes, you must know all about it. You call me and text me relentlessly (even if we’re not fighting)until I have to tell the person I’m talking to(my mom or other family), that I have to go.

This letter is Long.

Still, not long enough.

I am healing. I am whole. I am not your victim. I am just me.

You can live in Sickmore if you want,

I’m

Moving.

-me