I've outgrown the scent of my own decay

I wrote a memoir in high school about conflict - the period of time I moved from my mom‘s into my dad‘s. I remember my mom tried to break down my door to read it. I hid, curled up in my room, knowing the truth would break her and harm me.

Now I’m 30 and I’m beginning to reconnect with my mom, in my truth. For my whole life, I lived somewhere outside my truth. I was terrified and still I am. Now I’m more terrified of a life spent hiding than I am of being found out. Of breaking. Of being harmed.

I want to shed the lies, the half truths. I wish so deeply to stand in the truth without balking from it. To let it surround me like warm honey, nourishing. This is hardest when I must confront the truth of how long I dulled myself for the sake of comfort and how I continue to do this.

It was hardest when I looked around and saw no one in my life knew me because I hid. People knew who I showed them. Some of these people left when I came out. I was so scared. I kept showing up anyway.

Each time I molted, shed my skin, felt like part of me was dying. I held on tight - so, so afraid. When I let go, I realized clinging to the past kept me hidden. No matter who people thought I was, think I am, or want me to be, I have the choice, again and again, to show up as a more true version of me.

I’ll never really stop molting. I’ll keep shedding my dead skin so the new can grow - over, and over, and over, and over. At first glance, that sounds shitty. A life of uncomfortable struggle after uncomfortable struggle. It beats the hell out of hiding behind my own dead skin.

Wearing the face of a corpse to please others left them to live in happy lies, and me with the scent of my own decay.

Hate breeds hate. I nearly hated myself into the ground - knowing with me gone things would be better. Now I love myself out loud in front of everyone who might despise me for it, might hurt me, might hate me. Might think I’m scum. Might think I deserve to die.

Guess what fucker? You deserve to love yourself too. Love breeds love. I watch the love I hold for myself overflow onto all those I love. Love where a fountain of hate once stood. Truth is hard, it’s constant. It’s ever changing and fluid. It is. The truth was here for me. When I stopped running. It was here waiting all along.

I’m trans. I’m into weird shit I don’t exist to be digestible, comfortable, viewed, or acceptable. I simply exist. At the end of the day, no matter how hard I tried not to, I still made people uncomfortable. Now that I understand that action cannot take place without discomfort, I can be intentional in the ways I make others uncomfortable.

It’s uncomfortable to hold friends accountable when they hurt us - when they aren’t living in accordance with their values. It’s uncomfortable to talk about genocide, rape, fascism. It’s hard and uncomfortable to face the truth. I’d rather face uncomfortable truths with my friends, than live uncomfortable lies for the sake of comfort. That makes zero sense.

Right now we all need to strip away the lies. Be uncomfortable. What is that feeling in your gut, your bones, your soul trying to tell you?

I am I am. I am Felix. I am a faggot, a puppy, a boy, a human, a baby, a man, a girl. I am angry. I am grieving. I am joy. I am love. I am rage. I am the trees and the animals and how a voice can crack from joy and despair and fear and sorrow and euphoria and rage and hopelessness and hope. I’m everything all at once - I cannot be picked apart, analyzed, defined, or understood.

I CAN BE.

And that’s fucking magical.