🖊️ Cuts and Bruises On My Heart

To: (123) 456-7890 -- From: Asteri

ERROR: NUMBER NOT FOUND

Song: [Summer Child - Conan Gray]

Book: [The Color of Lies - CJ Lyons]

Keywords: [being queer, life, love, pain, parents]

I deserve this healing.

That's something I thought up after therapy today. I deserve this healing. I've had bullshit with my parents about my transition to presenting as nonbinary for nine months now, and it's been hard. And I don't think I've really talked about it much on here, but it's really drastically affected my life.

My parents, when I came out to them and told them I was nonbinary and wanted to change my name as part of my transition, freaked out a bit. And all this time, they have not been able to find a way to accept that this is what makes me happy, and to find a way to move past their own reservations and feelings and fears. They've said a lot of very traumatizing things to me, which have hurt me possibly irreparably. And I don't hate them for it, and I don't want anyone else reading this to think they're transphobic, because I know they're not, at least not intentionally. But it still hurts.

Our arguments and conflicts have continued up until as recently as this Monday. And then today, for the first time, my mother used my new name in a written thing. Completely out of the blue, without any warning or reasoning. I asked her about it and she was confused why I was confused, shocked, and overall stunned. She said she misses me, and that if this is what makes me happy then ok. And it was beautiful, and I said thank you and meant it wholeheartedly.

But it still feels yucky. And I'm starting to understand why: I deserve to feel this pain. No, this isn't some self-sabotage moment; I deserve the space and time to feel the hurt inflicted upon me. My parents said and did things to me, and I deserve the time and space to feel the consequences of that properly. Not to pretend that everything's okay now because they did what I've been asking for for months. Cause everything's not okay. All the hurt still happened; it all still hurt and it's all still very, very real.

So I deserve this healing. By healing I mean the space to heal from what has been done to me: the cuts on my soul that can't stop bleeding and the bruises no one else can see but that hurt with every step and the trauma I know will scar underneath my skin. And to me I think healing means distance. Not complete cutoff, because one of the major ways to heal all of this is by letting my parents see my life, who I am, that I'm really not that different from who I used to be. But enough distance that the cuts can heal without being sliced open again. Enough distance that no one will hit the bruises while they're trying to heal. Enough distance that the trauma, while it will still scar, can heal into that scar instead of staying open. Because there is a weight on my chest that won't go away, and I don't think being around the people who put it there is going to make it go away. 

I deserve this healing. I deserve to heal and to feel my trauma even though things may be better starting today. Despite the good thing that happened, my trauma also happened, and I deserve to feel it and heal from it. Both can be true. And it might hurt my parents more, and it hurts that I need to heal from them in the first place, but I have to do what's right for me. Because for the past nine months I've thought about 2 people constantly, cared for their reaction to my situation, and was called selfish for wanting to express myself. It's time to actually be a little selfish and take my life into my own hands and take the healing I deserve. To be among the people that heal me until I am healed enough to properly be around the people who inflicted the damage. It's not distance out of anger anymore. It's distance so that I can have a better ability to love.

--Asteri ⭐️