Anonymous asked: I told my dad that I'm nonbinary and now he won't stop saying shit like"I raised you better than this"and"where's my little girl gone"and"you were supposed to be the normal child" (i was adopted because my parents wanted a successful child and my sister has asbergers and my brother has a reading disability and a stutter) and he keeps making comments about God when he has been divorced twice and I dont even believe and I don't know what to do and this has been going on for months and I'm so tired
Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. I wish there was something I could do to fix the situation for you–there’s nothing more insidious than people who are supposed to care unconditionally telling you that you’re guilty of the crime of existing. It sits in your heart and eats at you, like something living, more than any other cruelty I’m familiar with. Combined with the idea that you’re supposed to be in some way ‘better’ than the people around you–more intelligent, more socially adept, more well-spoken, more normal, whatever–it’s toxic like nothing else. I know that it probably feels like everything you do and everything you are is a personal failing of your willpower and your strength, right now, and I want you to take me seriously when I say it is not.
It’s not. You are not failing the test of being human because of your looks, because of your gender, because of who you love or what you enjoy, because of what you do or don’t believe. No matter what kind of abuse the people who claim to care about you heap on your shoulders, they are wrong about this. Your brother and your sister aren’t failures because their brains are wired up differently than the ‘norm’, and you’re not a failure because you’re nonbinary, or because of the way you present.
And because I know a thing or two about being the family failure while also being touted as the family genius, let me add: you’re not responsible for why your parents adopted you. You aren’t beholden to their idea of a ‘successful’ child, and nor are you selfish or monstrous because your parents were arrogant enough to write your siblings off. You are, ultimately, far more the person you choose to be than the person your parents make you, and your parents cannot force you to become like them.
And it’s hard to remember these things. I’m not going to lie to you. You said you were tired–oh, sweetheart, this globe-sprawling clan of people who have come out of terrible families, we’re all tired. But we’re none of us failures because we’re tired. We’re none of us weak, or broken, or monsters because we’re tired. We’re alive, and goddamn, some days that is good enough.
It’s taken me years to settle on this, and trust me, there are a ton of days where I still struggle with it, but here is my one piece of advice I can offer you–and a weak and paltry thing it is, in the face of a situation like yours, but it’s all I have for you, my dear one. The world is not an exam. No one can give you a pass or a failure on this, no matter who you are or what you do or how your brain works or whatever. You are succeeding by the mere fact of being alive.
