My Dad Sucks: The Non-whiney Teen Version
I want to move out but so far my only lead is looking like a big maybe. Living with my dad is becoming insufferable. I've been out as trans to him for... well, two years this June. Nothing about his behavior has changed since then except for the occasions where he feels the need to remind me I'm fucked up for being trans.
He won't believe that I am and he never did. He claimed I just hated myself and wanted to find any solution to fix it that I could. I don't hate myself, I hate the vision of a woman you see when you look at me. He was mad at my friends for supporting me.
He thought I'd find myself a monster, a mutilated mess when it was all through but even though my scars haven't healed anywhere close to what's considered "well", when I look in that mirror all I see is pride and love and what I strived for and fought for and the point I finally reached and I wouldn't give that up for anything.
If he saw me murdered on the street he'd say it was my fault. When I go into the men's washroom he wishes out loud that there will be a "creepy guy in there". He'd say, "why did you make yourself so weird so that people would victimize you". He doesn't care if people treat me like shit - cause he does it himself. Every wrong pronoun, every time he utters that name is like a knife in my head and he wonders why I don't want to go to any events with him.
He thinks I hate myself but really I love myself too much to hide who I am, too much to let myself sink into that false prison everyone envisions me in. I am not what you want me to be but I still have the right to exist.
On Easter he went on a tirade about how he can't call something gay buy a gay person can use that word to describe themselves. I told him it was a matter of context and what you were using the word to mean - he told me he shouldn't have to look up a dictionary definition of the words he uses. As a straight, white, middle class man he's never been affected by this things in his entire life but he can pass judgment on the hurt he causes, claiming it's more important for him to be able to call something gay or use racial slurs without being made to feel guilty than it is for someone to walk down the street without being victimized.
He thinks gays are out there just to screw and be done with it. He thinks they're perverts, sub-human, not worth the right not to get fired from your job for having a partner of the same sex. He thinks "don't ask don't tell" is the ideal solution.
But there are people in this world who DO think I have the right to exist. The right to be happy and whole and love whoever I want. I've got friends who never once abandoned me - not one - through many different comings out. Bi, gay, ace, trans. They never once told me I was messed up and they never once looked down on me.
And I've got myself. I believe I deserve the right to be here. On my worst nights I would break down but I wouldn't condemn myself - I would plead of the universe the answer to why won't anyone accept me for who I am?
But it doesn't matter if you do. It's your loss. When I move out, you'll have another kid who doesn't talk to you but this time it will be your fault because you could have turned it around. I don't care. You don't like me anyway so why should I mourn the loss? Once I don't have to deal with you on a daily basis I'll be free to live my life with the people who actually care about me - those friends you were so mad at for not telling me to change who I was.