I Want To Be Loved

I want to be loved

I think I fell a little in love tonight

I have a problem with guilt.

I am haunted by these specters

One by one

Till all I can see is the need for my damnation.

It is easy for me to get turned around in it.

Perhaps I can force down a couple thoughts

But all it takes is one big self-accusation

Then I am drowning beneath the broken damn.

Everything is my fault.

So my mental anguish tells me.

I am responsible for all the bad

Makes me easy to manipulate.

I gaslight myself for fucks sake

And always need to see the best in people.

Suddenly years are lost

While I'm still wondering

"maybe it really is me?"

Add to this a troubled connection to reality

And all the other psychological insecurities,

I risk reverting to that corner

Holding my head

Rocking violently back and forth.

I don't want to go to those dark places.

I don't see poetry in it like I used to.

I don't want to die

And I do not wish to feel compelled towards it.

My torturers have always been loved ones

Ever since I was a little child.

"I love you!

I'll never hurt you!"

While his hand is wrapped around his child's neck.

Kept repeating

Hurt by love.

"Be this do this don't you love god?

Wicked

Sinner

"How can you even face yourself!"

I always bowed.

Evolved to hide in plane sight.

Subservient

I never did anything of my own volition.

I didn't offer ideas or options

I just recycled what I knew they wanted to hear.

I became perfect

And was perfect

A marvelous reproduction

Of the conscience of the person talking at me.

I regurgitated their own words

"and it was good"

I mimicked their neuroses

"and it was good"

I broke me into a malleable putty

So I could be molded into their image.

I became a shape shifter

And disappeared entirely.

.

I have made a lot of progress.

Hurt the people I cared for most

When I turned out to be hollow.

Worse than hollow

Filled with raging psychic pain

From the life long concealment of my person.

A lie

Who professed to love.

Drew close to the door of my own extinction.

Saw what I had become.

Been fighting to heal

To grow and mature.

Yet somedays I still get low

Even after a stellar day,

Especially after a stellar day,

And begin to question myself

Wondering

"what if I am wrong?"

Guilt for being happy.

Guilt for being free.

Guilt for refusing the old pains

And the ones who caused it most.

This is the first year I have experienced International Women's Day as an aware trans woman. Spent it pretending to be a boy at work, the last vestige of my old life. It is a strange feeling sometimes. Just, the idea of being woman. Ever since I was a small child, I have been drawn to it. This nature within me I couldn't express or understand, I couldn't even comprehend it. Didn't even get a chance until I was well into my twenties, and even then I couldn't ever quite get there until 30 was literally dawning over the horizon. I was consumed by an envy I didn't recognize, and it's presence permeated the whole of my life.

Gender wasn't real to me as a kid, everyone just was, but I enjoyed playing as a mother. I remember convincing my little brother to play house with me when I was 6 years old, and when I was 8 pretending to be the mother of a baby gorilla plushy I had received on my birthday. My own mother was always an inspiration to me. She had the strength to take on the world, just to keep me safe. She was meek and kind, and quite literally didn't know how to hate anyone. She kept me safe. When men were cruel she stood in the way. When my dad would beat her, she'd keep him away from me. When I struggled she was there for me, and when I woke screaming from nightmares it was she who would hold me till the night grew calm. Neither of us could have understood what was transpiring inside of me, but without her I don't know if I could have made it in life, and I definitely wouldn't be as strong as I am today.

I am lying here crying thinking about it. My mom is my greatest supporter. She still slips up and calls me the wrong name sometimes, and we get a laugh as I call her out in humorous ways, but she has literally been my defense through it all, coming out for me to all those I didn't care to or lacked the courage to face down directly. I learned how to be a strong woman from her. Even if neither of us ever knew it, she raised me from birth teaching me in the ways. She taught me how to shave for crying out loud, when puberty started ruining my mental well-being. She always told me I was beautiful, and this is something I can never repay. She is quite possibly one of the greatest people I have ever known, and even now as 30 year old pubescent woman grappling with hormones and the future, I can still depend on my mother to help me get through the hardest days and the terrible nights.

The alter of my work

I have poured my soul into this

This construct of my own existence.

I have bled through my tears

Crying before the mirror.

The totality of all my exertion

That which I worship above all.

I'm going to miss you when we're gone