I put my phone down slowly, at the same time you get home, just in time to watch me staring at the wall in shock and horror.

“You called them, didn’t you?” You shake your head, close the door, set your keys down in the bowl on the counter and proceed to quickly put away groceries.

You’re beautiful today by the way.  You’re beautiful every day. Black hair tied up in that quick and messy bun, the cupcake t-shirt and your second-favorite jeans.

“Well?” You sit next to me on the couch. “What did they say?”

“I spoke to my mother.”

You cluck your tongue. “The woman who carried you in her womb for nine months. And?”

“She said never to call her again, ever.”

You pat my leg, and memories of trauma flash through my mind.

Kicked out of the house when I was seventeen and first came out as both trans and gay, which should have been illegal. Their angry faces, my mother screaming at me, that I was an abomination and she wished I had never been born.

I thought, maybe, we could talk. I thought, maybe, now that I knew….

The doctor explaining why I could never conceive a child, because I was a … hermaphrodite, intersex, and some doctor – probably with my parents’ consent but maybe not – and oh the unspoken judgment on my doctor’s face – had chosen to perform “gender affirmation surgery” of the gender they thought I was, that THEY thought I should be.

And oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.

“Hey,” you say. “It’s okay. We can still have kids, but in some other way.”

But that still isn’t the full horror of it all. No. I stare at my phone.

“I still love them,” I say quietly. “Even if they hate me, if they would rather pretend I didn’t exist, I still love them.”

“I know. And you know what?” You take my face in your hand, turning me to face you. “That’s how they should feel about you. If they were really your parents, that is exactly how they should feel about you.”

***

Although this story is fictional, it’s based on the very real reality – to this day – that some babies born with both male/female organs at birth will have the undesirable organs removed against their wishes (obviously) and occasionally even without notifying their parents.

Anytime anyone says “gender affirmation surgery” is unnatural, or trans people are just making things up, I want to be like – so this is the 21st century. We have this ever-evolving body of knowledge called “science.” You might want to keep up. How do you like electricity and running water? Times change.

I have NO room for TERFs OR for people who say “oh because you are asexual, it must be easy to be celibate. At least you’re not gay, et cetera.” Nope. Being asexual means the Opposite of That. You take all that at least I’m not ____ exclusionary talk and you march it right back to that hateful space you got it from.

Oh and this story is also partially inspired by the many times my mother said she wished I had never been born. To me. As a child. Because of my cleft lip and palate. Things like that make it so I don’t have to imagine how it must feel to be told things like that. I KNOW.

Whew. Another rant. I really need to look at other people’s posts. I also … really just want to curl up in a corner until the world gets sane again. If ever.