Hell Followed With Us

Do you believe in God? I do, please stop, there's so much blood

Being transgender is who you are, and the pain is what the outside does to you. The pain is what happens when you and the world go at each other's throats.

I'm done begging for a scrap of respect-I am done with those who enact suffering, and I am done with the sons of bitches who stand back and let it happen.

dysphoria had to wrap its hands around my neck and hold me down, baptism in drowning, before I faced the fact that living as a girl would kill me long before the Angels did.

I won't be okay, but I will be better

I think it hits us all at the same time that maybe we'll live long enough to grow up.

What's going on in my head? What do I believe? How much of it is me, and how much of it was put there? I don't know.

Hell has followed us onto Earth, and I am the monster that has brought it forth.

I have no sense of myself anymore besides the fact that I am not what I once was. I'm too tired to see my body from the eyes of others, in the terrible way trans-ness demands--always existing both inside and outside myself, judging as an observer. Now, I am a pile of flesh on the floor, everything hurts, and I do not give a shit.

It’s amazing how locking down one key demographic, white people in rich countries, means you can get your claws into the world so tightly, you can tear it all to pieces around you.

The first thing Dad told me—when Mom said I’d see the Lord’s plan for my womanhood eventually, that she’d carve it into me if she had to—he told me I’m a man, and I fought for it, and nobody can take that from me.

I'd burn anything down if you so much asked

He'd spent so long memorizing the rules of interacting with people that he could twist them to his advantage. There are scripts people don't even realize they follow, and if you fit that script, or tweak it just enough to throw them off, they drop their guard.

Theo snorts. “How did I manage to land a straight guy?” “How dare you imply I’m heterosexual. I am disgusted and appalled.

I've taken what they've given me and turned it into a mockery of them. I will turn it into what destroys them. If they want me to be a monster one step closer to God, that's fine. In what world was their God ever a benevolent one?

My flesh is a single, perfect, God-given fig meant to feed all the hungry. I am their savior in Angel whites and skin peeling off the bone.

I can't keep running like this. I am so, so tired.

Are you trans?” Salvador blinks. “Uh.” “Wait, no.” I can’t just ask people if they’re trans. “I shouldn’t have…” “No, it’s fine,” Salvador says. “I mean, yeah, of course. I’m super trans. Like, an honestly heretical amount of trans. Why?

I tried to feel it. I did, I swear. I reached for it, squeezed my eyes shut as tight as I could and begged for it. I pretended I was stretching my hands out into the darkness behind my eyelids, fingers splayed wide, trying to find even the barest touch of something out there in the abyss. To feel the warmth Mom always assured me was waiting once I accepted God into my heart. There was nothing. Always nothing.

I’m super trans. Like, an honestly heretical amount of trans. Why?

The Angels were made to be the servants of God, but I am the wrath, the flaming sword, the six-winged beast. Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

Bein transgender is who you are, and the pain is what the outside does to you. The pain is what happens when you and the world go at each other's throats.

Theo stared at the raw tattoos the way little boys look at soldiers coming home from war. I stared at them the way little girls look at that one uncle their sisters tell them to stay away from.

I had to pull a knife to keep from falling into his arms, begging him to forgive the transgression that made him raise a hand against me. He did it to me, he hurt me, and I wanted to apologize.

We are alive, we are alive, holy shit, we are alive.

Grief is a sin. Loss is God’s design, and to mourn the dead is to insult His vision. To despair at His will is sacrilege. How dare you betray His plan by grieving what was always His to take? Unfaithful, disgusting heretic, you should be hung from the wall so the nonbelievers will know what’s coming for them. Romans 6:23—for the wages of sin is death.

For the kids who sharpen their teeth and bite

It was just me, the words, and the air in my lungs.