I Still Believe It/The Most Homophobic Thing Someone Can Do

It’s taken me a long time to process and realize this

But by far the most homophobic and transphobic things

That have happened to me

Are in my closest personal relationships.

The most homophobic and transphobic experiences I have had was

Not really my parents— it was

My relationship with my ex girlfriend.

She now lives and rewrites her life as if

I was never in it, which

For a short relationship

Would make sense, but it was almost 5 years—

Three of which were spent living together.

She rewrote her college years

Gauging me out entirely

I am certain, now

Despite the omnipresent embarrassment and

Guilt and shame of having spent

So much of my life with someone

Who treated me like shit—

I am certain that I am entirely at fault

My own self-loathing and desperation

Keeping me prisoner from self-respect

But it didn’t help to be

Gender shamed, sex-shamed

Body shamed, belittled, berated

Publicly degraded

Often demonstrating to my friends that I am

Something less than all of us.

It took me a few years of transitioning

To love myself enough

To see how much shit I used to put up with.

Tiger King’s Saff gives me the same vibes tbh

IMO something I’ve heard

Many queer people discuss

Is the pain of having a lover

That denies they ever knew you.

I don’t think there is much

Anyone else could do

Than what she put me through,

And yet the worst is that she convinced me

For years that I am solely to blame

So much so that I still believe it.

What I know is true—

She would be miserable

Whether or not she had ever met me

But as for me, I cannot say the same.

I was so full of love to give

Yet she berated me for everything

All of her insecurities which were

All the things.

I wish I had had enough self respect

To leave her in the shithole from whence she came

Yet for whatever reason

I chose to go down there and

Help, until she crippled me, and climbed over

My corpse.

I still think

The most homophobic thing anyone can do

Is deny they were ever even with you.