a brief journey through heartache
a manifesto for a better tomorrow
I'm not sure how to start this, so I'm just going to word vomit. If it doesn't make sense, it just doesn't make sense.
Before anything here is misconstrued in any way, I want to preface this writing by saying that, while I identify as queer and trans/non-binary, I recognize that I have an immense amount of privilege as a male presenting white person. I do not want anyone to think that by my writing this that I am diminishing the struggles or lived experiences of anyone that is different from me in any way. I am incredibly fortunate to have a stable job, a roof over my head, a partner that I love with my whole heart and who loves me immensely, and a chosen family that I would not trade for anything in the world. I'm just need to put my frustrations somewhere. Nothing here is designed by me as the writer to be interpreted by you as the reader as a cry for help.
This is a lengthy piece. I'd love for you to stick around.
Y'all, I'm tired. I've lived a hard fucking life. And now that I'm in a stable, peaceful place for the first time in the almost 35 trips I've taken around the sun, I don't know how to handle it.
I, like so many others, am the child of a broken family. Adopted at a young age by my aunt because my 19 year old single mother was unprepared to take on the job of child raising. Being separated from my siblings. Living through divorce. Despised by my family for being born out of wedlock, and later in life, for being queer. Being forced in to the role of a caretaker for people who would rather I be dead.
I remember the very first time I was told "you're mature for your age." A police officer told me that as I sat on the couch, motionless, while my mom and sister were wailing hysterically just feet away from me, after my sisters father performed a drive by shooting of the house we were hiding from him in.
I was 4 years old.
Shortly after that was when I was adopted. My aunt raised me basically solo. Her husband was an abusive alcoholic. I had to watch as she suffered abuse on top of cancer and struggles with her mental health. I never knew a moment of peace, outside of the wee hours of the morning when it felt like the whole world was asleep but me.
I went from being her child to being her caretaker. Her confidant. A bottomless well of love and affection that she could pull from whenever she was feeling down. A refuse bin that she could crumple up and toss all of her problems into whenever she was overwhelmed with life.
A child.
Learning all about the deepest darkest secrets of her marriage and about our family. Learning things that no child had any business learning. Learning about all of the horrors of the world. Learning that at any moment in time, your light could go out. She was supposed to protect me, shield me from all of that. But instead, she plopped me into the drivers seat with no lessons.
Things didn't get better as I got older. Like so many other queer people, I wasn't granted the privilege of having an easy time of things. I was bullied mercilessly by my cousins for being a faggot. I didn't know what that word meant then. Kids at school also called me faggot. They bullied me for being poor, for being raised by a single parent, for the way I walked, for the way I talked, for the way I just existed.
I came out to my aunt when I was 13. Suddenly the person who told me everything, couldn't tell me anything. Complete radio silence for what felt like eons. Days stretched into weeks into months. I was on a deserted island, and everything told me that I had put myself there.
I've felt wrong for as long as I can remember. For being a faggot. For being different.
I didn't get the chance to emotionally and mentally mature as I got older. I didn't have the capacity, nor the time. I started relying on substances early in my teens as a way to escape reality and to separate myself from the never ending hurricane of life happening around me.
At 15, a conversation over dinner with my aunt and my birth mother. A dinner that I had shopped for with money I made from cutting grass for our neighbor. A dinner I had prepared entirely solo.
"It's time you started making your own way in this world. We'll see you on the weekends."
My birth mother had decided to spend a year traveling the country, and my aunt had found a new love in a different state.
Suddenly, on top of being in school, navigating my queer identity, dealing with substance use and what would later become an eating disorder, I had to work. It was either that or the streets or the foster care system. What many say were some of the best memories they have, most of mine have been blocked out. Turns out, that kind of thing happens when you spend close to 4 years surviving on a combination of 3 hours of sleep a night, drugs, alcohol, Newports, and 1 meal a day.
At 16, a phone call from my sister. I had just gotten off of work, and was at a friends house. My birth mother had been home for just a few weeks. She was dead. I ran, barefoot, a mile and a half up a barely paved road to find her already gone. Now, I had to become a parent to my two younger siblings, at that time 13 and 9.
I scraped out of high school by the skin of my teeth. I was 17 when I finished. As soon as I graduated, I ran as fast as I could. A friend I had from Twitter offered me haven, and I plotted my escape. I didn't say a single word to anyone. I left my cell phone behind. I took nothing but the clothes on my back, the money on my person, and a can of Diet Coke from the fridge. I cracked it open as soon as I was out of the city I grew up in. To this day, that Diet Coke remains the sweetest thing that's ever crossed my lips.
I spent the next 4 years bouncing between houses. Walking to and from work. Wearing clothes two sizes too big for me because I had to take what was given to me. Sleeping on the floor. Still struggling with substance abuse. At the height of my eating disorder. I weighed 160 pounds soaking wet, and if you saw me now, you likely wouldn't believe that. But despite all of that, I was fighting back against the world any way I could.
As time went by, I reconnected with my aunt. I went back to the town I grew up in. I moved back in with her and unfortunately ended up back in to the same position I was in before I left. Her new husband was abusive in a different kind of way. Every day was screaming and fighting until the early hours of the morning. I felt like I had to intervene, to protect her in some way, in the way that she had failed to do for me when I was young. I could see that she was at her wits end, and I felt compelled to make a change.
8 years went by. They felt like 80.
During that time, I was fortunate enough to land a role that allowed me to travel for a bit. I'd never left the South before. Suddenly, I saw that life could be different in more progressive cities. I made a friend that I still have to this day.
I knew I had to escape again. I traveled to every major city I could afford to, as much as I could. Minneapolis, Chicago, Baltimore, New York City, San Diego, Houston. Seattle.
I had met someone through a friend of the friend I mentioned above. We hit it off and started a long distance relationship that became serious. They lived just outside of Seattle. I had been through a long string of shitty ass relationships, but this one felt real. Suddenly, I had a new way out of the old hell.
December of 2020, after saving for what felt like an eternity, I bought myself a brand new car for my 29th birthday. A red 2021 Kia Sportage. I named him G'Raha Kia. I spent the entirety of January tying up loose ends.
I packed G'Raha Kia to the brim, and on February 4th at 8am, I left my hometown for good. I drove for 12 hours a day, just me and all of my worldly possessions on the open road. I arrived in Seattle on February 8th at 11:30am.
I drove through downtown Seattle, up through Belltown, past the Space Needle, and up to Kerry Park in Queen Anne. I still remember my first taste of that trademark crisp Seattle winter air, what it felt like when it hit my face as I got out of the car. Being able to take in the entire city to my left, the Puget Sound to my right, and Mount Rainier straight in front of me.
I felt like I was taking the first breath I'd ever taken in my whole entire life. Like I'd never see anything more beautiful ever again. I sat down on a bench, and I let the sounds of the city fill my brain, the cold winter air completely saturate my lungs, and stared off at Mount Rainier for what felt like eternity, searing it's snow covered visage into my mind to make sure I'd never forget it as long as I lived.
I was here. Now I had to figure it out.
Without getting too much into the details, that relationship didn't work out. We're still friends. I don't think I could ever let them out of my life, even after what I went through with them. They helped me achieve something that I don't think I could have accomplished on my own.
I felt like broken goods. I felt damaged, like I was, and always had been, a problem that was beyond repair. I felt like a failure, like everything that I had done up to that point in my life was meaningless, and that I was never going to be of any value to anyone, let alone to myself. I've never told anyone this, but at the time, I seriously considered ending it all.
But then I met my current partner, Jomi. I cannot for the life of me put in to words how he makes me feel. Every single good thing you could ever say about someone, I can say about him. He's the first thing on my mind when I wake up in the morning, and the last thing I think about as I'm falling asleep. We've been together for a little over 4 years now. He's been there for me through some very dark times, and has stood by me, and together, pulled me out of one of the deepest depressions that I've ever been in, something that no one else has done for me before. I've never had someone in my life who has been there for me unconditionally in the way that he has. I don't think I'd be here still if it weren't for him.
If you've made it this far, good news, my dear sweet reader!
As I am writing this, I have been sober for 161 days.
I no longer feel the need to rely on substances to numb out the wonders of life that I have been given since starting over in Seattle. The wonders that I have been shutting myself off from for all these years.
For the first time in my life, I have the space to grow as a person. As my own person. I'm learning to navigate the world around me, and am learning to hold space for my emotions and learning to give myself grace when I let them get the better of me. I am finding ways every single day to become the best version of myself that I possibly can be, for my benefit and for the benefit of the people that I hold near to my heart.
If you've noticed, there have been a few words that have been intentionally bolded in this writing.
Wrong. Problem. Faggot. Child. Existed.
But out of those five words, those five words that each hold so much individual meaning, one word is the most important to me out of all of them.
Existed.
To have being in a specified place or with respect to understood limitations or conditions. As in the past tense of the word exist.
I am making the conscious decision each and every waking moment of each and every single day to exist. To soak up life. To enjoy the minute details of everything. To see the world, the people, the music, the art, the food, the culture, all of it all around me, with a child like wonder that was denied from me in my youth.
I titled this piece Wrong. Problem. Faggot. Child. Exist(ed). for a reason. I'm rebuking some words, reclaiming some others, and giving one new meaning.
Wrong: I was never "wrong". My existence was never "wrong". I am the way I am the way you are the way they are the way we all are. Very few people are truly "wrong". I rebuke it.
Problem: I was never "a problem". The way I was stripped of life was the "problem". The way society treats people who don't fit the narrative is the "problem". I rebuke it.
Faggot: I am a "faggot," loud and fucking proud. That word hasn't hurt me for a very long time. I reclaim it, and let it give me power in the darkness.
Child: I am, despite my age, allowing my heart to "child". Let it be used in jest, not to by those with a superiority complex demean me. I reclaim it, and let it give me wonder.
Exist(ed): I "exist(ed)". I "existed" in the shadows of my past. I "exist" in who I am in the now. I give it new meaning, and hope it carries us forward.
If you ever feel like someone is not in your corner, if you ever feel like it's you against the world, here's a friendly reminder:
I'm here for you. I love you, unconditionally. I always will.
I say that to you, my dear sweet reader, as much as I'm saying that to my 4 year old self. I hope you make the same choice to exist as I am.
"Keep us simple in the heart
Empty like a cup
Compassionate as a spring of water"
-George & David Lewis, Spring of Water, 2007
with love, warmth, happiness, always,
~Taylor~