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occasionalmagicandcurses · 3 years

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its been about 10 years

But I’m back. I did therapy for a year and honestly all it got me was agitated. I remember the days of yore when I would sit on my tumblr home page, refreshing constantly and making new friends through whatever current horrible experience I could put to words in my life at the time. Whether it was the milso shit I was on (he was a cheater, and I was just a girlfriend), or the love for pokemon or anime, I always made a friend. I’m still friends with so many of them to this day. I’d skip whatever homework I had to do and meticulously pick at the code for my theme, calling to the days even further back of myspace and (dare I say it...) xanga. I learned about my internet etiquette through here. I paid way too much attention to the rules and regulations, even dipping my toes in some internet drama. I was an early witness to the birth of “cancel culture.” It was here that I developed my dreams and material aspirations for the future.

And 10 years has flown by. I’ve got two degrees, a staggering amount of debt, a few more earth shattering relationships, and 1 cross country move to show for it.

They say that no matter where you go, you are there. Whoever they are, they’re right. And it is draining to have to carry myself around everywhere. I can never seem to be completely upright. My anxiety says “gnaw on your fingers until they bleed” or “buy one more pair of shoes” or “shake your leg until even your dog looks at you funny” in an attempt to mitigate some of the pressure in my jaw. My depression follows up with the gambit of “you have no self control” or “no one will want you” or “just hold off on eating, it’s not going to do anything for you.”

I turned 30 years old 3 weeks. Feels the same as 29, except now 40 is 10 years around the corner, instead of 11. None the less terrifying or grim. I have an awful spending problem, undoubtedly an overcorrection from my poverty-stricken childhood. Ever seen cheese that doesn’t melt? I learned how to count from the monopoly money-esque appearance of food stamps. My mom would make it a game. I found it fun until we started having to leave baskets of food at the register because something was wrong.

Trauma, its delicious, I swear. We bounced from home to home, changing schools by the semester and allowing my brain to continue to develop on its fucked up axis. I struggled to make friends and struggled even harder to want to try. I knew it would all blow up anyway. I told the most elaborate lies to hide my home life. I’d say my grandmother was a doctor, and I’d hide that I couldn’t afford breakfast at school by saying I was trying to lose weight, or not have a full stomach for band practice later in the day.

I got on the overcompensation train pretty early. I finally got tired of my mom’s repetitive failures and walked out of the door at 17. I never lived with my mom again. I never want to be like her. To be 53 and living paycheck to paycheck with two kids I never wanted and still can’t parent correctly? Count me out.

I burned through college and graduate school. I have a career I am pretty kickass at. I love what I do.

I decided to change directions (and time zones) about 3 months ago. When I say I was bored, I was b o r e d. Professionally, I felt stuck. I had a job I was good at, but didn’t want to move up in. It was lacking the spark that made me love my field to begin with. I was living in a city I’d been in for the past 20 years. I was a year past the breakup from a relationship that literally and mentally broke me in two. Absolutely devastated me. I sometimes cry for that life on occasion. It was pure misery and happiness that I don’t think I’ll ever experience again. I still feel I’m not worthy of one or the other. There’s always a price. Both, or it isn’t real. Comparison (and infidelity) were the thieves there. My unbridled anger too.

I packed up my car and my dogs and took the mom that told me she would have had a great military career if it weren’t for me and drove halfway across the country. I flew her back home a week later, and not a minute sooner. Being in close quarters with her always stews a rage that turns me into not the daughter that’s pushed for 25 years for her to be a mom, but the daughter that hates the mother she never had. I drove the entire trip and never really could quantify why I wanted her to come, except to say it might have been a latch ditch effort of the little girl that wanted a parent. I could have done it by myself, and I probably should have.

Getting away has been amazing. I haven’t worked in almost a month and this was the break I didn’t know I needed. I saved up some, but obviously not enough, and now I get to pay the piper in a few weeks. I’m doing stupid things like riding my tax refund and the bonus for the job that I over performed at for 3 years to pull me through. I already got another job but good lord the background check has been sucking the life out of me. I am not a murderer, but I guess they need to figure that out for themselves. I’m slightly nervous for this job. My family and friends think I’m working now, but I am enjoying doing whatever the fuck I want. I blew off the job I got that motivated me to come out here because of the lack of money and transparency.

Then I made the absolute mistake of swiping on tinder. I’m not sure what I get out of doing it, aside from fleeting attention from guys who like to talk about their sex drive, but I did it anyway. I’m not ready for a relationship, and I know it. So I’m forcing it with this guy who works too much and looks 10 years older than he actually is because of it. He smells nice though. I sold him to my gf’s as “he’s great!” and he is. Just not for me. I’ve only had sex with him once because I’m honestly not all that attracted to him. His fingers are chubby, but he’s not fat. I don’t like how he touches me, and I wish he was more dominant. Not in a “smack me around” type of way, but a “hey I wanna do this thing and I’m gonna show you and not really leave it to discussion” kinda way. He could make a great friend, so I’m probably going to go ahead and nip that sooner rather than later.

I think I want attention, but I don’t. I honestly just want to mind my business and start the process of fixing all of my fucking problems. And actually finish.

#30something #life #help #thoughts #broke #failure #starting #fresh start #new start #thirty years old #thirty #aging #time #california #texas #success #fail #new #trying again #depression #anxiety

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faithfully-limping · 4 years

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hello world

So, I figured I should make an intro post, and talk about why I’m here :)

I’m Ian or Casey, a Christian who also happens to be a pansexual trans man. I am a student earning my Associates in CIT, specifically Programming. I love hiking and nature, reading, art, and food. Like many, I was raised in a conservative fundamentalist evangelical Christian household and environment. My family is non-denominational and went to many, many different churches with different beliefs through the years.

As a result, despite having what I see as loving parents, I received a lot of unhealthy and confusing theology growing up that is hard to shake. The most notable of which, of course, is that queer people will all suffer in Hell for all of eternity.

I was a fundamentalist and a homophobe doing evangelicalism for the majority of my young life. I told people in McDonalds and other various public places that Jesus would save them at age ten. I was sheltered; I figured queer people were only a thing in dark corners and hidden, shady places full of depraved people and criminals. If they existed at all.

Then, more and more friends I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing as “evil” began to come out to me. I lost a loved one, and experienced the near-suicide of another loved one, right around the time I began to have feelings for my same-sex best friend. For two years I prayed for God to take those feelings away, and received what I thought was silence.

My conclusion?

There must be no loving, intelligent higher power. Surely they must have heard my desperate cries if they were there.

For years, then, all throughout high school and early college, I was in limbo and struggling. I had absolutely no direction in my life and very little love for myself or others. Sure, I discovered I was queer, and took on what I’m sure is a familiar attitude of pride- I was born this way and fuck anyone who says otherwise, you know? If I burn in some god’s underworld, fine, because it’s not like I can change who I am. I tried that. Later on, when I began to deal with the pain of rejection and queerphobia in more mature ways, I tried other beliefs, other religions, other practices. I love them all, and I believe they all have their parts to play in others’ lives, just as they did in mine, but I could not escape a different call.

I constantly worried about Hell, about life after death, and most compellingly, a higher purpose. I’d had a messy coming out to my family, a horrible relationship and breakup, pain was coming in at all sides. I had dropped out of college twice, lost a job, and ended up doing what I thought at the time was nothing. I now see it was recovery.

I felt pretty awful about myself, still living with my parents, bringing in very little money selling products online, finding very little joy in my day to day life. I’d once loved art, nature, animals, reading. I couldn’t muster up the energy to do those things anymore. I tried escaping through food, through Netflix, through gaming. I then tried self improvement, business, and art. I tried going back to school.

There was always something missing.

In fall of 2019, a family member lost a job, and decided to pursue some much-needed disability. Our household income, which was six figures, was halved. In an attempt to lower our rent and bills, we started looking for a house to buy and own. It sounded crazy, but for a month we searched and got no results. Nothing was in our price range and safe and big enough for a family of four.

One day, I witnessed my dad praying in his truck.

The very same day, we got our dream home (a fenced in yard, a fireplace, a quiet neighborhood), the house we are currently living in, for a price lower than what we expected to pay.

This event came off the back of several points of pain and stress in my life- facing the reality of death and worrying about that. Returning to school. Family health issues. Then, a miracle providing for us.

I couldn’t ignore God calling me any longer.

But, I was still queer. I’d already tried suppressing and ignoring that, I’d tried praying it away. I’d tried ignoring faith. I’d even tried integrating the two before, but got so hung up and distressed about the Side A vs Side B debate at the time, that I just couldn’t bear to face faith and sexuality together. I went back into limbo.

Why was this time different?

Maybe it was because that was when I discovered Queer Theology. It certainly was a big part of it. Maybe it was because a friend had bought me The Screwtape Letters just months before. Maybe it was because my brush with self improvement as the center of my life had taught me to weigh things more maturely, to stay emotionally centered, and to seek to be virtuous and contribute something to the world. Or maybe it was because I discovered Ask A Mortician that one day, or saw I Can Only Imagine in theaters with my family on the best vacation of my life a few years prior. Maybe it was the journaling Bible my mother gifted me as a surprise (a genuine surprise- I was a Pagan at the time) on my 21st Easter. Or, or, or...

Do you see what I’m getting at with that paragraph? Maybe it wasn’t just one thing. Maybe everything, everything in my life has connected in an intensely miraculous and complex way to lead me to that decision to ask God to come back into my life.

Everything. Every movie, book, video, game, person, bite of food, sight of nature... All of it shaped me into this person who is able to say today that I am queer, I am loved by God, and I love him back. I don’t have all the answers yet of what my life should look like, how I should live this love, but I want to build my relationship with my Lord. I have returned to prayer, I am learning to appreciate and embrace the depth and beauty of the Bible in new ways. I have been journaling, but I guess in typing all this out and posting it, I’m finally strong enough to seek out one of the pieces I am missing; community. Putting myself out there is terrifying, and I still have a lot of spiritual baggage to work through, but I’m here.

And I see now that God’s silence in response to my attempts to “pray the gay away” was an answer.

It was a “No.”

It was a “My grace, my mercy, my love is enough.”

It was a “Have faith in me.”

#queer christian #first post #intro #hell #religion #homophobia #long post

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