Heartwell

          I'm sure there's a multitude of things I could blame my inability to be vulnerable on but I can almost exactly pinpoint the moment that the gate seemed to close for good. It was a sunny day in Hartwell Georgia, March 6th 2021; sometime after 4:05pm.The only reason I know that is because of an innocent snapchat I’d saved the same day only minutes before shit hit the fan. The day had started totally normal for what it was. My parents had taken me and my two sisters to visit my cousin’s new vacation house in Georgia. These cousins, the Renegars, weren’t our blood relatives but they were my parents' best friends so I grew up regarding them like they were my family. The oldest, Ian, and I were closer than any of the rest of our families. I regarded him as a brother even if I knew he would never truly see me as a sister. He kept me alive during my worst and told the right people when I made threats to end my life. And while I was livid when I first learned he betrayed me, I’d go on to be endlessly grateful for his fast action later in life. 
          He took me on my first date and he was the first to politely friendzone me at the tender age of 14. As I look back, I’m sure I was in love with him then but as I came to learn later we were too different to ever work in any reality. So when we took a quick trip to the grocery store for ice cream and pizza I never could have imagined how it would end. Truthfully I don’t remember much of that fateful trip to the store as my mind has always sheltered me from the worst, but I remember snapshots and of course the whitehot rage and betrayal I felt at the words he was spitting at me. I sent him into the store without me due to his adamant stance against masks and my insistence that I not be seen with the idiot without a mask in the middle of a pandemic. I could see the anger in his eyes as he left the car and I knew he was going to get me back as soon as he got back into the car. He started to complain loudly about gas prices and how the new president had everything to do with it. This topic was an inflammatory thing to talk about between the two of us as I knew he was an avid Trump supporter and I was very much not. I never really cared about gas prices but I was too naive to see he was baiting me. He wanted an argument so he could “own” me and make me look stupid because I embarassed him about not wearing a mask. I don’t even remember most of the argument but I’m sure it was stupid points about how much worse trump was but somehow it landed in a very personal territory; Lgbtq+ rights.Now I’ve been openly queer since I was 14 and Ian, of course, was the first to know. He was also the first person close to me to tell me it was sinful and disgusting. 
          But over the many years I had been out, Ian had seemingly made his peace with my sexuality. He never openly supported it or told me it was okay to be gay but he would give me advice about girls and let me rant to him about my crazy exes. I took this as acceptance but it was this particular argument that I learned I shouldn't have. He started to spit the same shit he used to about how it was an act against god and how evil it was. That it was a disease and that he prayed for me everyday to come into the light again. He told me that he endured my sinful homosexuality because we were family but he wanted me to know he would never endorse it. He told me that my love for that girl, no matter how pure, was perverted. I started to panic but I had no way out. We were in a car alone and 20 minutes away from our destination. I started screaming at him to shut up and he just started screaming back telling me he wouldn’t shut up because he “wouldn't be silenced”. As I continued screaming for him to shut up, I desperately tried to hold back tears and stay as calm as possible. I turned my metal music up in the car so it would drown him out but he just turned it back down and started screaming at me again. I remember being terrified of him at that moment. The boy who had given me endless comfort in my youth turned into this man who instilled nothing but terror in me. I could see the blood vessels in his neck and the redness of his face as he screamed at me. It was all I could do to not cry in front of him. I didn’t want to let him win, so I did what I’d gotten used to doing and I shoved everything deep down. I locked my emotions in a steel box and gave him the fucking key. This is where I truly don’t remember anything. We had 10 minutes left of our drive and I sat there still. I didn’t talk, I didn't cry, I don't even think I blinked. Maybe he had stopped screaming or maybe he had started to try to comfort me, I have no clue. His screams just echoed in my mind as my heart bled out from a million knives wedged in by those hateful words. 
          Sometimes I wonder what Ian would say to me about being transmasculine but every part of me knows that finding out is a bad idea. When we arrived at the vacation home again, Ian left the car with the groceries and I didn’t follow him. I sat in the passenger seat of that car for maybe five minutes before I started laughing. That didn’t last long though. Soon I was hysterically crying and I would have been screaming if I wasn’t trying so hard to be quiet. I was so determined to not let him win I tried to push back everything that he had said to me and tell myself that it didn’t matter. But it did, it mattered so much and I physically couldn't handle it. In my moment of weakness I texted my mother and asked her to come to the car. My mother has never been good at comforting me but at this moment I just wanted my mama. And comfort me she did, to my absolute surprise. She held me while I was hysterical and I could see the genuine concern in her eyes as her little girl spilled everything that had just happened to her. I saw the anger and determination in her eyes as she went back into the house to grab my father. My dad came running out of the house with my mom as she frantically explained the tears running down my face and for a moment I saw Ian’s face on my father's. His eyes went wide and his face went red with anger. But soon he was running back into the house screaming for Ian. Screaming that he was going to “beat the shit” out of the motherf---er who said such awful things to me. I remember it feeling so strange to have my parents stand up for me, stand by me. They had never been overtly supportive of my queerness so I was sure I was on my own. I often compared it to “don’t ask, don’t tell” but in this moment they were my only lifeline. This is still the only moment in my life where my parents have truly had my back; and they even doubled back a few days after this incident so I’m not sure if this even counts. I remember my mom guiding me inside and I saw Ian jump from where he was watching tv on the outside patio as my dad ran for him screaming. Uncle John ran to get in between Ian and my dad as Aunt Marisa took another large sip of her second mojito. The world was a blur between my tears and the wails I was unable to stifle. Soon everything seemed to have been explained and I shook my mother off and went back outside and sat in the car. I told everyone to not follow me. That I just needed a minute to compose myself. My dad took Ian out back again and I assume gave him the biggest talking to that he had ever received. Uncle John looked devastated and Aunt Marisa looked livid while drinking that stupid mojito as I left the house again. I just wanted out. I had known that these cousins were extremely against queer people and pretty much every human right there is to fight for except wearing a white coat and hood. 
          Before this incident I had strongly identified with the fact that every human is a good human at their core, but I could physically feel this belief slip from my fingertips as I watched my own family turn their backs so violently just because my existence was no longer convenient enough for them. And I told them as much. Things were not okay but they were settled. I had spent a half hour in the car calming myself and I had almost succeeded when my parents approached me. They asked me to talk to Aunt Marisa and Uncle John. They said if I “opened their hearts” then I could open my Aunt’s and my Uncle’s. 
          If I could go back and do things in my life differently this would be the only thing I changed. In this edited version of history I would have said no and I would’ve asked to go back home. My parents, while upset, would’ve agreed and we would've left that minute. But in actuality I agreed. God! There is nothing in this world I’d wish for other than the power to change my answer to that formidable and certainly undefeatable ask. The car ride was enough. I didn’t need to further traumatize myself with this pit of vipers. But these people were my family, I loved them, and I desperately wanted them to love me too. I wanted them to love the real me, not this persona I had adopted for years to appease them. I think I knew I wouldn't succeed but something in me needed to try anyway. As I write this, I miss the person I used to be then. The person who would give someone infinite chances because they believed that it was worth it. I was soft in the best way and kind in the worst, but I can’t travel back in time nor call forth the person I used to be
So I dried my tears, collected my thoughts and I went inside. I readied my best arguments against whatever religious bullshit they were about to throw at me. And and as a southern, queer, teenaged taurus with anger issues, I had a LOT of counterarguments to religiously based homophobia. The conversation started out fine, It really did, It went so fine that for a second I thought that I had a chance. Ian was still in tears sitting at the kitchen counter. Uncle John was rubbing his wife’s arm comfortingly as she poured yet another mojito. I wasn’t quite sure exactly what went into a mojito but I knew enough to know that this one, Aunt Marisa’s third, was particularly strong. With my luck, this “fine” conversation was coming to an end, and the real one began. Aunt Marisa had finally joined the party, drunk and angry. She started out with the infamous “We love you, not the sin” and of course me and my teenage rage said “You don’t love me. Don’t lie” This interaction is one of the only ones that I remember verbatim because of how proud I was of myself for finally saying what I wanted to Aunt Marisa. She has antagonized me all my life about my clothes, my friends, how much I ate, and pretty much anything there is to antagonize. I was so done with her. Aunt Marisa took to my statement like oil on water and started another long winded sermin about whether the sin is separate from a person and that gay people don’t happen naturally so of course this is something I choose. But my comment about how she doesn’t love me seemed to really affect her. She kept trying to say “I love you” and “You know we love you” and I just kept rebutting with “You don’t. Don’t lie” “You don’t. Don’t lie.” When I started crying again, this is what repeated in my head. And as Aunt Marisa started to bring up her gay brother and how she doesn’t endorse his sin but she still loves him, that mantra just kept repeating. Thankfully I had the restraint to not point out that in all the years I’ve known Aunt Marisa my whole life she has never once mentioned a brother. I also was smart enough to not voice the fact that I was sure Aunt Marisa’s brother did not love her, the same way I couldn’t allow myself to love my older sister for the same reasons.
Luckily my relationship with my older sister is much better now, but when she thought the same about gay people as Aunt Marisa, I could not find it in myself love her the way I loved my younger sister, who accepted me wholeheartedly. This wasn’t some revenge plan against her, I wasn’t punishing her for her beliefs, it was protection for me against the inevitable betrayal I would face from her if the choice between her religion and me ever arose.
          As strong as I was, standing there in tears trying to convince my family that I deserved more than eternal hell, I eventually broke again. My words became large heaves of breath and my tears pulled another wall of blur over my vision as I settled back into a panic attack. Aunt Marisa chose this moment to stop loving me and started screaming at me about her religious freedom. Her face was red with alcohol induced anger as she screamed at me for daring to try to silence her religion. She said many hurtful things that I can’t even remember enough to repeat but I remember her words made me feel so incredibly hated and unloved. At this moment, I was surprised she could be so outwardly cruel. I had known she was a bitch of a woman who just wanted to ruin every little girl the same way she had been ruined herself but it hurt to hear her turn this on me. Once that knife of betrayal hit my chest I said a cruel thing that I can't find it in me to regret it.

                                                                                                   “I thought you said you loved me?”

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          In retrospect, this was the moment I gave any chance of victory I had away. This was the moment that I decided to be vindictive instead of educating them but no amount of retrospect can make me believe I would have succeeded if I hadn’t pulled out my own knife. At those fateful words, shit hit the fan yet again. Aunt Marisa stopped screaming at me about religious freedom and just started insulting me. My dad yelled at her to shut up and let me speak which didn’t help because at that point Uncle John started yelling at my dad to respect his wife. There was a lot of male posturing and I remember being so confused. I thought who gives a shit about respect at this point, after you’ve been yelling at a teenager who just wants to exist freely? So with my dad in an almost physical fight with his best friend of 25 years, my mom hugging me as I was practically hysterical again, and Aunt Marisa still screaming while drunk on those stupid mojitos, the only person left to defend me was Ian. The one who started it all. And to my surprise, he did just that. He jumped up from his seat at the bar, with his tear streaked face, and screamed at our dads to shut up. He pointed out that no one cared about their wives and then he turned to his own mother and told her to stop screaming and listen. I remember him stubley moving the rest of that third mojito away from her after everything had calmed for a third time. I no where near forgave him for his stunt in the car but I thought it was rather ironic that the brother that had started the single worst event that has ever happened to me would also be the one to save me from it. 
          In earlier years, when I had much more hope for Ian and I’s relationship, I had asked him to get a parabatai rune with me once we were both 18. The parabatai rune was from one of the books we read together, it was a blood bond that made the two recipients brothers in everything but blood. An oath to always be by each other's side. And while this idea was scrapped after this incident, I still think Ian and I had this toxic brotherly love for one another and it’s why I think he came to my rescue even when I interfered with everything he had ever believed in and against the parents that relied on him to run their family.
          But unfortunately, Ian’s last minute save wasn’t enough to resolve the issue. In short, I gave up. I can’t remember the words I used but I told them that I was done debating. I was done fighting for my life in this room that was supposed to be filled with those that love me. Everyone around me took this retreat as a resolution. My family and theirs continued about their vacation like nothing had happened. Sure the atmosphere was tense, but the atmosphere has been tense since I came out. The smiles have been fake, the hugs have been empty. The life I had lived with these people was a lie, and now I knew that. This wasn’t new. The only newness was my acceptance of this hard truth. I now had an understanding that no one here was ever going to save me from anything ever again, I had somehow spent every favor I had acquired over the years. Ian apologized, eyes downcast, but made it clear that he would always choose his family’s beliefs over me. I understood, but it hurt. Uncle John also came to apologize but expressed that he didn’t understand how to make things better. Nothing was said about the drunk Aunt Marisa. And while I didn’t know this at the moment, my parents would turn on me just days later, blaming me for their loss of 25 years of friendship with these horrific people. But nevertheless I was on my own from here on out and I knew that. I had always had a feeling that my parents would turn on me once again and of course I was right. I hate that I was right. I’d like to say I took this ultimate betrayal by my family well, but I would very much be lying. My household had always been a “fend for yourself” environment, even between me and my sisters, but now this idea of needing to be able to handle everything alone extended to the outside world as well. I could no longer believe in the goodness of others and their kind words always fell flat at my feet. Help was not a thing I could rely on anymore, and vulnerability was no longer something I could afford.