~~old 2012 - 2018 diary livetweet thread (for venting)~~

[TW: abusive family, gaslighting, manipulation, possibly more idk yet]

https://twitter.com/SiegeFeathers/status/1276509704668295169

Here's last night's thread on the same stuff https://twitter.com/SiegeFeathers/status/1276310368785174533

24th July 2012, having just come out as liking female artists the day before.

Talking about my mum;
"I played her some more Tori Amos, and she said it’s really good, but for some reason she just doesn’t like listening to female singers for very long.

Hopefully it’s something that can be overcome, like me and Marmite. She said she doesn’t know why.

I really want to find out why or at least defeat it in some way. Mainly because -I’m- a female singer, and eventually -will have a female singing voice-."

Something that my mum does, and will probably mysteriously stop doing now I'm mentioning it on my Twitter, is,

when I sing now, in my singing voice which is -very- feminine coded,

if she knows the words to the song she'll sing along too, but deliberately deep

it feels like she's making fun of me.

And I already know the easy defence would be "this is contrast, her singing deep would contrast with your high voice", maybe paired with "her voice is quite deep anyway".

I feel what I feel. It feels like she's making fun of me.

Like, i don't just fucking pick these reactions out of nowhere, and i don't get angry or agitated for fun.

My singing - which i put time and effort into and which i actually consider my fucking -job-, and which unrelated other people have said is good - is a joke to her.

Anyway the reason she doesn't like listening to female singers for very long is 'cos she's ashamed of femininity.

A VERY big part of her motivation, at all times, is to impress men with how non-feminine she is, like a pre-gaming and also non-sports version of "one of the guys".

hey, quick aside,

i -cannot do- the words "feminine"/"femininity" with muscle memory. The "inini" fucking -throws- me, i always type too much of it.

10th August 2012, thinking a lot about coming out and being scared.

"What I didn’t realise is how central Mum is to all of this somehow. I don’t even fucking care why at this point,"

no babe, -do care why-, it's fucked up

"She’s going to be part of this and she’s going to come through this with me. I’m going to come out and I’m going to be trans and we’re going to talk about it and she’s going to come out the other end as well."

right.

What's -actually- happened is that she has dragged her heels the WHOLE time, denied my transness as much as she can without (other than once) outright saying "I disagree",

and yeah no she's not coming with me.

It's almost heartbreaking, and i already lived it and know it all;

just about every time i mention my mum in my diary (so far), it's either been

1. her being completely dismissive or self-centred or uncaring, or
2. me talking about how much i like her and believe in her

Like i said last night, if i never met people on Twitter, i would still have these standards and think it was okay, and i would -definitely- still keep trying to convince myself it's normal.

You all saved my fucking life

14th August 2012, talking about wanting to come out to my mum before a specific event (which didn't happen and isn't important).

"I will have to tell her I don’t want her to use female pronouns yet (because of the context we’ll be in),

but I just think it’d be best if she knows what I am then. I don’t think she’ll slip up like [brother] probably would.

I don’t think [younger sister]’s gonna find out prematurely through this method"

yeah uh,

yeah uh, she has unnecessarily gendered me male WHENEVER FUCKING POSSIBLE since I came out,

and ALSO she outed me to my younger sister like THE NEXT TIME THEY TALKED TO EACH OTHER pretty much.

Y'know what makes that last part even worse? (which, idk yet if i wrote this in my diary but i'll say it now)

When i came out to my mum and we talked about me being trans, BOTH OF US AGREED THAT MY YOUNGER SISTER WOULD DEFINITELY OUT ME TO PEOPLE.

So she knowingly outed me to someone who I SPECIFICALLY said i didn't want to be out to yet,

FULLY AWARE that my reason was 'cos I was sure that person would out me to other people.

She AGREED THAT MY SISTER WOULD.

September 13th 2012, a month before I finally did come out as trans.

"I think I’m going to come out to Mum soon. I don’t know. It feels like something I can do.

I think someone needs to know. I think I need someone to know I’m Claire somewhere in here. Maybe I can get that from joining Reddit, I don’t know."

wow, not a -great- pool of options i'll be honest

"If anyone here is going to be a clear-headed strong wall of support it’s Mum."

BABE NO

"But yeah, I reckon Mum wouldn’t be too negative. I reckon she could keep it a secret as well"

cough cough

a lot of this sorta "Q3 2012" era is tied up with the Marillion album Sounds That Can't Be Made, which i wrote some very positive things about and which i fucking hate now.

Marillion are my mum's favourite band but it ain't just that baggage that makes me not like them anymore.

"I want someone to do What My Life Is with who knows I’m trans and a girl and called Claire and stuff. I wish I could be sure that any of my friends could be that person. [cool person on twitter]’s probably the most likely."

Fun fact, that person turned out to also be trans

We fell out over me being a cunt with cunt anxieties and I apologised to them the other year and it's all swell.

They're a cool person to this day, they do podcasts now which are probably good.

gonna carry on with my diary livetweet thread.

forgot to say in the first tweet but this is specifically bits about my mum

oh i guess i did the trigger warning, that's sorta the same thing

September 27th 2012, having put a Melanie C album on my Christmas list.

"I think she said something like “so you like Melanie C as well”. I said “I thought you might mention that” or something like that.

Then, before I said anything else, she said that yeah Melanie C was the only one who really could sing out of all of them.

So, without any more prompt than her name on a list, Mum agreed that Melanie C was the best Spice Girl."

no,

no, what she did was insult four women and make it a competition.

She didn't say "Mel C is my fave Spice Girl", she said "she was the only good one".

"Which I guess just goes to show ... how on board Mum is with my un[deadname]ly strong pop leanings."

noooo, no, this is a blatant example of my mum dragging her heels and scraping up any excuse to keep her shit opinions while still validating me, a "golden boy"

"I wonder how long it’ll take for her to be on board with me being trans… That’ll be interesting."

the answer is never and it's not interesting

October 6th 2012,

"really that’s the only thing carrying me forward, the thought that I could have the mental fortitude to get through this without breaking down."

hi, more than a few breakdowns later now, so never fucking mind

so, on October 6th 2012, my mum's husband absolutely went off on one about me not doing the washing up after dinner.

In my diary it says he was angry at me for not doing "a 10 minute job". I wish i had more words to quote.

This is a thing he used to do a LOT at the time,

i'm pretty sure it's still bubbling under the surface now, how fucking angry he is at me and my brother for being depressed and sometimes being unable to work.

Just absolute rage at depressed people for not trying harder.

on October 7th 2012, i wrote

"I tried to argue about the washing up a few times throughout the first half of the day, without having thought through in words exactly what I felt about it,

and it always ended pretty quickly having got absolutely nowhere."

Apparently i did a thread on twitter after that, trying to work out exactly what i was feeling and how to communicate it.

Then in the evening i tried with my mum and her husband again;

"It started out with me trying to explain exactly what I wrote in [tweet thread],

and whereas I wanted them to feel retroactively remorseful (and be recognisably as such),

they just said about how I can’t expect them to know if I don’t talk to them. Which they always say.

It was annoying, but obviously I couldn’t (and can’t) really disagree with them."

THIS IS A TACTIC. THIS IS A TACTIC. THIS IS A TACTIC.

So basically what they said was "how are we supposed to know not to shout at you for not washing up, if you won't open up to us - the people who shout at you"

(my mum doesn't shout at me but her husband's shouting does get her silent approval)

How are we supposed to know not to treat you like shit if you won't be vulnerable?

"The whole conversation is kind of a blur though to be honest."

GASLIT. GASLIT. GASLIT.

"luckily I got to tell her on her own that I felt that she might have to choose between me and [her husband] at one point, and it scares me that she might choose [him].

She didn’t actually say who she’d choose but I don’t feel bad about it right now so it’s probably alright and nothing to worry about."

hey y'know why EYE don't worry about it??? 'cos i DON'T FUCKING CARE ANYMORE

"The conversation ended on good terms,"

because they successfully placated me.

"and I went back to my computer feeling pretty great."

because they successfully placated me.

"I found that [friend] had direct messaged me on Twitter, saying

“Yo. So you seem to be having a sort of breakdown on twitter over the last week or 2 and i hadn’t noticed you talking like this before”"

This DM convo was probably shit 'cos of how much i cared about my mum and how sure i was that my mum actually cared about me,

but oh my fuck it was nice that this person reached out like this and this isn't the only time they've helped out when I felt pure shit about things

"DM convo was probably shit" by which i mean, i was probably way too fucking positive about things, like the poor gaslit cunt i 100% was

"After that I started writing my first Reddit post!"

it was about planning to come out to my mum, and i got a bunch of supportive comments and it made me feel good.

got to the entry where i came out, October 12th 2012, and i'm anxious just reading it, like i'm actually reliving it or something.

i have only vague memories of what happened and i'm like 2000% sure i'm gonna read my past self saying like

"mum was very very slow to accept the possibility i might be trans and denied every single thing she could without outright coming off as antagonistic, it went so well"

"It went a lot more fluidly than I said [it would] in my r/asktransgender post, with questions happening throughout."

what this -actually- means is that i was constantly interrupted. And actually, i doubt my brother did very much talking, since he doesn't exist.

So i was coming out to my mum, trying to tell her about my feelings and what i am and what i need, and she was constantly interrupting me the entire time.

"Obviously I can’t remember exactly what was said and everything,"

running theme huh.

"Mum was unsure of stuff, because I haven’t really ever shown any femininity, she said"

points to my younger self for adding "she said" there. This is a fucking Thing That Shit Parents Do

yes i did show femininity. Yes i fucking DID and you cunts either killed it or reinterpreted it, rewrote the whole fucking thing

this was actually part of a dream i had a few weeks ago

"my mum had stolen all the pictures i'd stuck there
and crudely redrawn their outlines
beautiful womanhood denied
and my printouts rewritten in ink, you weren't even trying" https://twitter.com/SiegeFeathers/status/1248987746426814465

"and because I only started thinking about this three years ago."

Three years ago being 2009 then, which is when i first (knowingly) met a trans person and found out that trans people are normal humans and not two-dimensional joke characters.

THE. MOMENT. i had the information that being trans was a normal and healthy thing, i thought "fuck that might be me too".

MAYBE IF I'D HAD THAT FUCKING INFORMATION SOONER, CUNTS.
MAYBE -THEN- IT WOULDN'T'VE BEEN "only since age 18"

(continuing on Reasons My Mum Was Skeptical)

"And because maybe I’m trying not to be male because the male side of the family tend to have less get-up-and-go or oomph."

WHAT THE FUCK????

i literally went "WHAT THE FUCK???" out loud when i read this, like, WHAT THE FUCK.

like, ah, yeah, my dad and my brother have no fucking drive to do anything, so I don't want to be male anymore

??????

I'm trans because the male members of my family have no work ethic.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.

like most of this is just total fucking abusive garbage but THIS one is like... WHAT THE FUCK.

WHAT CIS BULLSHIT IS THIS WHERE THIS MAKES SENSE TO SOMEONE.

I'M TRANS BECAUSE MY DAD AND BROTHER ARE UNEMPLOYED.

WHAT
THE
FUCK

"She didn’t say this like it was definitely the case, she didn’t say this like it might be the case, she suggested this as a possibility."

oh yeah that makes it better actually, yeah, she didn't say "you're not what you say you are" she just offered me an out

she didn't say "no", she just went "here's an explanation for why you might be wrong" and pulled "trans because dad and brother are unemployed" out of her ass, yeah that's way better

this is gonna be the best part of this thread, holy shit, nothing's gonna top this.

trans because male family members have no work ethic, holy fuck.