Vent book

its this songs fault im typing

“If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you'll get into heaven baby” is something my grandma told me once. It was dark out, I can't remember what it was, dawn or dusk, but the words stuck with me.

Not because it meant something to me, but rather that it meant nothing. In that moment, even though I didn't believe in God in the slightest, I had my first existential thought.

That if I'm wrong (I'm not), i, at 5 or 7 years old, was going to burn forever in hell. And my grandma believes it. Now that I don't believe in God or the church and resent religion, if I die, I'll be tortured for all of eternity.
No ifs, ands, or buts. '

Another time, when I was still small enough to put my feet into the sink and soak the fire ant bites on my feet in epsom salt, I remember her petting my head as I looked out the window at her large vegetable garden. Out of the blue, she said “if you decide to… be something else, or love ... someone you aren't supposed to, i'll still love you. It's against the bible, and will be wrong and sinful, but I'll love you just like I did before”.

Now, both of my grandparents watch Fox News and Evangelical Preaching on television. My grandpa insists Joe Biden is going to turn the country into sommunist soviet russia. That we will all wear the same clothes and take the guns and how “they want to use the bathroom with me. I'll kill em if i see em”. Sometimes, I wonder if anything in my life was traumatizing since I hear so much worse from other people.

I wasn't sexually abused or outright abused in any of the churches we went to, but at one point, going into one made me feel sick. Not to the point of vomiting or even a stomach ache. I mean that strange, dizzy kind that you get when you get deja vu. I would feel like I receded into myself, like I had to hide something, and i didn't know what. When my grandma gave me the “i'll love you even if you're fruity” talk, I didn't even know what kind of things she was talking about, if I'm honest. I don't even think I had explored my own body or seen someone have sex on tv yet, so I was certainly under 8 years old at that point, maybe even 4.

I walked through the doors of the church every single sunday growing up knowing that I'd go to hell for not believing, which I already knew I didn't, and also for some unknown (at the time) thing.

As I grew up, I recognized that it was partially dread. Like everyone in the church could tell j was queer and wanted me dead. The southern preachings at a small-town methodist church that only had 2 children in total is prob exactly what you think, maybe just slightly less worse.

It's around 2 am as I'm writing this down, and I turned my phone off an hour ago to avoid answering one of my only friends' phone calls because I wanted to sleep, and here I am anyway. I listened to Ethel Cain again. Big mistake!!! I sobbed. I open mouth, snotty nosed, hand over mouth sobbed listening to the song i always cry to, sun bleached flies. Classic me move.

It's always for the same reason. Ethel Cain (a beautiful woman who i am in love with and would grovel on my knees in the red alabama dirt for). One of my worst fears (and i have a a few) is that i turn out to be wrong.

That i die, soon and violently, either by accident, murder, or my own hand, and as im fading away, i see the light. I dont know what I'd do. sometimes i get on my knees and pray, brokenly , saliva dripping from my lips as i sob to a god i know isn't real, but desperately need to be sometimes.

It's selfish, i know. I always was told growing up in every church I've been to (my grandma's methodist church, my southern Baptist church with my parents, and my other grandparents's Church of christ i went to for 2 years when we lived there) to pray for things that benefit others, but in desperation, in the middle of the night, i press my forehead to the carpet, like they would bow in front of kings to beg their almighty king for even an ounce of mercy, for money, for food.

Except i beg for my parents to change.
i beg for them to actually love me enough to change.
I beg that I wake up tomorrow, and I'm not chronically ill.
That I wake up tomorrow dead
That I wake up tomorrow and I'm cis and not trans.
I pray that my mom wins the lottery, not a lot of money, but enough.
I pray that I was happy for once.
That someone would love me
That I'll get a job that pays good so I can move out and be myself.
That my family wasn't republican Christians, and that they weren't so easily corruptible.

I beg and beg and beg. I move up and down, praising the air as if even maybe the dust particles will hear me and do anything to help me. But they don't. I'm met with silence as I cry, digging my bluntly nailed fingers into my dingey carpet. There's nothing there. There will be nothing there. God isn't real. And if he is, I want nothing to do with him after he's let me get to such desperate points. Let alone the state of the gazan genocide. If there is a god, he needs to be punished.

Out of the two, (or 3?), Jesus is the one I'd rather believe in. I haven't read the Bible, but from what I remember, he was a cool guy. Nice, even. If he came back like the Christians say, he wouldn't be accepted by them. In fact, I have a sinking suspicion that Me and good ol j-man would get only pretty ok.

Maybe not friends, but to me, Jesus is the middle aged father at pride that has a 'dad hugs' shirt on. Not the ones that are spewing hate and vitriol from the sidelines. I once made my mother angry by saying if Jesus even was real, he'd like me more than the average American Christian. And I stand by that.

Sometimes i think my life would be so much simpler if i stayed christian. Ignorance is, in fact, bliss.

Of course, i have a bad memory, and there's many details I'm leaving it.
My Insomnia is slowly getting worse. I'm 210 lbs and 21. I'm ugly. I'm disgusting. No one will ever see me as a man, and I'll never be able to transition so long as I live here in this house with my family.

But I can't move away.
Alabama is all I know. I'd kill to move up north, to have seasons, to feel what winter is supposed to feel like. To have a reduced risk of being murdered for being trans or queer in general (of course. Anywhere in the USA is of risk of this. Even LA.). I'd love to leave and shave my head and reinvent myself wholly.

But if I leave...then what happens. More republican nominees get voted in. I leave behind the other southern queers tk fend for themselves. I have to stay, against my own safety. To try my best to take care of the minorities around me, that I both do and don't belong to. I have to be blue in a red state. Someone has to.