Growing Up Ruined My Life

Intrusive Midnight Thoughts

Sometimes I believe that growing up Ruined my life. By that I mean the idea of adulthood and being independent. All my life I was raised to believe that success stemmed from hard work and good grades. In order to make something of yourself, you had to achieve the best GPA, attend college, and if you were biologically female; you should marry a successful man and be a supportive and well manners wife. I was raised on the values of the Mormon church and learned at a very young age that sex was wrong, being Gay was wrong and that somewhere down the line, I would be expected to give birth and raise children of my own, however none of this really made sense to me.

My family always believed something had been wrong with me. I didn't have the typical strong ambition of most children and as a biological female; they thought it was strange that I didn't hold childish crushes towards any boys in my school. In fact, I was deemed shameful and disgraceful because instead, I liked girls... Specifically one in perticular: my best friend. 

It wasn't my best friends gender that drew me to them though. In fact, it was the energy and blazing ambition and personality that they produced towards life. Having been raised in a broken and damaged home, seeing this individual love life without so much as a worry for their future sort of inspired me and influenced me to spend more and more time around them. As we grew older, I found myself more and more attached to this person, however the attachment was mutual. Our last years of elementary school and beginning years of middle school, they shared their interest in me and at first, I didn't know how to feel or what to think. I often joked about how I went along with it because I didn't actually know what it meant to like someone; little alone love someone, however that isn't quite true.

To put it simply, I knew how I felt, but I was afraid. My father and grandparents had groomed me to believe that the only appropriate way to live was to love a man and marry a man, however since the first time I spoke to this friend of mine, my heart fluttered and eyes shined with admiration. That of all things scared me. So how could I best combat this dangerous attraction? By lying most of my life and saying I never knew. And by playing it off as something simple and plain. 

I never knew how hurtful and damaging that could be. When they first heard those thoughts expressed , my childhood friend was rather hurt. I had made a mistake and kept with it for so long, that I hadn't know how to back out... It seemed impossible. After all, when you stick to a lie for so long, how are you supposed to change your story at the end? You can't. Right?

I never intended on hurting my loved one and that certainly wasn't the last mistake that had been made. Throughout the years, we fell on many landmines. We fought and cried and hugged and kissed. There never seemed to be a extended time of peace, however, I loved this person more than anything in the world... I still love this person today.

It may be silly, but we made it pretty far. We struggled the entire way, though we were in the middle of growing up and learning about ourselves. It was a time when it would have been best had we just stayed friends. Maybe then, we wouldn't have kept hurting each other to the extent that we did. But nothing can change what has happened, you can only move forward from where your at.

A lot of things changed over the years, but so had I. Not in the way I had hoped, rather, I changed for the worst. I became something I wasn't. All my years I never associated with a gender (although femininity was pushed onto me) and I loved being as nonconforming as possible, referring to myself as a Tom boy and wearing boys clothing while keeping my hair long and wild. I was unapologetically unhinged. However as I grew older, I was influenced more and more into becoming a woman. I lost sight of whom I was in order to please those around me. I wanted my partners family to like me, so I became less boyish and started dressing more womanly. I cut my hair and kept it tamed and began wearing makeup to cover up my androgenous features.