A photo of me wearing my genderqueer pride shirt and hoop earrings, arms crossed, tattoos visible. I’m smiling, believe it or not.
You’ll sometimes hear the line in movies: “My whole life has prepared me for this moment.” It’s usually accompanied by a dramatic zoom-in on the protagonist’s face as they ready themselves for the final conflict after enduring approximately an hour and a half’s worth of hardship. It’s a bit trite, a bit overused, but it also often has an impact in that moment as we have reached the climax of the film. We’re cheering on our hero as they get ready to finally defeat the seemingly unbeatable villain.
Despite it being a trite phrase, right now I’m feeling it ringing particularly true. My whole life really has prepared me for the moment we find ourselves in. I never wanted this particular thing to come to pass, but if it was going to come to pass, there is no better time in my life for it to have happened.
On Monday of this week, I did not watch inauguration coverage, and I still have not heard a single word that that man spoke that day. I mostly stayed off social media as Russ and I started a Lord of the Rings extended edition watch-a-thon. I had the day off from work for the MLK Jr. Day holiday, and some part of me refused to watch the most hateful person on the planet spoil the day to commemorate one of the most amazing people who ever lived. Monday night, I took a peek of social media, and looked away almost immediately after looking. But it was too late - some of it got into my head.
On Tuesday, I still stayed off social media more than usual, but it was unavoidable - I was going to see what was said. Something started happening to me, and I didn’t know it was happening. My brain started to shut down and my body started to do something that was familiar in all the wrong ways. I was devastated, inconsolable, afraid. I felt small, I wanted to hide, I wanted to disappear. Tuesday night I finally recognized what my body was doing - it was the same thing it did after I survived an assault in college. It locked up, it hurt, and it was my body going into a trauma response. I couldn’t shake that - among the other terrible things he is - we once again had a proven rapist as president. And that rapist was saying the most devastating things, specifically about people like me. But something clicked when I realized what my body was telling me. I texted my therapist to see if she had time for a virtual appointment on Wednesday, and miraculously she did. I contacted an attorney who was recommended to us to schedule a phone call for Thursday. I was still shaken, I was still not okay, but I had started taking the tiniest of baby steps. Somehow, I was able to sleep.
Wednesday was different. Shortly after waking up, my body let go of the trauma response. I started texting Bethany (the same way we do every day), and we texted throughout the day, providing each other the support and encouragement and validation we both needed. I ended up telling her some things about my history that I never had, and the way she held the space and showed me unconditional love in that moment signified a real shift in the day. I had an amazing conversation with Russ, truly groundbreaking stuff, the kind of growth-filled conversation that you don’t expect to still have after being together almost 20 years.
Usually my therapy appointments involve a fairly equal amount of back and forth talking between Miranda and I. This appointment was different. As soon as the video call started, I just started talking. I talked myself through how Monday triggered the traumas from my past, and how I am now able to recognize when my PTSD rears its head and take the steps to get past the trigger. I talked about the family I’ve spent the last several years building, which is a collection of people who are built to stand together through what’s to come. I talked about how I’m not ashamed that my body went into trauma mode, because - since the autism diagnosis - I am so much more able to be compassionate with myself for what I truly need and feel. I cried when I talked about the compassion I have for myself. I talked about how amazing my marriage to Russ is, how the words “lucky” and “blessed” are woefully inadequate to describe how I feel about what I have with my husband, and how - no matter what happens - I know that we will always have each other and that there is no taking that away. I talked about how the new president can say all he wants that there are only two genders, because I know in my guts, in my bones, in every atom of my being that I am not one of those two genders, and he can’t take that away from me. He can also say the sky is purple and that house cats live in the ocean, because his saying it - or putting out an executive order saying it - doesn’t make it true. I talked about how much I believe in the fact that I truly am safe - no matter how much my safety feels threatened right now, no matter what material or physical changes to my circumstances or environment happen - because I now know in a way I never did before how safe I am with my family, with my husband, and most importantly, with myself. Things got less serious in the last little bit, where we chatted about how great our dogs are, but then at the end Miranda told me that she was proud of me, and how remarkable it was that I was able to say and realize all of the things I had, especially compared to who I was a year ago, and even more especially 2 years and more ago. And I was proud of me too.
On Thursday morning, Russ and I talked to the attorney to arrange all of the stuff we will need if our legal marriage gets taken away. That plan is in motion, that work is being done, and the protections we need are being put in place. But even if the pieces of paper that declare us legally married get nullified and burned, they can’t take our marriage away from us. Russ and I first got married when he was working for an institution that would have stripped his livelihood away if we had the legal documents saying we were married. The first five years of our marriage were not legally recognized. Even after he moved on from that job and marriage equality became the law and we made it legal, we always have considered our marriage to have started the day we got married without legal recognition. Our marriage is real whether there’s a legal document affirming it or not. I know what it’s like to be married without the legal recognition, and I’ll know that we’re married whether that legal right gets taken away or not.
Friday I felt strong, despite getting a little shaken at points, and I focused on gathering my strength. Now it’s Saturday, and these things now feel like they need to be said.
I do not put myself in a position to engage with trolls online, but I’ve seen the rhetoric they spout to other people. Trolls like to tell people like me that we’re not who we are. “You can pretend to be [x] however much you want, you’ll always actually be [y].” And, like, okay bro, you can see me however you want to see me and you can tell yourself whatever lies help to get you through your insecure little life, but I will always actually know the truth of who I am, and there is no taking that away from me.
Sometimes you’ll hear mental health professionals recommend that their clients picture a “worst case scenario” so that they could see that it’s not actually all that bad, even if the worst does happen. Throughout my life, I always had a fear of the worst case scenario. What would I do if the worst thing I could imagine came to be? How would I get through it? But time and again, I would imagine what the worst case scenario was, and that exact scenario came to pass. Some of those “worst possible things” I’ve talked about, a lot of others I haven’t. There have been many, MANY times in my life when I pictured the worst possible thing that could happen in the hopes that picturing it would make me prepared, and then that worst possible thing actually did happen, and having pictured it didn’t really help. I was devastated every time, I felt a deep sense of rejection and/or pain and/or grief at it having come to pass. I didn’t know how I’d survive the feelings I was feeling. But somehow, every damn time, I did survive it. These horrific things that a lot of people can’t actually imagine having to live through, I lived through them. And because I’ve lived through so many worst case scenarios, I know that I am capable of living through them, and that there is joy and celebration and peace on the other side of those things.
I spent almost 38 years not knowing who I am. I didn’t know what was important to me, I didn’t actually know myself at all. I did my best to make decisions and take actions and say words that felt close enough to real, but didn’t actually have an actual grasp on what was real and what wasn’t. And now, After the Autism Diagnosis, I know what it’s like to actually know who I am. And with the work I’ve done to understand my gender identity (1 and 2), I know and accept and LOVE an integral part of what makes me who I am. If this is another Nazi Germany situation, and they start dragging us out of our houses and putting us to death, I actually finally know what it’s like to truly live and be alive. And they’ll never be able to take the fact that I was truly alive away from me. And you can use that picture of me from the top of this post - favorite earrings, favorite genderqueer pride t-shirt, tattoos out front, sparkle in the eye, smiling defiantly - as the photo for my obituary. Because that’s what a truly alive Daniel looks like.
There was never any hope for me to not be different, right? Society often encourages us to hide what makes us different (and we’re especially aware of what our society thinks of differentness now), but in the end, there was no hiding it for me. Whether it was being noticeably “too sensitive”, or being gay, or being nerdy, or being chubby, or whatever, there really was no hope of being able to fully hide the parts of me that were different. Coming to embrace what makes me different was a very long, very gradual process. Now, at 39 years old, I am so incredibly proud of what makes me different. Not only is there not any hope of hiding it, there is no desire to hide it, because I want to celebrate it. I decorated my skin with the things I’m passionate about so everyone could see them when they look at me. I have been wearing t-shirts of the comic book characters or bands that I love since I first started being able to pick out my own clothes because I wanted everyone to know how much I loved them, and that’s not about to change. I’ve already put out to the world that I am autistic, that I am non-binary, that I am queer, and all of the other things that are essential to who I am but also make me different from “normal people”. Not only is there no hope of hiding these things that make me different now that it’s significantly less safe to be different, there’s also no freaking desire to start hiding those things. In fact, I only want to declare and celebrate them more. If there are lists of “the different people” who are going to be cast out, I’ve been on those lists for a long time, and there’s no hope of removing me from them. And dammit, I’m so happy to be on that list, and there’s an absolute freedom in knowing that there’s no going back from being this openly and proudly different.
A diagram of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
We’re going to need each other with what’s to come. We’re going to be constantly subjected to the worst rhetoric, the most shocking discrimination, the most divisive language. Our sense of real safety will be constantly threatened, because when people don’t feel safe, they don’t have the presence of mind or the ability to access their ability to organize, connect, and actualize. It’s right there in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs - if you’re not getting the needs at the bottom of the hierarchy met, or if those needs feel threatened, you’re not going to be able to meet the needs higher up the hierarchy. And I think the people who have just come into power are using Maslow’s hierarchy as their weapon in this fight, because if they can make us feel like we’re going to lose the needs at the bottom of the pyramid, we’re not going to even be able to focus on the needs higher up, which are the things we will all need to get to the other side of this. If they attack our Safety, we’re not going to pay attention to Love and Belonging, or anything higher up.
So here’s my Mission Statement - I will continue to be proudly different, and I will celebrate what makes me different. I will continue to feel joy and share my joy. I will continue to provide strength to my community. I know I am safe and I will continue to repeat to myself that I am safe, because I know that they want me to believe I am unsafe so I can’t pay attention to what we need as a community, and because my safety in myself, in my marriage, and in my community is not something they can take away. I will live through yet another worst case scenario and I will feel joy and love and peace on the other side of it. I know who I am, I AM who I am, and I will continue to celebrate who I am and love who I am no matter what anyone tries to say or do about it. I will continue to LOVE YOU, I will continue to believe in YOUR ability to live through yet another worst case scenario, and I KNOW that YOU will feel joy and love and peace on the other side of it. They can’t take our joy away from us, and they can’t take us away from each other, and - no matter what policies they try to put in place or lies they try to pass off as truth - the things that makes us different will CONTINUE to be things to love and celebrate, and that is the ACTUAL TRUTH.