What is a friend? What is a girlfriend?

I'll tell you what it is not. A true story.

A true story of gender constructs, hormones, and the growing facade of mental illness.

What happens when someone you know, and trust with your life, puts you in a box to hide their own insecurities and fears by using the phrase mental illness as an excuse to justify their own words and actions towards others? This is not as uncommon as one would think. It is similar to a woman that abuses the legal system that is supposed to be there to protect women by taking advantage of someone for blackmail and shamming. Like falsely accusing someone of stalking them and harassing them to show control over them. These things can happen, and causes more damage than one could imagine. But it can also bring clarity and awareness.

How it started.

Many biological women will never treat trans-women like an equal. Forever trapped in the boy/girl cat and mouse game as those that break the chains from the gender construct get left in the dark, alone. This happened to me once as I slowly gained the trust of a woman that showed an interest in me, many years ago. I thought she really was interested in me, as a trans-woman, and individual, a person. But I was wrong. After a few days of talking on the phone, I began to ask if we could hang out, have coffee or something. I thought this was going to work out uneventful, but yet somehow sensing the whole time that there was something just ‘not right’ with the situation.

Immediately after asking if we could hang out, she changed. A controlling and dominating tone of the voice engulfed her very being as she transformed into a different person. This different person was someone I had been way too familiar with in my previously attempted ‘boy existence’ and I knew how that felt. A feeling of inadequacy and self-worth, as the other person makes you feel as if you are always doing something wrong. But I also began to realize why this was happening. She could not fully grasp the aspects of deconstructing the gender roles, even enough to see me as who I was. I suddenly in her mind became the boy again, and was expected to play out those boy roles to continue talking to her. I had no choice but to cut her off completely as she became controlling, abusive in her words, and would not see me as I was. And what was worse, was that we worked together.

The bigger twist.

Though that situation was bad enough, something more disturbing happened that changed me from that moment forth. As the mis-gendering and unfortunate circumstances around the woman I worked with exploded, I had a breakdown emotionally, as I realized how awful people can truly be, emotionally, towards a trans-woman, in the worst ways possible. As all of that went down, I decided to call, and share my story and tears with someone I thought was a good friend. Someone I trusted with my life. Someone I felt I could say anything to. But I was wrong.

I called my friend, also a biological woman, sobbing my eyes out, trying to tell them what had happened and how it made me feel. To my surprise, her response was not anywhere near what I expected. She said these very words to me, shattering my very existence into a million pieces.

“You need to get help. You need to find someone to talk to.”

But that someone was not my friend. That someone was not a person I thought I could trust. As they closed off so fast to friendship and emotions, and then had the audacity to accuse me of having a mental disability because I needed a friend to talk to? Though this actually took several days to process. What came next was the pointy little end that changed everything. I had to let my friend go as well. Because I realized she was doing the same thing the woman I worked with was doing. Shutting me out of feminine emotions as if I was not allowed to have them, and then using mental illness as a finger pointing excuse to justify her reasons for doing it. After so many years of getting to know someone, after so many years of developing trust, everything is wiped. And because of the gender constructs that very few of us have genuinely broken out of and can actually see with our own eyes.

I have never spoken to, or seen, either women since. And care not to. And though I have met and known some of the most beautiful, and wonderful biological women in my life, I have yet to met one that has actually broken free of the constructs. Broken free enough to fully accept, understand, and be there with me, without manipulating me just because of a fleshy difference that is between our legs. It is all just a piece of meat. And I’m sorry to break it everyone out there, but there is no magical Yoni that is floating in the clouds, and there is no almighty penis that is shooting through the sky. And the hard truth to differences in gender boils down to one thing that I know for a fact from direct experience. Hormones.

I know what both testosterone and estrogen feels like, and what it does. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. And I also know the difference between what being a true human being with emotions is, and what mental illness is not. And to accuse your friends, when they want to talk to you, of being crazy, is disgusting. I feel, therefore I am. And this is the real normal. A normal that the majority will lock you away for, just as women used to be locked up for, with a label of hysteria long ago. Most people will not allow you to be emotional. Most people with not allow you to be free, and you. People will not allow you to be whole, and complete. They want you to be broken. They want you to be shattered. And they want you to be miserable for the rest of your life. And if they get the chance? They will make sure you are medicated to shut you up. A silent genocide that makes one wonder this. How many people in the world have been falsely labeled with mental illness that are now medicated into a path of no return? How many people have been gaslighted into thinking they are crazy for being human? For being pure, for being complete and one with everything around them? Probably more than you can imagine.

The cold bitter truth.

So how am I now after all that? I’ll tell you. I am a bitter, cold-hearted bitch. Sometimes evil and downright nefarious. I have learned how to use rhetoric and be manipulative to others that may seek to undermine my very existence. I tactically maneuver my existence in ways that can make people feel very uncomfortable. I am never what I may seem to people in person, or through written words. But I can also be very secretive, hidden, very kind, and loving. I carry a great amount of devotion, and can follow even the most unlikely people through hell and high water, purely because of my devotion to them. And where did I learn all of that? Who taught me that? Who caused this to happen?

Women did. Biological women. And that is not a bad thing. It is just a perspective. One perspective out of many in a social construct revolving around gender that to this day, controls everyone and everything. All because most people haven’t been able to truly break free from that matrix.

Though it’s lonely at times, a dark, damp, place, isolated from the juxtapositions of society. As everyone feels it is their duty to continue this tug of war game between opposites and differences, I will carry on. I will evolve, with or without you as I must do so to be whole, and to survive. Are you coming? Hurry up, let’s go.

Athena’s Pointy Little End

Support and Donations at Ko-Fi