Periphery

As I drove away from my parents’ house tonight, I could not stop saying to myself: God, I can't believe I let myself trust them. As the saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

It was a couple days in and I finally got tired of my dad saying the wrong gender. I wasn't around him as much as my mom and had thought that after having a conversation early on about the importance of using the correct gender for me and my sibling J and correcting oneself when making mistakes that it would stop, but it turns out, that is just where my mom has finally arrived right now. My dad is at the place where he thinks he can do and say whatever he wants in his house because he is the master of his house.

I suppose I should not have been surprised to hear this master/slave language, and I called him out on it. My brother Josh immediately backed him up when I challenged that he actually can't just treat me however he wants and that I am a human worthy of respect and that he is disrespecting my personhood by saying: “you can't control how other people treat you; only how you respond.” So, I said I was going to leave because I was not going to be treated that way by anybody. My dad said who I am is a choice like his choice to say what he wants, and I was like, who I am is a person; a human; it's not the same. You're choosing to treat my as less than. It's abuse. Josh tried to dispute my assertions that me being male and human were a madeup language, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence in contrast to his religious studies. While theoretically the idea that sex is a madeup language is correct, that is not what he was saying. Thus, I continued to maintain, though it should not matter, that this is a legal status, and I will not be treated this way.

I'm really not sure why I thought it would be different this time. Maybe because I tried to be vulnerable and open up about how the in-fighting in my own community can be so alienating and frustrating. This dates back to Silvia Riverra, maybe further.

We tried to discuss how there can be differences among different communities and people groups. It's like we could engage in polite civil discourse until I asked them to respect my personhood, then they downright refused. I don't know why I think they'll get it one day that they can be polite about politics all they want, but they are not treating me like a human just because they let me share my views on social issues. I deserve to be respected for who I am. Who I am is not defined by them or their views or who they are.

My mom seemed to get the bigger picture here when she inserted as I was leaving: “HE is ACTUALLY here.” Like she understood how big it is for me to come around and gets who is coming around. I'm around when I'm around. I'm not on my phone. I'm in the room with the people I am with and trying to be part of their lives. Maybe one day they'll see that family is more than origin or paper and respect me for who I am.