NoBS.
Healing from trauma isn’t linear because there are times when you’ll unexpectedly experience a trigger. Some people who have been in auto accidents, even long after their body has physically healed, may experience tension, fear, and pain when they drive by the location of the accident. The body and mind have made a link and send a signal of danger. It’s for our protection. Yet, sometimes it can feel like going backwards. Opening a wound that has been trying to naturally close and feeling the blood on your skin again. The truth is, healing never ends. It only gets easier the closer to death you allow yourself to make peace with.
This last month has been sleepless. The only deep sleep I’ve had has been in the last week, with the help of Mucinex Night Shift (working alongside Lucy Dacus) because I’ve been fighting a sinus infection. I’ve had some dreams to accompany me in my in-between-sleep-and-awake moments, some very pointedly telling me what keeps me at unrest. I decided that it’s time for me to tell a story here.
In Spring of 2021, a friend and fellow tradesperson invited me to design a t-shirt for Pride month to sell online. I was excited for the opportunity and asked if we could donate the proceeds to The Trevor Project, which he hadn’t yet heard of. He said that the shirts would be printed by his friend’s company and that a portion would be going to them, but a little under half the price of each shirt can be donated. So that was our plan. I didn’t discuss payment for the design, I was just excited to do the work as my contribution to the cause. I made some mock-ups and asked for feedback from friends over instagram for changing, tweaking, making it the best it could be.
Once the design was settled, my friend, whose company would be represented by the t-shirts, asked me to make a version of *two* of his company logos with rainbow letters so there would be more options for Pride shirts. I felt like I had already done enough work, but I didn’t want to let him down, so I agreed. Besides, I had a really cool idea for one of them. I asked him to email me his logo in a format that I could easily manipulate. He said he wasn’t able to, so I screenshot shirts from his merch page on his website and spent many hours recreating them to provide what he asked for.
While all of this was happening in June, I was simultaneously working on a big project that would be released on June 20, the summer solstice. It was a series of home recordings from musicians as a way of giving local music lovers a chance to share their music virtually during the pandemic. The release can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bRvFCmuQRQ . On top of my full time job, I was very busy and feeling very much a part of my community, inspired, and like I was making the best leaps of self advocacy of my life, all while secretly battling some internal struggles. My focus was completely split. Before the end of the month, my marriage imploded. My wife left me over something that, at the time, I thought was a small misunderstanding. I now see it as a larger issue that’s bigger than me.
The following months felt like I was watching a huge, heavy page of a book slowly turning toward me from a stormy horizon and I’d soon be squashed. I felt like I was catapulted into a different reality. I was alone. I self-isolated and struggled to sleep at home alone, so I often slept on a friend’s couch. I struggled to let people know I was struggling. My transness was begging to be seen, just by me if no one else. My wife wouldn’t tell me where she was. She only communicated to my sister. Everything I’d worked for in the last 9 years felt like it crumbled under me and I felt very little motivation to find stable ground. I was a child again and living alone, trying and make all new routines and trying to self-motivate. Anytime I checked in with the guy who asked me to represent his company with rainbow colors about how much money we raised, he said the check hadn’t gotten to him yet. I didn’t know exactly how it worked, but I trusted him. My biggest mistake was not getting all of this project in writing.
After some failed attempts at trying to get together in person and talk about making a social media announcement about the fundraiser check being sent to Trevor, four months had passed and we finally met up to catch up about our personal lives. I found a moment to ask about the check, and he said, “Oh yeah, I have to pull that money together. It was just another check laying around, you know?” My body froze. His daughter was present so I kept my response quick. I said, “Easy.” I don’t know what I meant. I was hurt. I covered up my true feelings and went home to think on it. I asked him to meet me a few days later at the place where we’d met 7 years earlier, working on the new location for Atomic Cafe. We met up and I told him how I felt. I was hurt, disappointed, and I wanted to know the money would get where it’s supposed to go. I requested that he take down the t-shirts I designed from his website (since selling past June wasn’t our agreement) and to have his friend’s company take them down from their website (something I didn’t give permission for) and to put the money collected from them beyond June (which was so absurd to me) toward the check for The Trevor project. He grit his teeth while I shared my feelings and made these requests. Even after I said, “I just wish this fundraiser was taken better care of,” he said nothing. I left that meeting feeling proud of myself for being bold, but I felt completely unstable with him. He promised to have the money together by Christmas. (In my experience, he was notorious for agreeing enthusiastically to help with things, with little to no follow through.) A few days later, he asked me to help with a project and I declined and told him I have to take time to regain trust in him. I reminded him of money that I was still owed for a project I helped him with more than a year ago. It wasn’t the first time I’d asked about it. In hindsight, I know that I allowed too much. I had very poor boundaries with this person, as a friend and as a business partner. This understandably erupted some new boundaries being made. A few days later, he sent me a receipt for sending Trevor Project the $850 we raised on October 20, 2021 in his name and (after I ignored his text telling me he put cash in his car and telling me to “come get it”) he Venmoed my ex the money he owed me from summer 2020, with a message telling me that I pushed away the people who love me and that he won’t be in my life anymore, throwing in a comment about me being a “grown woman” and blaming his wife for me not getting paid for painting his house. He accused me of name calling. Some folks aren’t able to hear about genuine hurt they caused without feeling attacked. He told me to “respect him” by not mentioning his name or his business on social media. He removed every picture and mention of me from his instagram. In my rage, I made a very ambiguous instagram post, not mentioning him, but deleted it two days later because my brain was spinning. I didn’t want to be a part of a big scandal. I didn’t want anyone to suffer long term. Yet I am. So many opportunities and plans we had were just gone.
He was one of the first people I told that I was non-binary, and I vented to him about wondering if I am trans. J wasn’t ever very talkative when I shared my thoughts while we worked together on job sites, but I felt safe sharing it with him. It was the closest I got to truly feeling safe, anyway. I think back to my childhood, all the times I overheard my friends saying homophobic and transphobic things. All the times I participated by staying silent or making jokes. And hated myself. I think about how abandoned I felt when I made my queer relationship public on Facebook and lost a bunch of friends as a result. My church family was just that, a family. Yet, some of them didn’t need anymore info, just that relationship status was enough for them to cut me off. A few of them, I cut off after they flooded my comment section and inbox with Bible verses and urgent prayers. This was yet another situation where “I love you, but” was used against me and I was expected to believe the love was real. I’m grateful for the ones who stuck around. I’m grateful for the people I call friends, who see me. Who don’t assume I’ve gone down a slippery slope with the devil hanging onto my ankle, thinking I deserve hell for it. I’m grateful for my friends who listened as I processed this particular situation after it happened.
There are times that I feel like I have let this horrible situation go. It comes back like a stray bullet. Sharing my experience brings some relief. Thank you for reading.
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