The Art of Forgetting

Nothing like crying at work. It happened unexpectedly while I was on my knees painting stair risers and listening to Caroline Rose’s album “The Art of Forgetting” which I have listened to probably a hundred times now. When I first listened when it was a new release in 2023, it helped me grieve the end of my marriage. It is relatable start to finish - I cried through some deep, crummy feelings that have been hard to connect with other people over. I thought I had done all of my grieving with this album, and have listened calmly many times, but it struck me (and not for the first time) that there’s one thing I can’t relate to on their album. Throughout, there are voice message recordings of their grandmother checking in on them while they were in a period of isolation. Something about it today just made tears pour out of my eyes and onto the stair treads. There was no stopping it. I’m feeling really sad that I don’t have family like that. I don’t know many people who understand this pain. With my grandparents, there was no acknowledgment of my marriage. It wasn’t real to them, because I married a woman. My parents agreed. While I was married, I often heard my twin talk about how Grandmom called to check in, or Grandpop called to say they were driving north and wanted to stop to say hi. I never got calls from them. No visits. And back then, any acknowledgment I made that it was odd, my siblings brushed off. Everyone around me treated it like a given. Somehow, because I am queer, my humanness and worthiness of contact disappeared. Everyone around me accepted it. Complaining was pointless. This feeling of being intentionally left out was echoed in more recent years when my brother drove 4.5 hours from NJ to see my sister who is 20 minutes away from me and not hearing a thing about it until he was back home, a couple different times. (Repeating to myself “it’s not a reflection of me.”)

I think it’s hitting hard because there’s been a glitch between my phone and my iPad where my phone doesn’t get texts from my family group chat (by my request) but when I turn on my iPad, I can see the group chat actively updating with missing texts (cause the interactions weren’t cohesive) (ongoing Apple ID shit) and informing me that my whole family is planning to meet nearby to surprise my dad for his birthday this weekend. I asked my sister to start a group chat without me last year after I had a big blowup with my sisters in which I was intentionally deadnamed and confronted for being less available than I used to be. This person said I wasn’t worth the effort to try to have a relationship with and the other didn’t protest. That came after complete silence from my whole family before and after top surgery in 2023.

Rewind to 2021, my grandmother passed away on February 19, my dad’s birthday. I opted out of going to the funeral because it was A.) out of state and B.) so early in the pandemic and the majority of the people who were going were anti-maskers. I was also really deep in pain about realizing I am trans and finally letting it sink in that my sister once told me that the Christmas checks my siblings all received from my mom’s parents were always twice what mine were (acknowledging only the straight married couples). I was still with my wife at the time. Now, fast-forward to summer of 2022, I went to NJ to attend my brother’s baby shower, having split up with my wife a year prior. (Which was another layer of feeling alone and lacking support for.) It was the first time I’d see my grandpop in years. While at my brother’s house and everyone was preparing to go to the location of the baby shower, I had a panic attack and told my sister I was going for a walk. Not very far from the house, I sat by a small pond with cars passing behind me. I gathered myself and started to walk back to my brother’s house when I saw his stupid black truck that’s the size of a fucking boat approaching. He pulled over and said, “Get in.” I don’t know if he was trying to be a hero or what, but he said he was supposed to be there early and he’s going to be late. I said I was going back to the house and could go with my sister, but he took me straight to the restaurant. I tried to express some of my grief, but he was mostly quiet. While at the baby shower, my mom walked over to the sibling table and made a comment to my brother about him gaining weight and laughed. I tried to defend him by saying, “We can always expect mom to come in with the body image comments.” Everyone was awkwardly quiet and she walked away, scratching the eczema on her hand that’s been there as long as I’ve been alive.

I felt “other” as a kid. My insisting that I’m not a girl was met with physical and verbal punishment from my whole immediate family. I learned to adapt. I learned to be funny to be liked. But early pandemic times brought me to face myself. When I started to become more vocal about police brutality and trans rights, everyone started to treat me differently. It got awkward. The version of me that they cling to was replaced by someone they don’t like. In spring of 2023, I called my siblings individually to tell them my chosen name. They (mostly) had positive responses (though kind of awkward). I won’t forget how my brother said, “Liam will be much easier. Lyd was hard cause it was too easy to slip into saying the whole thing.” Seemed positive. He did go on to complain, “How am I supposed to get pronouns right if non-binary people don’t want to hang out with a 35 year old straight guy like me.” But in the following months, they were no longer getting mixed up and saying my deadname, they were instead saying Lyd, not Liam. When I aired out my frustration to my sister, it traveled to the others as me complaining about it and being mad that everyone still refers to me as “she.” They all started to distance themselves. So when I started making plans for top surgery, I didn’t call them individually. I had one person I trusted with all of my updates, and she was overwhelmed by the pressure to keep everyone informed (something I specifically told her was not her responsibility) and I trusted that social media would keep them informed if they wanted to be. The fundraiser made its rounds and I got no calls or messages from them. Okay, one text from my older sister - “Sending positive vibes.” Not a single family member was concerned about me or offered any kind of help in my 6 weeks of healing. My sister’s in-laws dropped off food, that I won’t forget. But for my immediate family, I was just someone they don’t like, making a bad choice (re: previous post about my last encounters with my mom).

I feel “other” now. I never in my wildest imagination pictured a world in which I’d be estranged from my family. I have a baby niece I haven’t met yet. Only a few close friends have sat with me as I’ve cried over this. I wanted to keep my family. I tried, but they didn’t. And some things in life require *too* much effort to hold onto. When it’s time to realize that some energy is worth saving, you have to let go of the relationships that drain you and lack reciprocation. That’s the hardest thing about my experience with being trans. I knew some people have this experience, sometimes more violent than mine. Yet I thought my family would have my back. It turned out that the more vocal I became, the less liked I’d be. They showed me how easy it is to let me go, and all back each other up that it’s my own fault. They lost their sister. (My mom reminded me.)

A few months after my grandmother passed, I had a dream that she and my grandpop were in a dimly lit waiting room. I walked through a door and saw them sitting side by side. My grandpop didn’t acknowledge me, but my grandmom stood up and came to me. She gave me a hug and said, “I understand why you didn’t come.”

So while they all gather this weekend to celebrate my dad’s 70th birthday, for all they know, I’m a short drive away. For all they know, I know nothing of these plans. Instead, I will go to the north shore and be with some of my chosen family. And while I’m there, I’ll be meeting at a notary with my ex to sign a separation agreement. My art of forgetting is remembering, and leaving the past where it is.