Last week, I had nose surgery. The finest rhinoplasty the uninsured can buy!

It turns out, I haven't been able to breathe adequately through either nostril in years. It's a whole thing that only got addressed because I had a weird "allergic" reaction to peanut butter. I am not allergic to peanuts. We tested. But while I was at the allergist's, I asked what to do about the constant congestion in my nose and was sent to an ENT. The dude looked in my nose for like... 2 minutes max... and was like "yeah, if you're getting any air through either nostril, it's your left one, and then it's not very much." So surgery! (I'm exactly a week out. My nose is swollen, full of blood and snot, and I can already breathe better than I could before. Wild.)

Anyway, the funniest thing happened while checking in for my surgery. I was looking through my paperwork because they wanted me to verify my information. While looking through it, I saw this gem:

Ah yes. My very favorite of the sexes: Adult.

I joke, but seriously, I love being an adult.

I really, really, love being an adult.

One thing that never has made sense to me is when people say they wish they were a kid again. Nope. No, thank you, very much. I'd rather spend the rest of my life working my ass off, in debt, and paying taxes. That is not a joke.

Don't get me wrong. Being an adult is not always easy or fun. It is a lot of work. I have really, really struggled through much of my adult life. But a lot of that struggling was a direct result of my childhood. And, from personal experience, I'd rather be unpacking the years of trauma than living it.

As an adult, I can do fun things like call the police when I'm hit. I can move out of unsafe living environments. I also can stop going to church when it becomes apparent that my weekly Sunday Morning Panic Attack was a direct result of going to church. I can talk about the "family secrets" that had to stay hidden (it does piss off a bunch of my biological family, but most of the ones who get mad about this already dislike me because I'm trans). I can stop caring about the meaning of life and trying to find a purpose to everything I do and just live.

Oh! I also get to be openly queer and trans! I love that for me.

Life is hard, y'all. As I said in my first post, the world is a fucking dumpster fire and a half. And yet... And yet, I would rather exist today in Utah, a state that is trying to strip me of the right to exist as myself, than have to spend a single day as a child in my family. At least my Found Family that I have created for myself sees me as Simon and loves me for who I am.

I never knew what it was liked to be loved for who I was as a child.

I'm not going to say there were no people in my life who would have loved me for who I was if I had felt safe enough to share with them. There probably were some. However, when the people you depend on for food, shelter, and physical/emotional safety cannot or will not provide the last two, you don't spend a whole lot of time trusting other people with the inner workings of your mind. Those who would have loved me never got the chance because I was too afraid to share my reality.

It's funny, I have been going through old poetry of mine for a book I'm writing (I guess it's half written since it includes those old poems?). One of the things that is crystal clear is that as a teenager, I did not feel seen or understood by other people. The only time I felt seen was when they read my words. So I wrote. And I wrote. And I wrote.

At the same time, I danced around my realities. There were things too scary to share. Things that I had been told that if I did share, would make people think I would be better off dead (thanks mom!). So even in my vulnerability, I was hiding.

As a young adult, people thought I was so brave for sharing intense, poignant, traumatic, emotional experiences on blogs or on social media. I was real. I was raw. I was also using those words as a shield. If everyone focused on that they would ignore the giant facade that was "Cindy". I wrote to hide, not just from the world, but also from myself. I convinced myself I was vulnerable and real. Selective Honesty. I was very good at Selective Honesty. Even with myself.

I'm not going to pretend that I don't still use some level of selective honesty in my writing. As I've aged, I've learned there's wisdom in keeping some things to yourself, for various reasons. For example, you aren't going to learn a whole lot of personal information about my step kids or my husband through this blog. They deserve privacy. I'll share what is relevant but that is not identifying. Everything else, you don't need to know.

But at the same time, you are getting a level of real-ness that I never could share before because for the first time in my life, I'm a whole person. I'm not spending my entire day compartmentalizing myself into versions of myself that are acceptable to any particular audience.

I don't care if you like me anymore.

I like me.

That's the power of being an adult.

I get to like me exactly as I am and go out into the world and find people who also like me exactly as I am and call those people Family.



**While I would rather live in Utah than not get to be an adult, I still don't really want to live in Utah. I'm trying to raise money to help me and my little family move somewhere safer for us. Anything helps. Donate to my paypal now! https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/XGGBW2YFYKQGU

***I will be launching a blog titled "Ask a Trans Man" sometime shortly. If you want to submit a question, use this link: https://forms.gle/toXV81A4obaBYTDU8