Vertigo

 There was a loud noise. The sound, it's always there. But this time it was loud. It was yelling at me from a distance. I could do my normal tasks. I could continue about my daily life. But. I was annoyed. I didn't want to do the things I was doing. I was accomplishing a lot and feeling frustrated the whole time. I couldn't help going in and out of focus. The loudness. The task. The thoughts in my head. It probably wouldn't have taken someone else nearly as long to get ready or to get things done, but for me. My brain. I just... I didn't want to go. I felt like I do sometimes... It will good for me. The water. The air. The atmosphere. There's a reason why I go there. A reason why I drink the fresh, cold spring water straight from the Adirondack Mountains. It's complicated. I think family usually is to some degree. How do you explain to people who claim to have or do love you that they think your rights to your body should be taken away? How do you explain to your family that you are hurt. That you cannot keep seeing the devastation and recovery on your sibling's face every missed pronoun? How can you keep loving someone who fails to love you for everything that you are? Or for everything about your sibling? They are a pain in the ass, but they are MY pain in the ass. I would step in front of them to save them from a bullet... but how do I knowingly walk into my family, the one I grew up having fun around every summer, knowing that they don't think I should have rights to my own body? That my sibling is not worth speaking to in a mature way, using their preferred name? Why is it so hard to end the name with the extra two letters? To make it more fluid, they can't even get that out of their mouths. I can't even imagine how it felt for their entire life having to struggle with this- knowing that if they did speak up about who they really are- this isn't the worst way to be treated, but it's not the best or the most courteous. I can't keep quiet anymore. My rights have been striped from me and I can no longer be silent in the presence of family ridiculing me. 

I used to get bent out of shape about being subtly teased about being vegetarian. I cannot and will not stand for someone to tell me that they voted for the previous president. That he had "good ideas." 

I cannot stress this enough: 

Dad, Fuck You and the high horse you rode in on.

You are white, cis, and male. You have never in your life experienced any sort of problem in your life that could ever possibly compare to what it is like to be DIFFERENT. Your male anatomy has never been threatened. So-

Dad, Fuck you, actually.

Having that feeling. Those hateful feelings, towards someone you know you loved once... It's grief. It's all the things leading up to me experiencing the loss that will inevitably happen if you continue to support politicians who seek to control women, POC, LGBTQ+, etc. Anyone not a white, cis, male. I am feeling like I will never speak to you again, and it has been a long time coming. The diet racist comments I heard growing up, it only reinforced the feelings I had and often shared. I am a leftist liberal and I don't think you should say things that hurt people. It's honestly not hard to allow everyone to have the equal rights. I can't tell you how many times I've argued with old, cis, white, males. I will never stop. 

That's the feelings I had walking into vacation this year. That my aunts by marriage, my own father, would vote for an absolute nightmare of a con man and then straight face tell me that I'm the one out to destroy America. With all due respect, 

Dad, go suck a fart out of a donkey's ass. 

This noise was loud. Ringing in my ear. Causing me to be weary. Tired. Irritable. I was so fucking tired. I napped almost everyday on vacation. I'm just so tired of this shit. It's my body and I have a right to say I don't want to grow a baby. That's my right. Don't you dare fucking tell me that is not something I cannot decide on my own. Don't you fucking dare! You don't have a right to tell me how to live my life. I'm not raising a baby because your fucking religious upbringing brainwashed you into thinking that all babies are "god's will" even produced under rape or incest. I do not say this lightly: 

Dad, rape is not a reason for you to think abortion is okay. Incest is not a reason for you to think abortion is okay. Abortion is the right of the person who's womb the cells are dividing in and their right only. You twat. 

To say I was avoiding my father is an understatement. I can't have the same conversation thirty times explaining that I don't have a "brother." I have a sibling. If you can't accept it, then fuck off. 

Dad, trans rights are human rights. 

I'm just so very tired. I think by the end there was a few corrections where he actually attempted to use the correct name. It's not even fucking hard to accomplish- it's been their nickname since I can remember. Why suddenly be so harsh on the "k" sound of the name? Why not allow it to have the extra two letters? You make an "ee" sound at the end of my name. I know it's possible. You don't even call me by the name on my birth certificate, but you can't give your first born the nickname that they chose because it makes it gender fluid rather than a hard cis gender name you picked, and honestly, you picked wrong. So what? Move on. Stop being a fucking baby and call your child by the name they ask you to call them because you aren't a little wuss.You are a man and you can own up to being wrong about who they were going to be when they grew up. And you know the funniest part???? They are SO much like you in the work they do... And I am too. I am a lot like you. The child that is the farthest from being like you is the only one you care to respect???? 

Dad. You are an asshole.

Just fucking use the correct they/them pronouns and the correct name and stop being a dick about it. Or you lose two children. Because I will not stand for the prejudice. 

*middle finger doing it as hard as I can*

 Don't you dare keep making a grey area. The line is drawn. Grow up or I'm OUT of your life.