Rejection – In all it’s forms

Morning Gorgeous 🙂 xx

And how are we all today, all Thirteen Bloody Hundred of you! Where the hell did you all come from? I’ll be honest, right, shooting from the hip as I always do… I never, NEVER, expected this blog to be a success. I just didn’t. It was never written for that. It was written to help me. To move me forward. To assist in my change from the person I was, to the person I was becoming. Much like most people have a diary next to their bed, this is mine. All those thoughts that I couldn’t control and had no use for, they go down here.

It turns out, that in the last four years, 10,000 of you have seen these pages. And 1300 of you have been waiting for me write more. I can’t thank you all enough for you patience, please believe me when I tell you; it’s not easy to write this stuff – I have to go through some really serious shit before I write it down.

It’s also worthy of note that there are 102 unfinished posts behind this one, that have got to come out (And they will, I assure you). But at the time, there was something stopping me finishing them. Something that meant I couldn’t complete them; because my mind would be taken away by a feeling that I couldn’t control & couldn’t understand. Therefore I couldn’t get over it and move forward, and finish what I was writing.

There’s a name for it, it’s called writers block. But it’s such a simple term for such a complex emotion, that it belies just how difficult it can be to resolve and move on from it. But I can tell you, with honesty now. It’s not there anymore; it’s gone. And THIS, that I am about to tell you, is the reason why. THIS, the title of the post, was my block. And fuck me was it a painful one to deal with.

Rejection. Such a simple term. So easy to say off hand, and so easy to dismiss. “Get over it”, Deal with it”, “Move on, what’s your problem?”, “Why are you so upset? Did you not expect that?” – These are all terms which have been said to me a lot in the past four years. And they’re all negative. They’ve all been said by people who were present in a given situation, but not at the centre; so therefore, the outcome wasn’t important to them. The people saying these things were all able to walk away from the situation relatively unharmed by it and, with a few good nights sleep, probably wouldn’t think twice about it.

But what do you do if you are at the centre of the situation? You’re the one that took the bullet. You’re the one that’s actually go to do deal with the fallout from that situation, and learn to heal – You’re the one that’s got to “Get over it”? How do you deal with the hurt and the pain of losing something, knowing it’s importance in your life and knowing it’s never going to come back or be the same? What does your mind go through in order to resolve that issue? I’ll tell you. You do it like I did, and you walk away; silently You don’t show the pain. You go home and you cry yourself to sleep, every night until the pain has gone. You allow your mind to rest. Because it’s going to need that rest to face the challenges that lie ahead.

So, what brought this on? Why such a deep conversation at four in the morning? Well, because I can, lol – That’s how I write this blog, lol. Because all my posts were written at 4 o’clock in the morning. It’s my favourite time for writing. Lol. It really is, works so well for me – The peace, the quiet, the birds singing as the sun comes up. Love it.

No, I’ll be honest with you, it’s more serious than that. I write at this time in a morning because that’s when I’m best able to gather my thoughts. It’s when I really work my magic. But why call this post “Rejection – In all it’s forms”? I hear you ask.

Well, because, rejection by own family and most of my long-term (20+ years) friends; has been the cause of why I’ve not been able to write much over the last four years. The people who I thought would be able to help me when I needed it, rejected me. They said no. They pushed me away. They left me to deal with a situation that I didn’t know how to deal with, on my own. And these are the people that you think you can rely on. Your family and friends…

Now I’m a family orientated person. I will always give back as much as I receive. I will help fucking anybody, if they need it and I can help – Even if it’s just a listening ear and cup of tea (NATO Standard, please. Two Sugars). But all I ask in return is for people to treat me as I treat them. And if I ask for help, it’s because I’m struggling. And it might just be that cup of tea with two sugars and an ear that will listen to my blurb. (and it is blurb sometimes, and it can take me a while to get to the point; I do apologise for being my autistic self). Sometimes that’s all you fucking need.

But the shit that the people I think of as family, have put me through in the last four years, beggars belief. I returned home to save my fucking life – I had death threats through my letterbox, my car was broken into and my laptop stolen, my car was involved in some questionable “accidents”, people attempted to break into my house and I’ve had the taunts, slander and fights in the street during the day. And the only reason I can equate for all of this, is because I transitioned so fucking well; and found ways of dealing with the effects of that, that it made people jealous. I asserted my independence and my rights as a human being, and I learnt the fucking hard way what that actually meant.

So to be told that there’s nothing for you in your home town, when you need to go back to your roots. To be told the people who you love the most can’t understand you and fear you. And to be rejected by the people who you thought were your friends, because they’ve reached conclusions about you that are not true; based on lies they’ve been told. That’s fucking rejection 101, right there. That’s life changing.

The worst one. The one that really hit the jugular, was that no one in my own family had the bollocks to find me, ring me up and tell me my own father had passed away. Or even when his funeral was. How cruel is that? And do you know why it was done? Because I’d had a argument with my mother four years previous; over my son. Who wasn’t even born at the time. Any they weren’t even there when both my ex partner (with my unborn son) and my mother forced me to choose between the two of them. A bit fucking rude, don’t you think? Makes you wonder what their reality of me actually was, clearly it wasn’t what I thought it was.

What I’ve noticed though, having been on this journey through Dante’s Inferno, is that I’m not the only one of my kind that goes through it. We all do. I haven’t met a Trans person yet that hasn’t been on this journey – Especially those that transition after puberty, or after coming of age. They seem to have it the hardest. Transition when you’re a kid, it’s infantilised; “Aww, they’ll grow out of it”, and when they don’t it’s accepted as they’ve come of age in their own way. Transition when you’re an adult, and by the Christ is it demonised; “What the fuck are you doing?”, is the usual term.

So let me ask a question before I close; What the fuck is the reason for it? I’m sorry we didn’t turn out to be the people you expected us to be; but it’s clear you’re not the people who we expected you to be either. Swings and fucking roundabouts mate, it’s a two way street. You’re asking us to deal with it, you fucking deal with it. And if rejection is your way of dealing with it, don’t put that shit on us – That’s yours, not ours.

I fully understand Gay and LGBTQ pride now, I see where it comes from and what is behind it. The hurt, the pain, the anger all being turned around and pushed out as what you believe to be a positive emotion. It all makes perfect sense. But there’s a problem. And I’m fairly unique in my ability to see it; at least from the feedback that I get, I’m led to believe that. And that is that Pride is the wrong emotional channel for this energy. Pride can be abused, pride comes before a fall.

I grew up with LGBT Pride, it’s in my family. I was brought up to be proud of who I am. And I was different. But my life fell apart in my late twenties and it was because of that pride – I thought I mattered and I was going places. I was proud of who I was, the family I had, the life I had, of who I’d become. And I had reason to feel that way. But those feelings are transient, Pride itself is a transient emotion and can’t be relied upon. It will always come before a fall.

So, to finalise, what should replace it? How should you feel when you come out the other side and you build your new foundation from the ashes of Dante’s Inferno (Yes, that’s what it’s really like; read it). What should that be?

I’ll tell you. You should be confident. Confident in your abilities, confident in your own skin, confident of who you are. And know that you matter to yourself. Know that you can win, that you can survive, that you do have a place in the world – But NEVER equate that with Pride. Pride is different, pride is a negative emotional state. Pride does not allow for fluid, dynamic, change.

Feeling confident in yourself and your ability to adapt to change. That’s what matters, that’s what keeps thinks alive and that’s what destroys negativity. Listen to the words of other people, understand them (or try to), take them on board. Store them. But don’t live by it – Let it go when it’s not necessary to keep it, you don’t need to. Evolve. Never stop moving forward, even if you can’t always see the direction you’re travelling in. There will always been signs that a cliff is coming. And even if you drive off the edge of that cliff, be confident in your ability to drive and you’ll always survive the landing. Have confidence in yourself and you will always come out the other side.

Just like I have.

Much love,

Vikki xx