How Do You Sleep at Night After your hypocrisy?

What are you curious about?

I’ve worn a lot of faces people projected onto me.

Straight girl. Dyke. Butch. Femme. Delicate. Dangerous. Confused. Attention-seeking. Pervert. Confused again.

Now: trans man, neurodivergent, loud, too political, somehow “too much” and “not enough” at the same time. And still confused.

I’ve seen all sides of this thing. I’ve watched people turn their heads when it wasn’t their kind of pain.

I’ve been told I’m part of the family until I say one true thing too loud, and then suddenly I’m disposable. I’ve lived through poverty so deep it rewires your brain. Go check out some of wheeling and tell me I didn’t. I’ve held my breath through trauma stacked on top of survival stacked on top of systems that were never built for me.

And somehow… even after all of that,

I still can’t understand how any marginalized person can weaponize power the minute they get a little of it. I’m really asking here. How do you explain away your bigotry when you are still locked out? You do get that don’t you?

What mental gymnastics do you have to perform to make it okay when you’re doing it? Do you think you’re “just being realistic”? Do you call it “nuance”? Is it a kind of safety? Self-protection? Power-lust? Do you feel it when you do it? When you side with the abuser? Do you understand the excuses you used are the same ones used against you?

When you push down someone even further beneath you in the pecking order you swore you didn’t believe in?Do you sleep easier with that boot on your foot instead of on your throat?

Because me…

I still flinch when I hear certain words come out of certain mouths. Even if the words are none of my concern. I still scan rooms for exits. I still don’t fully know what it’s like to feel safe in public as just myself.

I still shake when someone tries to take my humanity and dress it up like a political debate. I will always live in intersectionality whether I want to or not. I can’t peel off my gender’s history or identity. I can’t unlive being poor. I can’t “grow out of” neurodivergence. I didn’t choose to be a minority from multiple directions. Though, there is no problem with existing as you are.

But I also never chose to become like the ones who tried to erase me. So again, I’m asking:

What does that feel like, when you know better and still choose worse? When you say you care about justice but it stops at your reflection? When your version of progress leaves entire groups behind? When you build your acceptance off someone else’s erasure?

Do you look in the mirror and think:

“This is what survival made me”?

Or are you still calling it pride?

Because here’s the truth:

I know what it feels like to be left out of even the most “inclusive” movements. I know what it feels like to be used as proof of diversity while being erased in every real decision. I know what it feels like to be expected to understand everyone else’s pain while mine is mocked or ignored! And I’ve never once, not once, thought that meant I should make anyone else feel the same.

So again. Color me curious. Genuinely. What do you tell yourself to make it okay when you silence others, shame others, turn your back on people you once stood beside?How do you justify it? What stories do you spin to soothe your guilt? If you even feel it!

Because me? I still carry the names of those I watched suffocate. I still carry the weight of what was done to me. But I also carry the weight of what I refuse to do to anyone else. And I wonder if you ever think about that, when your feet are wearing the boots now.

And I’m losing my breath underneath it.

Links Portfolio uhhh discord?

Let’s hike? Read a poem?

Feeling emotional?