Just random late-night rambling from a trans girl
Hi, my name is Helenna, I'm a trans girl, I'm 17 years old, but, it's getting worse, and I feel horrible, I, I used to be a fervent Christian, an apologist, but when I started discovering my dysphoria, being a girl brought me a happiness and sense of well-being that I had never felt before. I'm not a Christian anymore and I'm not even sure whether being trans is actually a sin according to religion, but I'm still very afraid. It's 4 in the morning right now and I can't sleep. What if I'm wrong? What if they're right?
I'm a hypocrite, the worst of all sinners, because knowing God perfectly well, I chose to reject Him simply because I thought my personal comfort mattered more, but I nadbrve6s6wg, it hurts so much not being able to be who I want to be. How can a good God, who knew that being a girl would make me so happy, have chosen to make me be born in the wrong body? And that thought alone is already blasphemy. I feel awful, and the idea of Hell is still far too terrifying. How am I supposed to live my life knowing that if I'm wrong, I'll burn in the very essence of God's eternal wrath?
Something terrible could happen in the next few hours. I could go to sleep and wake up dead. I could get hit by a stray bullet. China could go to war with the United States and destroy the world, or I could simply have a heart attack and then wake up before the God who made me male, and I pointed my finger in His face to tell Him that the perfect Being made a mistake.
I know there are different interpretations, but deep down, at the core of my being, there's still a part of me that thinks this is wrong. So even if someone gave me a perfect theological argument, I would probably still be weak in faith and believe that by being Helenna I was sinning against my conscience. I could apply the whole "the one who does it, does it for God, and the one who does not, does not do it for God," but that doesn't work if being trans is actually intrinsically sinful. Romans says that we all have God's law written on our hearts, making us without excuse. Deep down I know what I'm doing is wrong, but I love being a girl, and apparently, more than I love God.
Nobody understands me. I don't go to church anymore. My parents are violently homophobic and have said they would commit suicide if they had a "gay son," and that they would rather have a rapist murderer. I'm afraid of whether my sister would accept me. And then there are the people from the LGBT community who like me and would absolutely accept me, but who would never understand the religious side of my conflict.
Jesus said we would not know the hour when He would return. He could come tonight, and I won't go with Him. I'll suffer for all eternity because I thought my comfort mattered more than the glory of Almighty God.
I wish I were an atheist. I really do. There are so many benefits. Being a believer has absolutely no benefits. If God doesn't exist, then the believer threw their life away, lost everything good life had to offer. Lies and bribery are there to be used responsibly. Drugs and masturbation are there to be enjoyed recreationally. But I feel cursed by God. I feel like I've been given a burden much heavier than anyone around me. I don't know anyone else going through something like this. I feel alone, abandoned by everything and everyone, even by God.
Do I deserve peace? Why is it intrinsically true that I deserve peace? Maybe I don't deserve it. Maybe I'm a depraved sinner who hates good and only practices evil, a sworn enemy of the good and almighty God. Why would such a disgusting creature deserve peace?
My parents said they only had me so they could have financial support and someone to visit them in the hospital when they need it. They said I'm not allowed to leave home and that they will accept nothing less than a monthly minimum wage handed to them by me for the rest of my life. Even without knowing that I'm Helenna, they already hate who I am socially. They're the ones who choose what I wear. They buy my clothes and decide before I leave the house. They choose my haircut. They say they have no pride in me.
I'm almost graduating as a computer technician from Fundação Matias Machline. I'm a two-time national gold medalist in OBMEP. I have a C1 English certificate. But the time I was almost run over, my mother became incredibly angry because she said I had embarrassed her terribly. She said I can't leave Amazonas because it would be sinful to abandon the land "God chose for you to be born in," even though I hate everything here. I hate the food, I hate the culture, I hate the climate. It's one of the cities with the highest levels of violence against LGBT people in the entire country.
Why does being human have intrinsic value? If there is no God, who gives value to the universe? Why does someone else's desire to live matter more than my desire to kill them? (Hypothetical example.)
I feel like no religion is capable of saving me. If not even Christianity, which offers salvation by grace, can make me feel at peace with who I am, then what hope is there for a religion based on salvation by works?
I have a dream life in mind. A life where I wake up in the morning, see snow outside the window (I love snow), make breakfast for my wife (yes, I'm sapphic, but that's another story), kiss her before she leaves for work, and spend the day doing housework, studying, and playing video games until she comes home and I can give her love, affection, and pleasure. And maybe, just maybe, I would be so fulfilled that I could get up, brush my teeth, go through an entire day without thinking about God, and then realize it, and understand that I can move on.
But no, I can't. Because when I say I wouldn't think about God in that scenario, I mean in the sense of searching for happiness, because I would already be completely happy. But I would still think about God all the time as the cosmic judge who HATES ME in a PERFECTLY JUST way because I hated Him first. At that moment I understand Pascal's Wager, even though I don't agree with it.
Could God have mercy on me? Could He recognize that my pain is immense and that everything I did was just an attempt to stop hurting myself? The best thing that ever happened to me was Fundação Matias Machline having a medical clinic, because when I violently scratch my forearm, that's where my friends take me.
But no, because my suffering isn't righteous. God chose to create a world where me being Helenna is wrong, and where having my dream spouse is wrong. Why did God place desires inside me that nothing on earth is capable of satisfying?
I'm safe right now. The last time was over a month ago, I think. Usually it's because of guilt spirals. Like, the last time it happened was because, okay, I don't hear very well, I speak loudly, and I think I might have some mild hearing loss, and someone at school just told me to shut up while I was talking. Completely out of nowhere. I immediately left the classroom and started scratching myself with my fingernails until my skin turned red.
The time before that was because my friend was on her period. I accidentally annoyed her and felt unbelievably guilty about it, until after I had already done that to myself she texted me apologizing for getting upset over something so small.
If I saw someone going through my situation, I would feel immense pity and compassion. I would want to hug them and give them love. But I can't see myself that way, and I can't imagine anyone seeing me that way. My parents have said that I'm incapable of getting married because nobody could ever love me.
What do I think God thinks about me? Disgust. Definitely disgust. A miserable worm who thinks she knows more than Him. "Who are you, O man?" Where were you when I created the heavens and the earth? Look upon Leviathan.
God's love is for those whom His Son purchased with His blood. I've always been Calvinist, but I would say not for a good reason. I simply thought I was too sinful and terrible to have chosen God. I didn't think I was capable of doing good at all. The logical conclusion was that God elected me. And Calvinism says Christ did not die for everyone, but for His own, and that God has a general hatred toward fallen creation because sin is a deliberate choice to reject the good.
Other than my parents and maybe an aunt who hates me because she wanted to give my brother an overdose and I didn't let her, almost everyone who knows me has a positive opinion of me. I always try to be kind, to understand people's side of things, not to accuse people without evidence, to correct the people I love when they make mistakes because that's what I would want them to do for me.
But when I unconsciously correct some grammatical mistake my parents make, I get at least thirty minutes of a speech about how I hate them, think they're stupid, and think I'm better than everyone else.
I know it sounds like I'm speaking very badly about them, and from a humanist perspective I have more than enough reasons to hate them, but I don't. I want absolutely no contact with them once I leave home, but the fact that the Bible commands us to honor our parents would still trouble me. Because even though I love them, I recognize that they made my life far more miserable than it had to be, and I don't think they deserve honor.
They dismiss my friendships. "You don't have friends. Your only friends are us."
When I almost lost my computer because I left it at school (and by the way, it contained all the files for my graduation project that I had spent six months programming), their reaction was, "It's gone. You lost it. Everyone hates you. Nobody is good in this world. Someone definitely stole it. Sorry."
In the end, I called a friend. She went there, found the computer, and kept it safe for me.
And what hurts me most about that story is that my mother's genuine reaction to the possibility of me losing six months of work and maybe not graduating was, "Sorry." And when I started tearing up from worry, she laughed.
Maybe that's exactly why the idea of being a girl appealed to me so much. Girls are socially allowed to wear colorful clothes, express their feelings, cry, laugh, perform, be mischievous sometimes. But any man who does those things is looked down upon.
I love theater, but I've had very few opportunities to practice it in my life.
And beyond that, being a girl would allow me to be fragile, to feel fragile, and not have to be strong. I could rest my head on someone's shoulder when I was sleepy and they'd think it was cute instead of pushing me away.
My mother spent my entire childhood and my brother's saying that she wished she'd had two daughters and didn't get the chance, which is why she adopted my sister. That shaped part of the image I have of women.
When I see a girl at school, for example (setting aside the normal gender envy and dysphoria), what I mostly feel is shame and fear that I'm somehow making her uncomfortable.
I hate being tall. Okay, I'm 1.67 meters, but that's already much taller than I'd like. And whenever I talk to a girl who's shorter than me, I feel like I'm offending her somehow, that she finds me disgusting. That's not objectively true. I know it isn't because I have friends, and my best friend loves me, I know she does. But I still think it.
Nothing offends me more than being called sexist because I love women so much that I wish I were one and married to one. So being treated as someone who despises women wounds me at the deepest level of my soul.
I have severe arachnophobia. I use texture packs and mods to remove spiders from Minecraft. I couldn't finish Terraria and barely managed to finish Hollow Knight because of them. When my brother was much younger, he had a rubber spider that he liked throwing at me, and I'd scream like a little girl, and my parents hated that.
I live in Amazonas, and there are spiders here. My parents have a rural property in the countryside, and there were always lots of them there. My mother once told me about a time when I woke up terrified because there was a huge spider on the wall extremely close to me, and I was completely frozen. I don't remember any of that, thankfully. But being at that property was a constant source of fear, and my father always looked down on me for it because he loved being there. He would kill the spiders and set them on fire. He mocked my fear and said it was stupid.
The thing about screaming is interesting too. My voice has always been high-pitched. I'm almost completely certain that I have some degree of testosterone deficiency (and honestly, I'm not complaining) because I'm 17 years old and don't have a single facial hair, among other things.
And throughout my life I've been misgendered, and for some reason, before I understood why, it never bothered me. It still happens. Three days ago I shouted the name of a friend during an award ceremony, and a guy in front of me turned around and said he "thought it had been a girl."
Want me to name three good qualities about myself?
I. Have. Absolutely. No. Idea.
But if you asked any of my friends, they'd definitely know.
Maybe it's because I'm an INTP hahahahaha.
Just kidding, I'm not going to treat MBTI like it's astrology.
I, uh, I guess I care about justice. I wanted to study law, but my parents told me not to because they said it's too dangerous and that every lawyer puts their entire family at risk.
Uh... I'm good at video games?
It's really difficult for me to say anything interesting about myself and MY GOD IT'S 6 IN THE MORNING I SPENT 2 FREAKING HOURS WRITING THIS.
Oh, and I don't swear around anyone. When I'm alone I'm a little more liberal about it, but never in front of other people.
Wow, I wrote A TON.
I'm going to try to sleep now.
Honestly, having the sun outside really does seem to make a difference in my thoughts.