A M Raulerson

I’ll try to keep this short, but I probably won’t be able to. Sitting here thinking about what it is I want to tell you about me, I realize I’m overthinking again. I do that a lot because I’m a worrier, a nitpicker, an obsessive-compulsive weirdo with a tendency to overshare… Bigtime. I have been many people in my life, both good and bad, like most humans on earth. I have a “family” I will probably never see again, unless someone remembers me when planning a funeral… maybe. I was adopted before my parents knew how strange I was, and was never really accepted me into their family. They kept me (too afraid of their friend’s judgment if they’d tried to return me because I was defective) but never understood or accepted me. I was “different,” odd and not normal, but what the hell is normal? I spent a lot of time alone, became my own person because that is all I could do, and even though I wanted their acceptance… I knew I would never get it. \n\nI was extremely confused my whole life, about who and what I was, what was “wrong” with me. Finally, in my late thirties, I came to accept something I’d known for a long time but was afraid of. Accepting the fact that I am a transgender gay man made me feel more alone than ever, but I knew the truth deep down in my soul. Living as a woman felt so wrong, but no matter how I felt I was too afraid to be anything else. Scared and lonely, I hide behind the mask I’d worn my whole life. (Better the devil you know, right?) I knew I would lose everything, that I would have to start a completely new life if I ever wanted to be me, and the thought terrified me. So deep into my depression, I thought I would have to hide who I was for the rest of my life, that no one would ever accept or love me for who I really am. I knew my “family” never would, I’d heard them make comments about people like me without ever knowing they were degrading me with every word. Every slur, innuendo or derogatory tirade a painful blow to my already broken soul.\n\nWhen I was at my lowest, voices reached out and told me that I deserved to be happy, and I felt truly loved and valued for the first time in my life. They accepted the real me; quirks, annoying habits, idiosyncrasies, my tendency spout random gibberish and all. I thought friendship was an emotional circus full of mind games and double talk, passive-aggressive “jokes” that I would have to wade through to find out what they actually meant. I’d had “friends” before, and I didn’t want to go through that again. It just wasn’t worth it… or so I thought. These voices turned out to be brilliant, exceptional, generous and devoted women who turned my entire life around with their love and support. These women, their belief in me, pulled me out of hell and helped me to grow stronger every day. They didn’t make me feel bad for being different, they celebrated my uniqueness and gently pushed me to reach for my dreams. My overactive imagination was always coming up with stories and ideas, characters and scenes that needed to be written, but I never thought I would be able to publish a book people would want to read. I’d only ever heard I was too stupid to write anything other than grocery lists, that my notebooks full of stories were just rediculous scribbling that no one would want to read. They helped me silence the degrading voices in my head, and they helped me prove those voices wrong.\n\nI have lived and I have wanted to die. I have fought with everything in me, and both won and lost. I have picked myself up after an atom bomb has destroyed my life, and I have soldiered on. I am not better and I am not worse than the next person. I’m human just like you!\n