Who I Came From
My mom was an authority who wanted something from me. The things she wanted the most were rooted in the fact that I was assigned to be her son at birth. The soil she gave me to grow with was the bible mixed with the American evangelical church. Although she was not aware, to be fair many of us are not, it was sourced by happenstance of singular examples of good and evil through her upbringing.
She would never admit it, but people desire for good and often when that good is gone we grieve it and then vow to live for it. Naturally the good we feel deserves to be desired is given from those we love. In this, those who we first love get to establish our most calling precedent. Love and goodwill are the strongest of agents for stringing together and setting a web of untouchable beliefs.
For my mother the web held this, an essential idea backed by her christian faith that god’s creation of men and women starts with gendered roles written by him into their DNA. From this people have a template of what shape their soul should take form through the development of identity. A man’s christian aim included the fight against lust over women though heterosexual aggression is his nature, to seek a wife and family who will submit to his earned authority, pursue righteous masculinity as femininity goes against god’s natural design for men, and above all to obey the will of Jesus Christ. Biological sex nearly, if not completely, told it all.
Being the first born boy of my mothers marriage, whose birth name meant gift from god, telling her that I was a girl who liked men and not the straight man ordained and written into white stone by the almighty god who sustains her very being, it tore us apart. Trying desperately to bring back the lost love for her son while keeping fast to the perfect truth of her universe she found the cure. God revealed to her the love he holds for me despite my sinful urges brought by the fallen place called earth. That there would be glory and honor to the name above all names if only I would fight against the devil who was planting these wicked trials of temptation obstructing my destined road of christian manhood. Whether it be a lifelong call to Christ centered resistance, or a trip to conversion camp to fix the faulty wiring caused by my father who by default of my internal conflict had to be labeled failed; either or both would bring restoration. To this I said no.
It is because of this I never had a mother. I was born a girl and my mom was the mother to a boy who I have always been estranged from. In her eyes she is still the mother of that boy even if he is dead or temporarily unavailable. When the moment came that I made her aware that I knew nothing of this son she had, other than that I knew it could only be him who she wanted, she left me entirely. The lady who gave birth to me spent all the legally mandated years trying to remake me a way I can never be. When 18 came the time was up and I left. Relief and freedom came for my now uninhibited female soul and for her I am not entirely sure. I do place wishes upon this wound that is sadly out of my care. And really I have only one wish knowing how ugly longing is: that she can let go.
