I Was Today Years Old When I Understood My Family Sent Me to Trans Conversion Therapy
Is yikes a trigger warning?
CW: disordered eating, medical treatment, family and intimate partner abuse, conversion therapy, transphobia, sexual assault
I had a physical reaction to letting something go this morning.
It happened when I sent messages naming and forgiving the sexual violence the people in my past had committed against me. Some of those messages went to the perpetrators. Some went to the people who enabled and empowered them. I’ve waited years — decades — for some of these people to stop lying.
I’m not crazy. These things happened.
HOW DO I KNOW THEY HAPPENED?
I know they happened because of the lengths my family went to bury those secrets inside me.
Keeping those secrets hidden in me meant I had to be contained. Controlled. Diminished. If it killed me, so what? Those secrets would die with me.