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I Cried Myself to Sleep Last Night [1]

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Date: 2024-11-25  

And though it was election adjacent, it wasn’t about the election. The day after the election, I cut every MAGA friend, colleague and family member out of my life. My premise for such a radical action was that people can’t say they love me while supporting someone who wants me invisible or dead, so I sent a blast out to my entire contact list with some exceptions, (those being people who I know for sure didn’t support that…..man). These folks were the same people with whom I had maintained relationships with despite the 2016 or 2020 elections. I had believed those relationships were important enough to me to let politics be politics and to compartmentalize those relationships and sequester them away from our differing philosophies.

Here’s the thing though: You can’t separate politics from policy. It’s like trying to hold an Arsonist blameless for burning your house down because the fire is what burnt down the house and the Arsonist just supported and encouraged the fire. Stupid, right? But that is exactly what the MAGA Cultists are telling us when they say that “their politics” shouldn’t affect our relationships. Well I beg to differ. They support and encourage a man who has been open about his desire to directly harm me as a trans American. While I’ll never get anybody who is non white, non hetero, non male and non Christian voting away their rights, I find it galling that these people feel like they can throw me to the lions and then expect me to be all friendly and forgiving while I’m being eaten. Well, here I am, in the arena and the cages have been brought out and are slowly opening. Soon the lions will be stalking me, toying with me until ready to pounce and I’m supposed to be your buddy while you sit with the bloodthirsty crowd safely in the stands? Yeah, ain’t happening.

It became painfully obvious leading up to the election that I was unable to persuade any of them to rejoin reason and to not end our American experiment. They voted for fascism, misogyny, bigotry, hate, anger and fear over reason, tolerance, love and hope. Fine. That’s their right, (for now) but that doesn’t mean that I just have to take it quietly and remain a captive audience while they gloat and dance on the grave of democracy. That doesn’t mean that I can’t set boundaries to protect myself from further betrayal.

One of those people was my own younger brother, (who I will refer to as “P” for this post). I also have an older brother (J) and a “baby” sister, (who is not part of this post). While none of us are perfect examples of humanity, P suffered a learning disability, (dyslexia) and was kind of left behind. He did graduate high school and he became a master machinist. Like the rest of us, he’s winding up his career now and will soon retire but he’s still surrounded by working folks. Nothing wrong with that, I am much more comfortable around working people myself but he has been using it as an excuse for his MAGA leanings so I mention it here.

Anyway, when I cut P off, I was the last sibling to do so and now he has no contact with any of his birth family, most of whom are dead or, like me, exhausted with his loud support of that….man. But I also remember the kind P, who took on the task of burying our mom so the rest of us wouldn’t have to, I remember the vulnerable P who cried at the end of The Hobbit and whose drunk ass I saved from the wrath of our parents all of those years ago. He’s a Cultist and while he’s responsible for his own actions, sometimes his actions, like those of any Cultist, aren’t his own. I was thinking about all of this last night while trying to sleep and how I would feel if I was cut off so thoroughly from my siblings and I couldn’t help myself and started to cry uncontrollably, like I am right now writing this.

Writing this has been cathartic in a way though. I now know that I’m not crying for what I have lost or even for the adult who was my brother, (yes, “was” is intentional). I’m crying for the poor 16 year old teen with dyslexia who had finally battered his way through my copy of The Hobbit, only to see his favorite character, (Thorin Oakenshield) killed off. I’m crying for the sloppy drunk who showed up on our parents porch in the small hours of one long ago morning who I intercepted before he could wake them with his stumbling and fumbling. I’m crying for the guy who I drove around town that morning to let the alcohol work its way through his system and whose vomit I cleaned up. The underage kid who I finally put to bed just before people started getting up in the house and I went to work. I’m crying for the grown man and the unintentional hilarity when we were gathered together in my recently deceased father’s home when our mom called to talk to dad but hadn’t known he was gone. (Sounds grim but trust me, the look on his face was really funny. Other brother J and I had to leave the room.)

I really, really hate that it has come to this but P, you can’t deny what your dear leader and his minions have been openly saying about people like me. You can’t deny knowledge of our state’s raft of new anti trans legislation that they are preparing when next in session. You can’t throw me under the bus and expect me to be okay with it while I’m being dragged under the wheels. I’m trans in Texas and my life was already difficult enough and you proactively supported making it orders of magnitude more difficult, even dangerous and you did it blithely but not unaware. There’s no going back from that. I can’t think of a circumstance in which I will ever be able to forgive you or let you back into my life. I’m sorry that this is where we are but I’m not sorry that I did what I had to do. I share none of your responsibility in making it necessary though. You’ve made your choice and I had to make mine. Goodbye. May you find peace because I never will.

Update: Thanks for all of the well wishes. The thing is that I still love my brother and all of the people I had to cut out of my life more than I can express and much more than they will ever acknowledge. As a commentator pointed out in the comments thread: civil wars are not civil. I think that’s correct and I think the MAGA cult have convinced themselves of some romanticized version of events following their betrayal. I believe they thought that they would just be able to continue on like they have been or that there would be only be consequences for other people, not their own loved ones. But this is neither going to be a movie of the week about Gettysburg, nor will it be a Hallmark movie in which Lori Loughlin reconciles with family at Christmas, memorialized in the perfect family holiday portrait. This is what they wanted and none of their Pikachu faces can change that now.

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[1] Url: https://dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/25/2288554/-I-Cried-Myself-to-Sleep-Last-Night?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

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