Be Safe. Be Careful.

This post was very unplanned. It touches briefly on something I'd been meaning to write about at some point, but that isn't the main thrust of any of it.

It also discusses relationships with friends and no longer friends, both online, and in the meat world. If any of those things are likely to make you uncomfortable, maybe give this post a miss (or at least, give the latter part of the post, once I start talking about "todays incident" a miss)


It started off as a tweet, or a couple.
Then I realised I was on the 16th tweet was still going strong, and would have liked to expand on some of the ones I'd already written. So now it's a blog I guess.

Sometimes, people will decide not to like you.


Sometimes, people who liked you once upon a time will decide they don't anymore.


You may never know the reason why someone suddenly stops being civil.
You may have some theories, with varied degrees of evidence and circumstance to back it up, and sometimes they'll flat out tell you.


But some people will seem to just wake up one day, or see something you did, or said, or see or hear someone else taking issue with you for whatever reason.


And they will decide that they hate you now.


Maybe you were close before. Maybe you were merely cordial.
Maybe it will be an instant dislike from the moment they met you.


You may never understand it.


But they'll dislike you, they'll not want anything to do with you.
Anything you say, they'll misinterpret in some way that offends them.
Anything you do, say, or don't do, or don't say, will serve to reinforce their poor opinion of you, and there's nothing you can do about it.
You sure can't ask them why, or what happened.
Or rather, you can, but it will really really piss them off, and you're pretty unlikely to get an answer at all, let alone one that eases the hurt.


And, because the universe is a disordered, uncaring place and makes no promise of fairness of any kind, you probably wont feel the same way.
As the song says "Loving someone don't make them love you."
The same is true of everything else. Liking someone doesn't make them like you.
and someone Very Much Not Liking You does not, immediately, or by default, make you not like them.


It should.


You should be able to look at it and think "well, if they can't see my value, fuck 'em." but it doesn't work that way either.
You will probably still like them at that point, still want to be friends, still want them to like you the way you like them.
In fact, You may want to be friends even more, might want to prove yourself and make them see the error in their ways. Want to push them past whatever caused them to see you as lesser, and come out stronger because of this.


This is a mistake.


It may not always be a big mistake, but it will always be a mistake. If they're at the point where they look for a reason to dislike you in every interaction, then they're past the point of redemption, and frankly, they wouldn't deserve it anyway.


So let them go. Be angry at them if you have to be, if it helps you and gives you closure, because they won't give you shit. Don't worry about doing something that will make them think they were right all along. They already think that.
If getting angry, snapping at them, or otherwise confronting them would not help you, or would hurt you more, don't feel obliged to do it. This is gonna suck either way, and you don't owe them anything anymore. Do whatever helps you through this.


But let them go. Part ways.


In time, the feelings you had will probably fade, you will feel less hurt, betrayed, baffled.
Probably.
The closer you had thought you were to them to start, the longer this will likely take to happen.
(How close they were to you is both irrelevant, and the entire point here. Their side of the equation only matters in the way it impacts on you. You don't owe them anything at this point.)


This is not unique to trans people (or anyone from the quiltbag)
It can happen to anyone, at any time, for any reason (or no reason at all.)
But it is a feeling that queer people are generally unfortunate enough to know well.
Being Trans (or any of the other letters) can sure be a catalyst for it. If it is, you'll usually have either a good idea, or been outright told in some pretty unpleasant language, why it is. And you'll probably have to deal with this more than most cis-het folk will. Even ones who are legitimately assholes to begin with.


But it can happen to anyone. Today, it happened to me for entirely non-trans-related reasons. Well, today and also over the past several months really. But today it came to a head, and probably a conclusion.
And it hits hard. Really hard if you're part of a group that can expect the sort of winnowing of friends and connections as a matter of course. It really feels like, if you're going to face this again and again just because of who you are, then you shouldn't have to face it for unrelated reasons too. But, life makes no promise of fairness of any kind.


Trans people, more than just about anyone, have to face a very difficult decision about who to trust with this sensitive information.
They pretty much all have, for a varying degree of time, something they will want to share with people close to them (or people they think are close to them) that can cause them immense pain, and immense disruption, if it gets into the hands of the wrong people.


Even once you are "Out" in public, most won't want to share this information with everyone. There will be people who will want (and as we should all know by now, some who will attempt,) to hurt you because of it. But especially for the time when you are still closetted, knowing who to trust is a tightrope, and one that can cause immense stress and anxiety.


Who do you tell, who do you leave in the dark.


In my case, the number of people I've told is very small. A little over a dozen at the moment, and not likely to change much in the foreseeable future.
And, none of those people were people I had any serious doubts about. One friend, I was slightly concerned how they'd take it, mostly because our relationship had always had a (joking) level of absurd machismo to it. To me, it was always obviously a joke, and I felt confident but not 100% certain that this was true of them as well. But that little voice that said "Yes but what if it wasn't a joke?" made a small doubt. Not enough to stop me, and it turned out fine so that was good.


But you need to be safe, you need to be careful. And, you need to trust your instincts. I was right to trust my friends, and that the niggling doubt was caused by anxiety.


I was also very much right not to trust certain other people with this information.




I bring this up, because of todays incident.


This was someone who, I'd never been really close, but someone who I'd been quite friendly with, and who, at one point, I'd have considered adding to the list. In fact, they were still vaguely on the "Might Get Told Before I Go Public" list along with a few other friends, and some family members who live a little further away and I don't interact with all that often. I still feel, that if I told them, they wouldn't have any issue with me being a girl.


But, at some point fairly early on in the friendship, (and in what I can't help but view as quite ironic, soon enough after I'd "corrected" (or mis-corrected as it turns out) their assumption of my gender.)
Anyway, I started to noticed a trend, that they seemed more likely to misinterpret me for the worse than most other people (it was something they do to most people as I'd seen, but I began to notice that it seemed to happen to me with a higher frequency.)


And it kept getting worse. This person, an artist, whose streams and hangouts were once a place I found very comforting, started to feel more tense. I found myself watching my words around them more often, walking on eggshells to avoid saying something that would get me snapped at. Eventually restricting myself to vague pleasantries and compliments most of the time. Occasionally, I would forget myself, and say something which, with sufficient effort, could be warped into an insult. Whenever I did that (or at least, often enough that I could usually predict it after I'd said the thing) he'd pounce, and I'd get some sort of derision, mocking, threat of being banned, or general demeaning commentary. Often, phrased in the "I am so wounded that people think I'm an idiot/asshole/whatever" way to make them seem the victim.


Eventually, fairly soon after (but also fairly unrelated to) realising I was trans, I stopped going to the streams altogether. I stopped following the artists twitter (because it was substantially notifications of said streams) and I mostly stayed away. Every now and then, I'd drop in, maybe say hi, often not even that, and watch the art. But I never felt comfortable or relaxed there anymore, and over a short time, the frequency of doing even that dropped to nothing.


Today, I went back again. It was my right near my birthday, and I'd recently forgiven someone else who had once been a friend, decided I would as part of the changing new me, try to be more forgiving and less bitter about past hurt. So I went with hope in my heart.


I didn't expect free art (though in the past it had happened to some of the regulars) and while I considered the probability that he may think that was why I'd come back, I thought that maybe birthday cheer would mean that instead I'd get maybe a doodle of one of their characters wishing me a happy birthday, or at least, a stream without them at best being lowkey an asshole to me.


No such luck.


I said something trying to be helpful, just in case he'd misread something, didn't want them to waste a lot of effort on an easy enough mistake. It was worded gently. He responded poorly. "Despite what people may think, I do know how to read."


So it's super obvious that I'm not welcome, and that his actions were generally being tilted towards making me feel unwelcome so I'd leave and if not, seem like an asshole so he can be even more rude or badmouth me till I do, or ban me or whatever, while not seeming like a insecure fuckwit himself.
So, after attempting privately to ask one last time for clarification what had caused this shift (and then getting publically called out for "spamming" him with (2 whole) PMs) I left.
I imagine (having seen such a thing before) that there will be (either on stream or afterwards on twitter) some "Woe is me, thanks for all the people who didn't make me feel bad today" tirade because of me. I likely won't know because at this point, I am done. Fuck that guy.


Except, as I said above, it's not that simple. I know he's a prick, who has hurt me, will hurt me again if I let him, and who doesn't deserve my respect, let alone my friendship. But my feelings haven't caught up with this understanding, even if it's been brewing for like, half a year.
And the really fucked up part, is that, because I still think that part of it was "He treated me better when he thought I was a girl" there was this small part of me that thought, maybe he'll treat me better again if he knew that hah, turns out I was after all. He would likely not have spread around my situation if he knew even in his shitty moods and method of trying to hurt me, that's never been his style or brand image, he'd probably be fine with it but continue to hate me for whatever reason it was in the first place.


That is abuse victim thinking right there, and I locked it right the fuck down.
And I was 100% right to do so. Who knows what the outcome would be? Not me, but doesn't matter. Wrong reason. Bad idea. Hard Pass.


It still sucks.




So the point I'm making applies to any number of situations, but because it resonates with me and my blogs themes, I'm mostly focusing on the trans aspect. Be careful who you trust. If you've got warning signs, especially ones that sound like emotionally abusive behaviour, hold back. Don't risk your mental, emotional, or physical wellbeing for a friendship you hope you have, had, or hope you can have again. People can turn on you, and it can be too quick to predict, but if there are signs, get out of there!


Be Safe.
Be Careful.


And know that relationships of varying degrees of intimate or platonic nature, will end for reasons both related to, and completely unlinked to, your gender and sexuality.


And that will suck.
And that will be unfair.


Life makes no promise of fairness of any kind.
Life makes no promises at all, except for one.


Be Safe.
Be Careful.


<3
LRP


Todays Vaguely Transition-Themed Song: The Cure - Bloodflowers
(It's hard to ever really know who to trust, how to think, what to believe... Who to choose, how to feel, what to do.)