How to Love You

The Artist D, April 2014

As the transgender world is dug into like an Alaskan snow drift it’s revealing all sorts of things to the world. The community is opening up to a world of questions from the media. With every positive outing there is always a negative shadow lurking somewhere in some other article. I see so much negativity that it has made me realize it’s no wonder some people hate themselves so much.

Being a part of this community (whichever part you allow me to reside in) has always taught me how difficult it is to deal with our shells, bits and mental pieces. That being said it’s even worse when a cruel and novice, unprofessional “writer” gets promoted into the spotlight by professional media. These pro-trans folk turn out to be seething cesspools telling us how to act, what not to wear and what words are strictly forbidden.

I’ve come a long way in accepting myself as whoever I may be and am learning how to extinguish demons. I feel as if for the last thirty years I’ve been knocked around in this society like a pool ball at a tournament. These waves of negativity being blasted towards our community make me want to share some superpowers of deflection. Perhaps the better superpower would be that of digestion. No matter what you do to improve into the person you know you were born to be, we all find ourselves still having to deal with ourselves.

The process of learning to love ourselves starts with taking the haunting past abuses and burying them. Just remember not to dig the hole within yourselves when you do the burying. Take all those horrible things that happened, think about them and then think to overcome them. It is destruction via digestion and understanding. Don’t box it, burn it. When we learn from something and move along we have won. You’ve lost when flouncing about for the rest of your life, hand to forehead, telling everyone that a bad childhood ruined your life.

Did you have a bad childhood? That’s me, you and everyone else. No matter how good or bad our childhoods were they are often considered pretty “disturbing” at the end of the day. The key is taking all of what you perceive as bad and making yourself stronger because of it. It’s not a blemish, it’s a birth mark.

Family is a big deal for everyone too. Being LGBTQ alphabet soup I learned early on that your family isn’t the one you were born with. Your family is the one you grow to choose. People are tortured trying to live with the family they were born with. People are lead by some false obligation that they must learn to love people whom hate them for everything they are. Because you share similar genetics does not sign you to some binding torturous contract. We can be family without sharing close blood.

The key to overcoming the demons and negativity broiling planet Earth is to realize who you are, take a deep breath and learn to live with yourself. We are all raised with the suggestion that we ought to be someone else. Kids want to be “like” a songstress or a respected dictator, but rarely want to be themselves. It’s as if being someone else is better when it’s not.

You’ll tell me that this is difficult, perhaps impossible. Yes, it is not easy. Life is setup to make us fail miserably due to the chains that hold us in position. We’re taught to love the family that hates us. We’re told to be haunted by the ghosts of Christmas past, but I say otherwise. I want you to do the opposite to achieve happiness. It takes a conscious effort to do and it is a long road. It is a worthy road to learning to really love ourselves.

Tags: acceptance, featured, love, self love, The Artist D, Transgender

Category: Transgender Body & Soul, Transgender Opinion