blog post.
some rambles on my religious beliefs and gender.
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this is my first christmas where i have no longer considered myself a christian, which is weird. i went to christmas eve service today because i am not in a position to make this known to my family, and every night we have had evening prayer together as we usually do. i pray things i don't believe in because i know my parents will question me and become concerned for me if i don't pray for those things. i pray to a god i'm not sure is real. well, i do believe in the existence of a god but as for what that god manifests as, i don't know, and i'm cool with the fact that i don't know.
it's really weird because i have built my whole life with the underlying assumption that i find my purpose and meaning in the christian god and following christianity. to take that away is almost like uprooting my foundation, but it's also freeing, and the relief sets in like a fresh drink of water.
what this means is that i am not bound by arbitrary theological laws. i can decide for myself what i choose to believe. this is almost like the silence after a first snow, where you lie in the snow and your face is cold and the sky is white and it's so utterly silent.
i went to service today and listened to the sermon somewhat (i usually have trouble paying attention, anyway). it was an out-of-body experience. i realized how i no longer have to bear any guilt. i am no longer bound by self-hatred and anxiety and fear. i am no longer bound by obligation to commit myself to servitude to an idea i don't even believe in. i'm free in a way i never was before. i no longer have to twist my mind to justify arguments that i do not resonate with. it's silent, now. a silent night, holy and clean and bright.
in the past i have contorted my spirit into false emotions and responses and worked myself up into imaginary guilt, imaginary conviction, imaginary repentance, just an endless cycle of pain in search of cleansing.
but you do not have to be clean. you do not have to convince yourself of your worthiness, nor do you have to identify with your unworthiness. you are allowed to like yourself. you are allowed to be happy. you are allowed to have good things regardless of "deserving" it or not. and, you deserve love regardless.
i grew up believing that i was inherently evil, unlovable, and unworthy. these actual words have been preached at me from infancy to adulthood, in my home and in my church. to finally break free from believing that is a recent thing for me, which is pretty bizarre to think about now. but hey, it's never too late to make yourself anew.
in the words of boygenius: i want to be happy. i'm ready.
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lately, i've started listening to more metal. i have some cool friends who really enjoy it and i also have listened to some bands in the past that really quieted my mind. maybe it's the adhd part of me, but the chaos of the music really streamlines my thought processes and helps me calm down. i fall asleep to screams and clashing cymbals and guitar shredding sometimes, which is funny to say, but it really works.
there's something about it that's really comforting, too, that's not just the sound, but the themes. i've grown up with legalistic parents who insisted that metal was demonic, not intensely, but as a "you should probably avoid that" kind of deal. it's cathartic, and it's unapologetically loud and expressive, which is something i was never really allowed and struggle to do these days.
the funny thing is also how it helps me come to terms with my gender dysphoria. something about it is a voice for the dysphoria i feel that i could never express. i guess i've always felt like a stranger in my own body, some kind of alien thing, or a trespasser. i've always wanted to cut myself out of my body, be seen different, reinvent myself, etc. something drastic and violent and lifegiving. metal that i listen to (specifically progressive / deathcore) has elements of chaos and carnage, personal struggles and hope or the lack thereof, spiritual themes, death and reincarnation, etc. which really resonate with how i feel about myself, i guess. i'm not sure i can even explain it except provide a playlist, which is embedded here.
i knew there was something different about me pretty much my whole life, like my body was this wrong puzzle piece trying to fit into a gap made for me, but it just wouldn't. i got acquainted with loneliness at an early age, and a blanket of heavy exhaustion became my friend from the constant upholding of an image i wasn't, but was supposed to be.
figuring out my sexuality, then the mental health disorders, helped a lot. i always breached the subject of my gender identity as some fragile, untouchable thing that i shouldn't even think about. i could hide my sexuality, i could hide my pill bottles and diagnoses, to an extent. but the way i presented myself to others was such a loud thing. there are so many voices in this society telling me how i should look and behave and publicly want and appear interested in. and somehow this heavily public thing is the most personal thing.
frankly, however i present myself isn't indicative of the exact identity i hold for myself, but how i present myself can be a reflection of how i identify myself. i tried to tell myself gender identity could be something quiet and tucked away, especially since a woman can be anything, but that internal misalignment blared loud and wrong in me and i couldn't shut it off. it's bright like a motherfucker. not so much the wrongness, but the rightness of what i should be that is suffocating under a mask.
my gender identity is an act of survival, defiance, and creation. it's an un-silencing of myself. i grew up with my mouth stopped up with dogma my whole life and now i've finally begun to cough it up and spit it out and take real deep breaths.
i am transmasculine in a way that is like furrowing dirt and pruning trees, like stitching a wound together, like demo'ing a condemned house, like trailblazing, like cutting my leg from the trap, like whittling wood, like cleansing fire, like glassblowing.
metal encapsulates that "crawling to the surface" kind of feeling i've experienced recently. i'm not sure if this is more unique to me or a universal experience, but this is authentically how it feels to me.
music is a pure form of expression that authoritarian systems have attempted to suppress over the years because it is uncontainable human expression. metal specifically has been a target of this attempt at censorship. sure, there's some music out there that is used in actually harmful ways, but the potential snowball effect of suppressing music to "controversiality" is more dangerous than the existence of less than politically correct material out there. this echoes the struggle of trans rights and existences being under attack by even my own U.S. government right now. at the very least, i find some kinship with metal's themes of rebellion and self-expression in a genderqueer way. it's pretty cool.
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i don't like making resolutions, and i don't like writing recaps about the year, but i'll say one thing. i'm hopeful going into 2025. and i'm looking forward to the future, whatever it holds.