I Was Born a Sinner

 I was born a sinner.

I was born an abomination.

I was born from the womb of my Catholic mother with the blazes of Hell backing me and the mark of Lucifer on my soul. From 6:55 pm on September 11th, 2002, I have been a living embodiment of what deserves hatred and what deserves to suffer.

And I have.

From the time I could comprehend gender, from the time that I could comprehend what was "for girls and boys" I have been terrorized by being forced into a role and a name and a gender that doesn't belong to me. I have suffered through "princess" through "little girl" through "missy" through "Emma" through "she" and through "her". I have sat and listened to the plight of my people be mocked by pure ignorance and I have listened as a Sunday school teacher called us an abomination. I have stood in the threshold between the men's and women's restroom and chosen the latter out of pure fear.

And yet I have done nothing. I have lived in fear.

For someone who rode in from Hell's highway, I have been as dormant as an extinct volcano. I have chosen silence over revolution and now, sitting at my computer desk, I feel as if the Devil himself placed the lighter in my hand. Now all I need is the gasoline.

I don't care if I go to Hell. I've been there and done that. I know what's going to happen. I know that I'll be lifted like Jesus Christ on those cast iron chains as a martyr for what I deserve. Human rights are my birthright, and I'd rather die and go to Hell before giving them up. I'll smirk at Satan before I allow myself to die empty handed.

I lived too long as a Catholic. I have nothing against Christianity, but it has plenty against me. From the beginning, I should have seen the fact that I tried to be there with God, but he would never be there with me because all I have done in life is successfully thwarted what he created me as. I feel no happier in his entrapment. I feel terrorized by the paradox of free will. When Lucifer fell, he fell for true free will. He fell for indulgence, he fell for human nature. He fell for self-governing.

I have spent many years fueled by the anger of the injustice that is my life. Fueled by the fact that I've hurt myself trying to deepen my voice and appear flat-chested, fueled by the polarization between me and my parents. Fueled by the barrier between me and Heaven. Fueled by hearing cis men decide my fate in society.

I have lived too short a life to already know injustice and to know inequality. I have lived too short a life to be having a religious existential crisis. Yet here I am, in my angry and vindictive nature typing this while listening to Green Day as if by writing this I have offered myself some sort of salvation.

And maybe it has.