Overtly loquacious bardic artificer / towering trixic techie transfemme, offering commentary on the zeitgeist, snippets of life outside allistic cishet normativity, and insight on our shared values. @leiracal.bsky.app for lighter stuff.
![My family were the first ones to refer to their “mourning” of [REDACTED]. They used my name… occasionally, after I’d legally changed it. They never fixed anything else. They said “he”. They talked to my boys about their “father” years after I’d become “Ren” to them (which is short for “paRENt”). They told me I’d never be accepted as a daughter, a sister. Eventually, they pushed me away. They didn’t feel the same obligation to me, that they felt to [REDACTED]. They’d lost him, and it was my fault.
We all, in our own way, become who we are today because of who we were in the past. We may not share the same beliefs, goals, dreams, or even family as our past selves. Loving the person you used to be, because they were the one who helped you become who you are, is an essential part of life’s journey.
I would not have made it through the early years of my life as myself. I would not have survived without the degree of support and community I received strictly because I just barely met social expectations enough of the time. There was no safe path out of a place filled with people that consider any additional degree of deviance worthy of scorn, abuse, and abandonment. There was never anyone who could have shown me any other path, especially not in the days before social media or widespread Internet. Most of all, my family has shown me, in the years since I came out to them, precisely the way in which they’d have rejected me all along.
So, if my family mourns [REDACTED], know this: they never loved him the way I did. He was the person who kept me safe until I was strong enough to be myself.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:lzr535yhip3mfj54qfr4syxk/bafkreic4ycgtvrebcpytfgkbq3jpmovjsvjk52nssuztn6scn2tiy42rq4)
![Ben Grimm: ...Oh, man, lookit that fine talent across the street in her apartment. Damn, if I wuzn't babysittin' I'd go over there an'... Aw, who'm I kiddin'. My dick is made'a rock. [beat] ...I really HATE cosmic radiation...](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:lzr535yhip3mfj54qfr4syxk/bafkreicprh2wyyoyu7nwqmt7pqaa3xcqat2qwkwz37illjhv52qug54lui)
![Peter Parker (in his Iron Spider costume) tells Tony Stark:
[mocking] "No, Peter, negotiation is a waste of time." "No one will get killed, Peter, just badly maimed." [resigned] There has never been a less satisfying time to say "I told you so," Tony.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:lzr535yhip3mfj54qfr4syxk/bafkreihsb6hwvazxqo3xkp6k25wu44ng6z7izqhewhfyj2tsea2ftbr3ee)
Overtly loquacious bardic artificer / towering trixic techie transfemme, offering commentary on the zeitgeist, snippets of life outside allistic cishet normativity, and insight on our shared values. @leiracal.bsky.app for lighter stuff.