I know in my bones that to what extent my ex may be aware of my gender and sexuality, my disability, my poverty, they’ve convinced themself it’s all an act. I’ve just been on estrogen the last year, I’m just spending all of my time in therapy, refusing to pull a normal job off the job tree, to rack up marginalization points so I can try to maneuver for the moral high ground, for the purpose of… making them… look bad? To deny them what they’re owed? While I cackle smugly?

Just, you know. For… reasons. Because that’s how everyone thinks, in their world. It’s all about power with them. Everything is a calculated move, angling to some kind of a showdown.

I think through all our relationship, they saw me as an enemy agent of sorts, that they could maybe bend to their will as a special weapon—like I carried this great innate power, that I defiantly refused to wield for their benefit or my own out of some mix of laziness, spite, and pride.

As compared to this disabled queer from a disadvantaged background, with no resources or safety net, who was fucking terrified day in and day out, unable to understand what I was doing wrong.

But that made no sense to them, right. I was just being willful, clearly. And one of these days they’d find the way to break me.

And, well. They broke me, all right. Not quite in the way they planned, I reckon.

It’s cool, though. Sometimes the only way out is through.

And here I am now. Still not really functional, but at least I know who I am.