Know Your Worth in The Stuff That's Not Interesting But Is The Most Interesting Stuff I'll Write

I know it’s been a while, but it’s been gradually increasing in intensity as time has gone on.

The drag show was fine. It was a bit of a mess simply because my friend that was supposed to help me insisted that I never mentioned that the drag show was in a bar (where the fuck else would it be?) and she refused to come because she felt “triggered”. So that left me to fend for myself. As an individual performer, I guess I raised more than anyone else, and a few days later, the local professional drag queen told me I was awesome and that I should consider doing drag full-time. I politely declined, but it was a nice compliment anyway.

Just a few weeks before I was set to transfer to LA, I was fired. It’s a very involved situation and they dismissed me on a technicality, but I suspect the reason to be because I was uncomfortable with the ways they were asking me to subvert the law in my job, to which I loudly voiced displeasure. So that threw my plans to go to LA in deep jeopardy.

Another wrinkle is that apparently my relatives that sent me to jail are now allowed to come back and visit the rest of my family. It was just another reminder how I don’t really matter to my parents. While my grandmother was alive, they were not allowed to set foot on the property because she had never forgiven them for what they did to me, but now he’s gone, and my feelings don’t matter, so I get to see my uncle and aunt regularly.

Today I almost lost it and went off on my stepfather. He came home with a bunch of groceries, much of it vegetables, and he told me I couldn’t eat any of them because they were for my little brother’s new diet. I just mumbled, “Well, he eats my food, so why shouldn’t I eat his?” My stepdad called me back and launched into this speech about how I shouldn’t say things like that because my parents buy all the food, to which my mother interrupted and said, “No we don’t.” I buy my own food, and the other foods are/were provided as part of my prescription for my diet.

You see, I had specific foods that I can eat and others which I can’t, but because I have to make them from scratch, I need a big kitchen so I would prepare them at my parents’ house. At least a dozen times, when I would go to the fridge to grab my lunch for work, my food would be gone because one of my little brothers would have eaten all of it (despite the fact that I had labeled the Tupperware with my name on it).

My stepfather said that the fridge was a communal fridge and that anybody had rights to eat whatever… except I can’t eat his food because he’s on a diet to lose weight. But my fucking medical food is up for grabs because fuck me, right? He said I should know better and I shouldn’t expect special treatment or be surprised when people eat my food.

I just thought to myself, why is it so difficult to not touch what isn’t yours? How is that such a difficult concept? Or ask? I mean, I don’t eat other people’s shit unless I’m offered some. But that’s not how they think… unless it comes to my little brother’s food.

I mean, I’m not surprised. It just reiterates, yet again, that I’m a second-class citizen in my own fucking family’s house.

So I’m gearing up to pack up my shit and move to LA with $14 or whatever I have, and I’ll live in my car or whatever, but I’m just completely fucking done with all this bullshit.

You know, I’m starting to see why I was so willing to kill myself a year ago. This systemic degradation really wears down my self-worth, and without my grandmother there to run interference, I’m just not worth it.