The Brother I Lost

When my brother announced that he was transgender, I excused myself from the table and retreated to the women’s restroom. My sister followed me and we tried our best to be quiet while we cried in a bathroom stall. It occured to me then that the bathroom wasn’t for us anymore, that any man claiming to be transgendered could walk into our refuge just for the hell of it. I was in a conquered place; another thing that’d been annexed and given away to humor the perverse delusions of people like my brother.

When I returned, the table was covered with full plates and empty glasses. Two of my siblings pretended to have appetites and the other five just drank. After enough time had passed for me to plausibly deny storming out, I left. I didn’t answer my phone for a few days because I didn’t want to endure another moment like the one I shared with my sister in that bathroom stall. I didn’t want to be quiet, I wanted to scream.

Nearly all transgendered people lose contact with their families and support systems within two years of coming out. Narrative attributes the blame on the family’s outdated bigotted views. Instead, could it be that watching a loved one become human wreckage is heartbreaking and exhausting? Maybe the majority of transgendereds end up abandoned by their families because they’re the only people who really care and they can’t stand witnessing human wreckage try to set itself on fire.

Today, when I think about my brother, waves of shame splash across my face like scolding water. Our family was supposed to be above this, we were supposed to be untouched by the insanity of this world because we are decent, good, and we had each other. Now, my brother is a reminder of the sickness in this world. Every family picture, birthday party, wedding, funeral, every moment that was supposed to be ours alone, and not the worlds, will have a freak in it now.

I never thought I’d be glad that my dad is dead but, in regards to my brother, I am; that God called my daddy home and spared him this spectacle was an act of mercy. I would rather there be a gulfing absence where my brother should be than a monument to his corruption standing in his place, wobbling in high heels and tacky stockings.

The mimicry of femininity that drag queens and the gender dysphoric focus on is insulting. It’s a summation of what only degenerates would think femininity is: fishnets, makeup, short skirts, the superficial. Nowhere can an answer be found to the transcendental question, “what is a woman?” They don’t care about that. They care about living in a fetish and forcing people to watch.

Low life expectancy in Trans communities is explained away by canned answers like, “…they are disadvantaged minorities mistreated by society.” I wonder instead if it’s because these are unstable and damaged people. Their delusions are validated by the rest of society, by people who are blissfully removed from the reality of loving someone like them. No other mental illness/defect/psychosis would get reinforced or normalized quite like transgenderism has. If someone was mentally ill, people would try their best to help them and, hopefully, people would be understanding if it can’t be fixed.

Instead, our society indulges people’s dreams of mutilating their genitals. I hope that some day we can look back at this time in modern history, at how transgender folks were indulged, pacified, and encouraged, and that we will be appalled. In any version of the future I’d want to live in, gender reassignment surgery will be seen with the same disgust and revulsion as we see 1950s lobotomies today. These people are fundamentally broken and the reality right now is the people they trust to help them only make it worse, and the people who love them know there isn’t a way to make it better.

I miss my brother an awful lot. I miss his jokes, his peaceful disposition, and the way he could settle any fight with just his words. I miss him and I know he will never come back. God gave me five brothers and now I only have four. I’ll try to forgive my brother for what he did to himself, but I will never forgive the world for what it did to him, and what that did to us.