It’s a brand new year and to be honest it’s not meaning all that much to me at the moment. I haven’t really had a chance to celebrate the end of any year. I’ve always been home during these celebratory events. Even as a kid, my biological family didn’t have much of a social life. My bio-parents were very controlling and very secretive. We didn’t have a lot of freedom, well, I didn’t have a lot of freedom. I shouldn’t speak for others. I grew up in a small town so there wasn’t really room for the poor family living at the top of a hill surrounded by trees, corn fields and solitude. Whatever neighbours we had, my bio-dad did a great job of building a poor relationship with them. Not all of it was my bio-father’s fault, but enough of it that it impacted the rest of us.

I guess growing up in solitude, I’ve found myself craving a party but have enough trauma in me to shy away from crowds and people getting too close. Though in 2022, I may have started off finding myself ostracised by a group of people overseas and excluded from a group I thought I fit into, I found myself making a friend with Dee, who has helped me further get out of the shell the world had helped put me into. In fact, my husband, Joel and Dee helped me create a pocket of this world where I felt safe and secure. I even reunited with a few old friends to catch up. Though time brought a sadness, it was still great to see them if albeit one more time. I find it hard to celebrate a year in which was horrible for so many people. The fake promises of a better year. The resolutions. A blanket to the fact that as soon as we get out of bed in the new year, we will still be faced with the same issues.

We don’t need anymore resolutions. We need solutions.

I’m learning that December and January are tough months for me. It’s an accumulation of all my hard work coming to a stand still when those I’ve socialised and worked with throughout the year disappear into their own families. Which is fair enough. But what comes with that isolation is grief. A grief my husband knows too well. Mix that in with trying to find the right medication for my mental health and I was a volcano of grief, sadness and anger. I ended up calling my bio-family one afternoon here in Australia. It was late at night early hours for them. I had already been sobbing. I was angry. I was angry that my abusers seemingly were having a great life being grandparents and uncles and aunts and everything in between. But the gay, nonbinary in Australia had to walk away because of the abuse. In my grief and anger, I left a couple of messages on their answering machines. Do I regret it? Yes and no. Yes because I was reacting with emotion. I wasn’t in control as much as I would have liked. I showed my abusers that I was hurting. But no, I don’t regret it because I was authentic, albeit mentally ill and vulnerable. They did me a favour by not answering the phone or responding to me. I was able to vent and move on. Numbers are now blocked from my phone so I can’t even call them if I wanted to.

The worst part of about the grief my husband and I share is that we are grieving over a fantasy family. What we miss we never had. We won’t ever know what it’s like to be mothered, fathered or build a relationship with our siblings and their children. For me personally what I thought I knew about my family was just me trying to ignore the harsh reality that I’ll never have the childhood I deserved and I won’t have the family that is shown on television and movies. That the chosen family isn’t always the easiest as there will always be grief associated through the truth. My bio-mother is not trustworthy and she is neglectful. She did not do the best that she could. My bio-father is a rapist, molester and abuser. Though he no longer physically abuses me, he is still verbally abusive, even in his written letters he has mailed me. My bio-brother is absent and hides behind his religion. He is silent when he should speak out and most certainly not the ally he thinks he is with the LGBT+ community. And my bio-sister isn’t the best-friend I grew up thinking I had. When times were tough and I stood up for her with her abusive husband, she treated me like everyone else in the family treated me because it was safer that way.

Better to call Michael a liar rather than accept the truth. Denial denial you bunch of crocodiles.

It’s hard to celebrate when your abusers never faced accountability for what they did to me. As I struggle with PTSD, physical chronic disabilities due to past abuse and traumatic events of the world around me, it’s no wonder I want to. I just want to spend as much time with my husband as I can. Work on my writing. Inspire others. Be authentic as possible even with my grief, anger and hurt.

And the most frustrating thing about it all? I know I’m not alone. I know there are so many people out there who has faced these issues too. Who continue to face these issues. It’s its own pandemic.

The world will keep spinning for now, unless we continue to dig too deep. I’ll find my happiness with my husband, my writing and the friends in which we keep. That’s all I can do right now. And for others, it won’t be good enough. I don’t care. I’m not living my life for you. I’m living my life for the rest of us who are tired of discrimination, phobia, abuse and hatred. We will be happy.

I will be happy, even when I don’t celebrate with the rest of you.