[Triggering content warning: heavy themes of abuse and suicidal ideation.]
Elementary school, Texas, 90s-early 00s.
There was a girl with the most delightfully southern name: Molly May. She dressed in tomboyish clothes, loved cats more than life itself, and had a pretty little haircut with bangs that looked like Xena’s. This kid was confident, energetic, and sharp as a tack. She was in Gifted and Talented, had straight As, had a network of friends and, as far as anyone could tell, a family that loved her. She never had a strike against her as far as the teachers were concerned. Always perfectly good when the rules made sense.
Unfortunately, the kids around her started developing in ways that she really didn’t understand. Some of her friends started getting curious about sex and attraction, and she thought that was a gross, embarrassing waste of time. Most of her friends started bringing cd players to school and talking about bands by name, but she couldn’t name any band or song and didn’t care to (if she wanted to hear music, she’d go home and screw around on her keyboard until she had recreated note for note a song from a video game she’d been playing. Who cares about the radio?) Some of them stopped finding crude jokes about butts and things funny and replaced their childish senses of humor with dark or sexual jokes seemingly overnight. In the span of about two years, starting in fifth grade, everyone started changing* and, despite being academically ahead, she didn’t keep up in a single other way.
- [Keane intensifies]
As puberty began to hit everyone like a truck, the bullying started. It was true that she wasn’t quite like the others; Her personality was a bit crude or overbearing at times, and unfortunately she could be cruel without understanding just how painful her words could be. She was also never interested in conforming to any standard of femininity or social normalcy. She suffered abuse for it throughout most of fifth grade that considerably amped up during the sixth. By seventh, she was an absolute wreck. Most of her friend group had moved on. P.E. had been replaced with “Girls’ Athletics,” and she was segregated from what friends she had kept to be put through an hour of hell each day. Her hatred of all things related to the female sex surged, fertilizing the seed of misogeny that had been firmly planted in her head by her father without her knowledge.
She stopped brushing her teeth. She stopped bathing. She wanted to die. Each year, it grew exponentially. Her perfect track record of As disappeared, as she would do her homework just to prove to herself that she was learning everything, but would not turn any of it in. She’d pass everyone else’s papers to the teacher. Rifling through her stack of books and papers to find it and turn it in involved too much effort for a broken soul. Besides, she’d probably written a story or drawn a comic or doodled sheet music on the back of the sheet, which meant more to her than some grade that was just an arbitrary number in a system that hated her.
It had to have hated her. Few cared to question why her grades disappeared and not one of them raised a hand to stop the bullying. God forbid she said something cruel to bully them back, though, she’d get the most serious talking-down of the century for it. Rules protect those who conform to societal standards only.
Even her family hated her. The sound of her dad’s booming voice echoing in their little wooden house was all she associated with home anymore. That and her mom’s silence. Dad had to get on disability for severe surgeries he’d had in his infancy and beyond catching up with him (born in the sixties with spina bifida and scoliosis, the pain and deformation was undeniable) but since being out of work, he did nothing but sit in his recliner and yell.
“Get me a cup of coffee!”
“Get me a cup of coffee!”
“Sweep the floor!”
“You’re not sweeping right!”
“Clean the cat boxes!”
“Get me coffee!”
“You missed a spot!”
“Stop being so meek!”
As soon as she could every day, she’d shut the world out and spend most of her days alone in her room with her keyboard and video games, dreaming up massive, intricate worlds and roleplaying in them to escape reality. Mom had taken a job in town and wasn’t around as much as before, but even when she was home, she’d stop paying attention to anything a long time ago. As an infant, she had paid so much attention to Molly, teaching her and playing with her, seeing that she was healthy and able, only for that attention to diminish by half each year she aged away from being a baby. She was on her own.
Before she started taking out the trauma on herself, she went through a period of torturing small animals. Anything she could get her hands on in the yard was fair game. A grasshopper? She’d peel their legs off, make holes in fire ant piles, and drop them in to watch them be eaten alive. Mouse or small mammal? Hold them under water for long periods of time, pull them out, and then do it again. No people in her life were safe to talk to, so her form of communication was silently relating to the animals being tortured. It was like an artist breathing a strong emotion such as grief into a painting, but the only way she could recreate the agony was to witness pain and death.
She hated her body to such an extreme that she could literally not face the mirror or look down in the shower, so she stopped bathing and the stink was so bad that teachers began to give her gift baskets of soap in private. She started wearing essentially Halloween costumes to school so that she could fool herself into believing that the hatred was directed at the costumes, not the real her. She could not enter a restroom at school and had nothing to carry tampons or pads in because she wretched at the idea of a purse, so once a month she would bleed all over the chairs in each classroom, sitting on the sides of her shoes to try and keep it from puddling in the seats. She wore pants sized 00 because she would not eat in the cafeteria and almost passed out if she stood up too fast. (She wouldn’t eat in restaurants either, which was open knowledge, but Dad would still take her into them and make fun of her in public for being so anxious she wanted to dry heave.) She fought openly with so many teachers and adults around her–the more authority, the fiercer the hate.
^ One of what she called the “Gypsy” costumes, which her Dad would later comment on when uploaded to Facebook “dont remember this really lol”
But she was fine. She had to be, because no one was going to bother taking her for professional help. She literally begged for therapy so many times, only to be told she didn’t need it. There were zero resources in her hometown of less than a thousand people, so she couldn’t find help herself. Eventually, Mom would fight Dad into letting her take her to youth therapy, but the therapist, young and fresh out of college, didn’t know what to do with someone quite that messed up. They’d stop going after a few months.
On a day without tension, she’d spend each class daydreaming about fantasies or hyperfixating on a topic she was studying on her own time. On days with abuse, she’d spend each class dreaming of suicide and praying her school would be the next Columbine. School wasn’t an escape from home, and home wasn’t an escape from school, with nowhere to go in between but inward.
Then, unable to address a single problem she had, they solved the crisis in the easiest way they could think to and homeschooled her. It was the biggest relief to never have to go to that hellhole again. She could do anything she wanted and stay in that room all alone for as long as she wanted. Her creativity flourished and her artistic abilities began to bloom. Mom even took her to town to get homeschool books, which of course were only used for a few months as well before interest faltered and she was expected to read them, work them, and grade them by herself. The one thing she had always respected about her Dad was his intellect–his IQ was 158, her mom’s 139, and her own a 138–but despite his deep interests and knowledge in so many domains, when it came to homeschooling her:
“I’m not doing that shit.“
Mom had to work. He was now on social security spending all of his time at home and still couldn’t be assed to think of anyone but himself. It broke her heart more than anything. What she didn’t know was that Mom had distanced herself and grown quiet because something else had grown exponentially with each year that passed: her Dad’s abuse. Most of that yelling and screaming mentioned above was directed at Mom. At home, in a restaurant, in the car… always yelling. Molly began to see that it wasn’t just her that Dad was taking places just to belittle in public or criticizing down to every last thought and inclination.
Something happened that broke every one of them. Mom’s second job was an hour away and Dad wouldn’t let her drive herself because his language of abuse was Control. He had to drop her off and pick her up. Once, though, we all went to the store she worked at together to shop on her day off, and the moment we entered the store, he spun around, pointed a violent finger toward her and told her “you keep your head down and don’t say a god damn word to anyone.” Right in front of everyone.
It wasn’t much longer after that Mom said enough was enough. She wasn’t sure how to approach Molly after so many years of suffering, part of which being from her own neglect, but damned if she didn’t start trying. More importantly, she put her foot down and changed the entire power dynamic of her relationship, which culminated in her getting a seperation. The two would move into town and leave Dad in the dust of his own making.
Molly didn’t much care about that. She’d been mad that it hadn’t happened sooner. When the two parents had come to her to ask if they should get a divorce, she told them to figure it out themselves with as much flippant aggression as she could muster. No, despite big things happening in her life, she had much, much bigger things going on. She had discovered the internet.
It started with one silly little lie. She made her character male in an online game. Her whole life had been making up characters and roleplaying, so she gave him a name and a backstory, but these details weren’t for the character–they were for the fictional person who was playing that character, a second generation child of German immigrants from Bremen whose name was Fabian. When people talked to her online and she responded as herself, no one took her seriously, whether for her sex or age. Fabian, however, wasn’t a 15yo girl. He was 20 and people listened to him.
She’d started making friends and loved talking to them, but unfortunately, they knew her only as someone who wasn’t real. Trapped in a lie she didn’t know how to get out of, she committed to that lie and started adding details about his life on the fly, inspired by questions and statements from these new friends. She couldn’t hurt these people by telling the truth. Telling the truth would mean killing their friend and replacing him with herself. So the lies grew and grew until she had a network of false identities that knew each other, dated each other, could vouch for each other. These spanned multiple games and MSN messenger. She’d be talking to some friends as several of these fake people while also multiboxing two games as two of the other fake people to make it all seem like they were real people.
Two years of that and the guilt was killing her. She’d never shaken the suicidal ideation she’d had in school, but it worsened back to the same intensity as it had been before leaving. She couldn’t even do that, however, because if she died, all of those people would die and the real friends she’d made would suffer being ghosted by all of them at once. Oh God, what if something did happen to accidentally kill her before she can figure out how to get out of this web of lies? Shit.
Eventually, she’d started intentionally telling lies that didn’t stand up to the intricate world she’d crafted. She whittled it away with inconsistencies until everyone began to get irritated or confused, that way it would be easier to come clean because it’d be answering some big mystery. She dropped the revelation in a huge note on old Facebook, where key friends would see it. To say she bawled on and off for days and was sick for more after is an understatement. Yet, somehow, some of these people… forgave her. They stuck around.
She didn’t know what to occupy her mind with anymore. For about two years, every day was spent churning out lies and keeping up with the details completely in her mind. Now, she’d faced what she had done and ended it. She had to start forging her own identity, which she’d been running from since puberty.
I’m sure you know where that’s going. I’d been saying since I was in second grade that I was a boy and refusing to let anyone call me otherwise. Information about being trans was very hard to come by back then, but I fought the good fight, found my own local resources, and transitioned (the medical transition was later at 18 or 19, I wish I’d marked the date.) I’ve been Matthew since, although I didn’t get my name changed until I was 21 or 22. The dying throes of Molly in the years just before transition were violent, full of hyperventilating, exploding sideways at everyone (especially on Facebook, when people from school started trying to add me who’d had a track record of not being kind to me,) and emotions so intense I’d get migraines.
I swore off lying completely after the identities incident. Not even little white lies were permitted. Lies were truly the tools of satan to me and the situation still makes me sick with regret. I’ve become a little less rigid about it, but I still uphold complete good-intentioned honesty as a core pillar of my philosophy.
Surprisingly, I’ve also managed to forgive her for a lot of the crazy shit she managed to get herself immersed in. She was a minor. Where the fuck were her parents while she was pretending to be a whole host of adult men on the internet for years? Why wasn’t she kept from harming animals that couldn’t defend themselves? Why the hell is a sixth grader praying for a school shooting? So, so, so much was wrong with every system that was supposed to nurture her and protect her. She fell through every single crack and when she hit the foundation, her parents (mostly her dad) found the nearest crack and stomped her into it. She gave the gift of pain and insanity to everyone and everything she met because they were the only things she had been given.
That being said, I hate her. I hate her so much. I think of being in my teens and I recall the unfathomable hysterics and emotions that broke the Earth’s atmosphere. Every single time I have a terrible thought, it takes me right back to being her and how much she bitterly hated everyone and everything. How much she cast the blame on all the wrong things. Like, I didn’t have to terms to understand being trans for a very long time and I sure as hell didn’t know I was autistic, those things are understandable, but the dysphoria made me uncomfortable by even the sight of someone that was female, which grew into me loathing and hating all women. Like, this bitch was NatC levels of wishing they didn’t exist and for the most idiotic reasons you can imagine. Shit like blaming women for how makeup companies chose to show them in their ads (instead of despising capitalism and consumerism.) Parroting talk about how weak and pathetic girls were and being disgusted at the sound of their voices so badly I wouldn’t fucking talk. I loved men until they breathed a word about attraction (unless they were gay.) References to vaginas, pregnancy, breastfeeding, periods would send me in a spiral and make me scream nonsensical shit in hysterical circles. (…to the same people who said I didn’t need therapy jesus christ I wish I was making this shit up.)
^^ The girl that had these thoughts and said this shit. Note how fucking tired and uncomfortable she looks.
Anyway. The point of all this… lately, now that I fully know that what I am doing when I start thinking about only the terrible memories and bad things about the present is called “splitting…” and that one of the ways to combat it is to write down what the negative mind is telling you, draw a box around it, and label it in an attempt to “other” it from your real self and mind… The nasty thoughts I’ve attributed to Molly.
I imagine what she would be like if I hadn’t grabbed the reins and forged my own life (omitting that she’d probably have killed herself by now.) I see her, still bleaching her hair blonde and wearing dark eyeliner and eyeshadow. She doesn’t shop at Hot Topic anymore, it’s too mainstream. She wears Burzum shirts, gatekeeps metal, bullies women worse than any pick me girl and would beat a person to death or die trying if they dared imply she was attracted to women (even though she is.) She’s miserable and waiting for an excuse to flay the flesh off of every human being’s bones. Absolute god awful person to be around. Much like where I go at the bottom of a spiral when the splitting occurs, this awful voice that goes against everything I believe in.
Thankfully, I was able to kill any misogeny right before I transitioned. I sat and realized a lot of things, including that I was bi and running from it. I laughed for so long when I realized that, by the way. How stupid I was. Once I got real with myself and admitted that I was being a middle man for my Dad’s nasty views, I cut that cord and gave people a chance. The growth in the years following was monumental. I only wish I could take back so much of what I’d said before that point. Someone should have beat my damn ass.
I’ve been toying with drawing short comics about these thoughts where I swap out myself for this imagined Molly when my mind goes stupid dark. Comics where she’s my equivalent to a Mogwai being fed after midnight or whatever. Someone sets off a trigger and bam, she’s there to be a menace. Lol, probably too stupid to do, but I’m playing with ideas.
P.S.: The worst part of writing this is knowing how much more is being left out for the sake of clarity. There was sexual abuse from a great uncle, being thrown into the workforce at 16 right in the peak of the worst mental state I’ve ever been in, and I didn’t even elaborate on my dad’s misogeny and nudity and open perversion and the part where he stole my college fund that my grandpa had put back for me to buy some pos used car. Ugh. I’ve been trying to unpack this shit all my life it feels like, yet when I think about who the hell I even am… I relate most to childhood me, before I felt social pressure, before the bullying, when I loved life, had friends, wouldn’t harm a fly and didn’t care if no one understood why the little girl with the long hair was refusing to be called a girl lol. I’d kill for that level of don’t give a fuck. That was freedom. I could experience true joy and fun back then… maybe, with the right therapy now, I can again.
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