Dear Karen

This week, I was contacted out of the blue by a woman who I hadn't spoken to in at least sixteen years, probably longer.

She wanted to know about me, my sibling, my kids, my "wonderful husband" who I've been divorced from for a couple years now, and my parents--whom she considers lifelong friends but whom she hurt significantly many years ago and they distanced themselves.

This woman was an active member of my childhood church, and was also my "prayer mentor"--an evangelical attempt to add safe adults to the lives of impressionable youth, often without a ton of vetting.

I am conflict-avoidant to a significant fault, and so I spent the conversation being as small and vague as possible. I gave the most palatable details and stripped-down versions of some of the events of my life that are scandalous to a white evangelical woman who was scandalized when her daughters brought home (gasp!) Mexican boyfriends with (shock!) piercings and (horror!) tattoos. I had hoped that a brief catch-up conversation would be enough to satisfy her, and she'd go back to whatever it is she's doing now.

Unfortunately, she reached out again today--asking for contact information for my parents. I think she genuinely wants to reconnect, and that's just. . . . . not gonna happen.

I am still fucking terrified of initiating a difficult conversation with her. That probably makes me a coward. Idk. But I have at least come to terms with the fact that I have feelings that need processing, and my stupid ADHD brain will only let me do that externally. So Imma write my thoughts in a letter here to her (names changed) in hopes that it provides some catharsis and helps me approach actual conversations with her from a more level-headed, healthy perspective.

Karen, I am not giving you mom's number. I'm kind of surprised that you'd even ask. You know she blocked you, right? Right after you called her fat on Facebook because she dared be excited about eating more vegetables without experiencing huge weight loss or something? You know she wants nothing to do with you, right? Obviously you don't. But you've never been good at picking up hints.

For example, you never quite tracked that you've never really been a mentor for me--and even if you were, there's no reason for you to believe you'd be one now. We haven't talked in sixteen years, minimum. I have had an entire life that had nothing to do with you. You saw me last on my wedding day, to a man I believed I loved, but even then was fully aware I needed to marry in order to achieve any kind of professional legitimacy in my chosen career field. You told me you wish you could've been there to "help me" through my divorce--while also telling me, as though I'm unaware, that marriage is hard and takes work.

Karen, I was married for fourteen years. The average length for a marriage that ends in divorce is much shorter than that. I know marriage is hard and takes work because I fucking worked on it for a long time. You aren't entitled to the knowledge of why that relationship ended, but even if you were, I'd be hesitant to tell you because the wombo combo of financial abuse, discovery of queer identity, and exploration of ENM would make your little head explode.

Let's zoom in on that queer identity bit--I actually have you to thank for part of it. You see, about five or six years ago, I was reflecting on my past and on our hangouts from my early teen years. I remember how much you hated my chosen wardrobe and overall gender presentation. You'd go to buy me pants, and I'd snub my nose at all of the low rises and the flared legs and the bedazzled pockets of early 2000s tween fashion. Instead, I'd make my OWN terrible fashion choices by leading you over to the boy's section, where the cargo pants that zipped off into shorts were. And with disgust and frustration, you'd tell me "You're allowed to be a girl, you know." You'd go so far, for years after, to comment loudly about how people could "tell you are a girl" any time I wore a skirt or dress to church. You'd chastise me for not wearing makeup, and just about every other possible feminine stereotype I rejected in my early teens.

I spent time thinking about that phrase--that "you're allowed to be a girl." I even wrote a poem about it! And about how I never needed your permission to be any gender at all. Back then, when I thought I was a cis girl, the thing I felt whenever you said those things was rage--I was a girl. Why would the clothes I put on change that? But in reflection, I do think I was looking for permission to be a girl. I think I was looking for acceptance into a gender I already felt was not the right fit for me, but had no vocabulary to express that discomfort, and so I desperately wanted validation that who I was, just as I was, could be seen as a girl. You never gave that validation. Others did, but you did not. But eventually, I realized that I never needed it at all. I could just stop trying to get validated for something I never was. I came out as genderfluid soon after that reflection, and started using any pronouns. I actually lean a lot more into He and They pronouns these days, which would absolutely scandalize you. But hey, I guess now I no longer need you to "allow" me to be a girl, because I'm not one. Not all the way, at least. Never was.

Don't worry though, because that's honestly the least offensive of the ways I've transgressed against the values you hold so dear. I'm polyamorous now. I have three loving, wonderful partners, who care for me deeply. One I live with--and we're not even married! Karen, I'm living in sin! That's what you'd call it, right? I'm also leading my children astray by allowing them to be who they are. My elder son has hair longer than mine was for most of my life. My younger son is trans, and has been since six years old. Whoever he brings home one day, so long as that person is not harming them or others, I will embrace and accept as my own as well.

I still love Jesus every bit as much as I did in the days when I cared about what you thought of me. I interact with Him very differently now, but I still have people helping me and a community of scholars and friends to keep me sane and supported in the faith. I still get scared, from time to time, that maybe you and people like you were correct, and all of the ways that I've changed in the past few years have alienated me from Jesus forever. Praise God that isn't true, and I'm so thankful for all of the people who remind me of that on a regular basis--even people that don't love or worship the God I serve, who look at my life and see that "something different" that we were told about, but that as a child I thought came from being a virgin and refusing to drink alcohol.

The thing they see in me, the thing that I thank God for because they see it in me, is love. And that, Karen, is something you think you have, but you really don't. It's heartbreaking, honestly. You don't love me, you want to weigh in on choices I've made without you for two decades. You don't love my mom, you want to fix her, to make her your little friend and plaything. Maybe that's not fair--but honestly I don't care. Because whatever you thought was love for me over the years felt more like pressure and shame, and it's taken me a lot of years to realize that's not what love has ever been.

Please leave me the fuck alone. Think of me as a lost soul, one of those who, according to Scripture, has tasted the fruit of salvation and then fallen away, who can never be recovered. Weep and Mourn for me if you wish. One day, in the new Kingdom of the Lord, we'll both be there and we can embrace and laugh and apologize for the cruelty we visited upon one another in life, and we can rebuild from a better foundation. But right now the wounds are too deep and too fresh--even after all these years. I don't want you in my life, I don't need you in my life, and neither do my parents. Go back to your children and grandchildren, your neighbors and friends that you've presumably cultivated over the past couple decades.

Or, if you really want to reconnect, then learn something from how much it hurts to even speak to you. Ask yourself why my parents haven't contacted you in twenty years if they're really 'like family'. Ask yourself why they don't answer the phone now. Ask yourself why you have found yourself so lonely that you are reaching out to someone who you last saw as a kid, refusing pants at TJ Maxx, getting married way too young, and refusing to go to victoria's secret for their first bra. Think. Try. Be better.

But honestly, even then, I'm not sure I have the energy to rebuild anything with you. You are a relic from a life I no longer live, and I'm not going back.

Ronnie