I went to the mall on Saturday

Content Warning: I use the t-slur towards the end of this post. It’s to make a point, I hate the word and actually feel disgusting using it. I’m sorry for anyone who is triggered by it.

It was supposed to be game night. My friends ended up taking a billion years at a two headed giant event so we ended up going to the mall for a walk. That was a mistake.

I’ve begun compiling a list of things that trigger sensory overload for me and I’ve realized that it’s just normal life with one change. Something doesn’t go my way. Something, anything at all, doesn’t go the way I (the infallible, precognitive, and absolutely always correct Nora Bell) predicted it would. Sometimes I hate this brain. Why can’t I just roll with the punches? Why do I care why I can’t roll with the punches instead of just figuring out how to roll with them?

It’s tax free weekend. I forgot that existed. A lot of places have a GRT (fancy sales taxes that fuck the consumer instead of the business owner) holiday in NM for back to school. I’m not sure what does and doesn’t qualify. But evidently most of the mall does. This mall was busier than I’d ever seen it before. I worked there for a while, even on the tax holiday, but I’d still never seen that many people walking around. I kept getting glared at. At some point I realized that I was at Cottonwood mall, not Coronado Center. Cottonwood is out near Rio Rancho, where the most colonial of those who participate in the theft of native land live. The folks who live there are a type of people I try my best not to associate with. Shitty wine mom’s living off their husband’s military pay or their oil money or their defense contractor centhousands.

So these fuckin PTA members keep glaring at me when I walk by. And like, I can try to lie to myself and say “they’re staring because I’m attractive” but I know it’s because I’m trans. They think I’m gonna steal their kids and rape them, or worse *gasp*, teach them about gender nonconformity (oohhhh the humanity). I know thats what they think because I can see the fear in their eyes. It’s the same fear I’ve seen a million times before, from a million moms.

People are too scared of what they don’t know, or understand. I’m literally just a sweetheart. I’m not dangerous, or a predator. I’m so scared people will misread my actions that I go through every single thing a million times so people will think I’m “normal” whatever the fuck that means.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’re just as overwhelmed as I am.

They’re the threat though. When all goes down, who’s word is believed? The tranny or the PTA member?

Resentfully,
Nora