MEMOIR POST - excerpt from first draft of *I'm Glad It Broke* by Jane Barlow

CW bigotry, dysphoria, bullying, allusion to self-harm, physical abuse, bullying

"I was born before Ronald Reagan was elected. I realized I was different several years before the first web browser was released.

From Nov. 2021:

Had my annual skin cancer check today, for the first time since coming out to all my doctors, and the good news is they didn't find anything! The bad news is a man I barely know ran his hands over every inch of me that wouldn't have been covered by a thong and I'm a total wreck now

Pasted from January 2022:

I uncovered another memory that I can't *believe* didn't get me sent to extreme conversion camp

(I was already getting sent to conversion "lite" every year or two despite having never been into guys or getting caught crossdressing, but that's a story for a different day)

There's a good starter blocklist for these accounts at bsky.app/profile/bloc...

This story was originally posted in 2022:

Amazing how much has changed in my lifetime that there's a kerfuffle in the UK over Boy Scouts supporting trans ppl when just 32 years ago a roving band of feral Webelos kicked my ass and called me slurs for wearing Dockers chinos

Just a few minutes ago on Main I said I was going to start retelling traumatic stuff I'd previous said elsewhere, but here's something so foundational to how I grew up and who I am now that it's why this alt account exists in the first place.

I think I almost scared myself away from this account with how raw that was, maybe I should mix in a happy memory for every bad one or something

For now I definitely won't be posting about any recent events and focusing on childhood (1980-1996) and young adulthood (1997-2012); eventually I'll get around to stuff that happened last year, but no unresolved/ongoing situations

My plan is to spill whatever is haunting me and keeping me awake at night, which means I'll be insomnia-posting on a fairly regular basis

Scene: exterior of small-town Southern Baptist church, just before noon, Easter Sunday, mid-1980s.

I am 4¾ years old, playing with parking lot gravel and waiting for my mom and new-ish stepdad to get done socializing. Nearby is our family's assigned deacon, chatting with the pastor.

1/

So, shit's about to get really dark here really quickly and mostly stay that way; enter at your own risk.