Hi,
Welcome back to the Shores of Night, or welcome if you're new. My name is Grim, a nonbinary, autistic human, and this blog covers far too many things.
Content Warning: Abuse, Bullying and Mental Health
This is a bit of a memoir I'll never write. Some pieces from my past which, sadly, still inform who I am. I've been in therapy since 2022, and a lot of that has been dealing with this shit.
I've never fit in anywhere. One of my first memories is being bullied on the playground because I didn't watch the He-Man cartoon (I know, the nerve! How dare I?). It doesn't get much better after that. My childhood was a patchwork of bullying and abuse. At the second school I attended, things got so bad that I'd burst into tears at the start of the school year, and I threw up in the back of my Dad's car at least once. It didn't help that the teachers were also picking on me, and I'm pretty sure that this was the start of my developing depression and anxiety, like the shittiest prize at a funfair.
The next school was better, in so much as the adults weren't abusive, but the kids were just as bad as my "peers" had been before. It wasn't long before I didn't fit; it wasn't long before people were asking, "Does anyone really like him?" (this being before the idea of nonbinary had surfaced in the public consciousness).
I learned that a "friend" had asked my sister this, and it's haunted me ever since. I learned that I was unlikeable, that I wasn't enough, and it informs my life even now - much as I wish it didn't.
Secondary school... well, let's just say I learned being alone is far from the worst thing to be. The bus journey home from Princethorpe was Hell, and the only time my parents did anything was when my school uniform got damaged.
In fact, my Mum would tell me that I had to learn to ignore the bullies and they'd stop, which feels like the sort of response someone who's forgotten what it's like to be a child would give.
Meanwhile, at the actual place I was attending, I was a ghost. I turned up for classes, then vanished again. While my "peers" were on the playground or, later, in the Sixth Form Common Room, I retreated to the Study Hall or to odd places around the school to hide.
Home was scarcely better. The place was geared to my Dad, who ruled with the sort of careless authority that could clench like a fist if he got angry. He'd been abused as a kid, and it feels like my entire family was structured like a fucking Philip Larkin poem. You know the one.
Despite his history, he chose to gift me with more of the same, and it was made abundantly clear I was there on notice. I remember it starting at the Naval Museum in Portsmouth. "That's your real Dad," he said, gesturing up at a picture of Hitler. "We found you on the doorstep."
I got upset. He didn't stop. If anything, it got worse.
The rest of my childhood was dominated by this sort of thing, and I have heard so many versions of why it happened that it's exhausting.
Worse, these taught me a very toxic sort of masculinity (since I am AMAB) and that being broken was "normal". My Dad's actions also led to me losing any faith in Christianity. I lost the ability to believe that a man, or a man-shaped deity, could be the creator of everything. I used to say if God was a man, we'd have more duck-billed platypuses because the men I knew, especially in my family, seemed like they'd be the type to fill the world with stupid animals.
Between these experiences, I learnt that most men aren't to be trusted, that I have no place in the world and that alone is better than toxic company. It left me feeling homeless in terms of gender because there was no way in Hell I wanted to be like those people. It also taught me that my voice doesn't matter, because no matter how I fought, how much I protested, nobody listened.
As an adult, I struggle to make myself heard and for a long time I didn't have much confidence - though I probably faked it well enough. I just remember feeling alone and masking it with a mixture of people pleasing, sarcasm and, frankly, irritation with the world. Unhealed, terrified, and even with my former partners alone and waiting for them to turn on me. Waiting for the moment where I wasn't enough.
Waiting for the "Does anyone actually like them" moment.
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