My partner told me this while I was having the mental breakdown that led me to write this very recent, depressing post affirming my self-hatred and internalized bigotry.

Feelings were heavy. I thank all the Hexbears who were able to have a proper grasp on supporting me through this, but this quote in the title is what made me flood my face with tears. I cry a lot, and when I say a lot, I mean a lot. It's something that my partner emphasizes about me, and she loves it when I do so. She loves that I can be very sensitive and emotional at times, which is a nice change of pace because, growing up, I generally got informed, especially as someone who was raised a boy, that I'm not "allowed" to cry.

The notion that me crying is invalid was always a sentiment used to divert solving my problems or supporting me through emotional turmoil. What I was actually going through as a kid didn't seem to matter; the real problem is that I reacted to it by crying, so clearly telling me to shut the fuck up while not addressing the issues I was facing at all was the proper approach to me being sensitive in the eyes of my supposed loved ones. "Sensitive" is a word that was used as an insult against me all the damn time as a kid, and it gave it a negative connotation for me. "You're so sensitive!", my sister, dad, mom, or anyone else would say this to me in frustration because my skin just simply wasn't "thick" enough from an age as young as 8 years old (for what is the earliest I can remember).

This instilled a lot of shame for me because, even before taking estrogen, I have always been very sensitive when it came to crying, and if I ever cried in front of someone else, I felt disgusted that I reacted with such disgust because I was always told it's wrong and never okay for me to cry. I know that if I were AFAB, this wouldn't have happened, as there was a lot of emphasis on "manning up" that I've been told about and that I've internalized.

My partner is similar to me in a lot of ways, including things that caused me to hold a lot of internalized hatred for myself. Though she is a cis woman, she is queer, she is neurodivergent, and she is also not white. There's this common tendency for us to look at each others as if we are mirrors of our own stories. Although variables will obviously differ here and there, there are common themes we've noticed, such as feeling rejected, being misunderstood, being ostracized, internalizing shame, and having a difficult time to be ourselves in a world that just seems like it was not made for us. We've talked about it constantly, but the difference is that there is such larger understanding between us than what we could ever get from anyone else.

She strives to be the best trans ally she can, and she really blew my expectations of how good cis allies can be out of the water. This is because she wants to learn because she truly just has genuine intent to be the best to trans people that she can be, especially while having a trans partner. As all cis people do, she's had her own faults and misunderstandings about trans people, but the best thing about her is that she only acknowledges these faults with intent to grow, and that's all I love to see as a trans person who's gotten so used to being misunderstood by people who make zero efforts to change.

I have never felt love this genuine in my life. I've had people who knew me from birth who could never offer me this love. I've been unable to make friends due to being too much a "weirdo" to be around others in a positive light. The very fact that this all seemed like an impossibility for so long made me cry so much.

It's very happy that I'm being treated this way and feeling this love, but it's also sad to me that I find it such a baffling concept that I not only deserve to be respected for who I am but loved and celebrated enough that a person would want to spend their life despite all the ways I stand out from the wider and more "normalized" parts of society.

Her life has so much value, my life has so much value, and contrary to what reactionaries wish to tell me, me being misunderstood isn't my fault. It's the fault of people who don't want to understand and instead choose to neglect changing their lack of effort and lack of empathy so they can blame me for being weird instead.

That's all.