This year is the third year where my extended family has completely severed ties with me in regards to family events/holidays.

The reason hasn't been given to me directly, but based on what my father has told me it's probably because I'm non-binary or that I'm "scary" to all my evangelical family because I work out, I wear thick eyeliner and I have bracelets with spikes. Like I'm clearly some type of queer leftist punk by demeanor and appearance and that's simply who I am and have been for a long time. My grandmother died of covid in 2021, days before the vaccine was commercially available. She was the matriarch of the whole extended family and she loved me dearly. No one would dare speak against her in regards to me being present. I was tolerated so long as meemaw would shoot them a dirty look or brandish her wooden spoon if someone started speaking ill of me. My meemaw was an absolute real one, grew up in poverty in the 1930s, daughter of a community pastor, and overall the sweetest person I've ever known. She had such an immense love inside of her. She practically raised me too, I got my first lessons from her on why racism is evil and how you should treat people with kindness and appreciation.

Now that she's gone the matriarch and planner seems to be my deranged fundamentalist aunt. At one point my aunt was the principal of my middle school where she was known by the students as "lady Hitler." She would frequently make disparaging remakes about the Latino students and once made a morning announcement that all Christians should be wary of secret Muslims sneaking into America. This was in the early 00s so she never got fired for blatant discrimination like that, instead she ended up superintendent of the whole district a few years later.

Yeah so if my aunt is in charge of extended family plans, I'm probably never going again. My parents, bless them, actually didn't attend thanksgiving last year or this one because they figured out I was deliberately excluded. Apparently there was an incident where my uncle tried shooting the shit with his brother (my dad) in 2022 about me. Uncle was saying something to the effect of "this is a lot nicer without that commie (slur) isn't it?" He said this thinking my dad would go along with it, but it ended up turning into shouting. Dad actually defended me, said I was smarter and more kind than anyone at the whole table. I'm just some dumb goofus, but it touched me to hear my dad defended me like that from all the bullies in my family.

My parents are actually super chill with me, despite being a little nuts and racist themselves, they're just standard American type of deranged, not the red pill maga christian fascist type of American. So my parents don't tolerate their kids being called slurs or disparaged by family, thankfully.

Anyway. I'm thankful that I'm healthy and I have two lovely cats. I only have one human friend, but she's very dear to me. And you're all my comrades and you've always been super nice to me. Thank you