A formal apology and going forward.
Honestly never thought I’d be making one of these. But, here we go anyways.
If you already know what happened? You can skip this paragraph. This is going to be a brief recap for those who don’t know. I will not be going into detail because the details don’t matter. It’s disgusting, no matter what. What happened is this. Things happened. Things happened that honestly? I predicted. Considering I am a trans creator, you can all guess at what these things were. And I got mad. Infuriated. I made the active decision to fly off the handle. And numerous times, I made the active decision to keep going. Despite the nigh-infinite chances to stop. I said disgusting, horrendous things. I went a thousand miles into territory of ‘too far’…and then continued another few thousand miles. No, I will not repeat them. They do not deserve to be repeated. I not only encouraged, but actively participated in targeted harassment, death threats, and bullying. And then lashed out at people trying to help me. There is no excuse.
And yes. There will not be 19 paragraphs of “Well if X didn’t do Y then I wouldn’t have done it” or “I can’t help it! I have (insert condition here)” or any of that bullshit. What others do, or what I have, does not justify anything I did. Especially not when resources are available to help. Plain and simple, I broke the biggest promise I made to myself and became the one thing I swore to never ever become.
I am disgusted with myself. I am appalled at what I have done. Whoever came up with the saying “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me” is full of shit. Words hurt a lot. I have experienced that at the hands of countless others in the past. They can also hurt other people than the intended target. And despite knowing full well what can be done with words, I still decided to go down that path.
Not only did my words hurt others, but they brought shame to my community and communities I am involved with. I brought shame and disgust on myself, and to myself. I am apologizing for my actions. I apologize for lashing out. I apologize for a lack of proper self control. I apologize for going infinitely further than anyone has any right to. But that will not be enough. And nothing will ever be enough to atone or make it up to others.
Going forward, I will be stepping away from content and social media as a whole. I do not know how long. At the bare minimum, it will be for the next couple of weeks. To at least get a couple therapy sessions in as I really can’t fit more than one session a week. Beyond that? Changes. Although that is about as empty a promise as is expected from something like this.
And one more thing. Don’t support. Just don’t. “But it’s ok, you just got angry!” No. No it’s not. “At least you didn’t do X!” And? That doesn’t change that I still did what I did. Don’t make excuses for me. Don’t try to deflect for me. I’ve made my bed and now I must deal with the consequences. Distance yourselves if you want to. You have every right to. If you do stick around? I’m not really sure why you would. Because again, there is no excuse for my actions.