Family, Heartbreak, and Fame

Updates on Moving to Phoenix and Moving On From My Family of Origin

For the last six months, I've felt unhappy with my egoic desires for this "career" in "influencing" or a nicer term "public speaking." At 27 I already know I don't care about it.

I recently did a high-profile event for which I was paid. It was everything I'm supposed to want from this career as an emerging "conservative celebrity"--fans asking for photos, accolades for my talents, dressing up nicely and feeling like a star. Reporters from all over the world saw my badge saying “Speaker” and wanted to interview me about cultural issues. My travel, hotel, food and drinks were all paid for, I was VIP—a very important person! Apparently.

But as I was sitting backstage waiting for my turn to headline, I turned to my invited guest and said, “I don’t give a fuck about this.” And I didn’t. I showed up to be responsible, and I did a damn good job at what I was there and paid to do, but my heart wasn’t there.

My heart was left in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where I had just moved from to Phoenix, Arizona. It was broken, as usual, but at least by somebody who meant something, who represented what I did give a fuck about it. He was a kind 39 year old, a twice-divorced father of three I met at a detransitioner panel in my hometown a month before my moving date.

By description alone, it was never likely we would be compatible or he’d be available for my relational goals, but I asked if he’d take me out for a drink and he agreed, and as I’m excellent at doing, I fell in love with him just as I was reaching Phoenix, supposed to start my “new life.” It took one month, maybe my personal best in the insecure-attachment record, but probably because he was representative of the meaning I had ironically just moved to pursue.

He loved being a dad, he sent me photos of him and his kids every day, often updating me with audio recordings from his job where he worked hard to provide for them. His schedule revolved around his kids, waking up at 5 AM and crashing by 11 PM, still making time to call me for hours and read CS Lewis. He was a Good Man, one I’d never had the honor of being close with before, indeed it would be stupid not to love such a person, rare as they are.

My drive to Phoenix went exactly as planned, and with how few things do? It was wonderful. Except for this man, who was miraculous. “Providence” he said, it was providential that we met just as I was leaving Milwaukee—God’s blessing.

Setting up my new apartment I thought of how little my material belongings mattered, how the sparkling pool outside my unit door was luxurious and maybe I earned it through my laborious adulthood, how the sunny days and nights of the dry desert air were what I had wanted, but how empty they were as I lounged on my balcony alone. These gifts were my desires manifested, my plans successfully raised, and my attempts at self-love as I chose a new state to make my fortune in. But compared to the life led by this father, they didn’t matter.

I get a lot of advice from older people trying to console me about being single. “You have plenty of time,” “You’re beautiful and young, you don’t need to worry,” “You can have kids at 40, just enjoy your time now.” I try to honor my elders’ wisdoms, but with all due respect, I’ve already done that. I lived an extended youthful hedonism throwing away responsibility with nihilistic contempt. I don’t care about the pool, or the furniture, or the boundless freedom I possess. I resent it.

The man told me he was envious of my ability to move to Phoenix and do what I do. Like most people I encounter, he admires my work as a conservative celebrity. He’s impressed by my achievements at a younger age, particularly the introspection and self-healing I’ve undertaken. I’m glad I’ve done what I have thus far, as it’s a hell of a lot more than the squandering of life I lived for too long.

But I am envious of him. That he has a reason to get up in the morning and fall asleep at night, a reason to work for money, a reason to suffer. I have no limitations on sleeping, working, or crying. I have no one to live for except myself. My whims are tiresome and even the greatest achievements enviable by average standards are lackluster and usually based in ego.

I hate the rat race of the culture war, of the detrans advocacy, of the influencer culture. I’ve become competent enough to be part of it, I’m grateful for my meager sanity in that regard, but I don’t feel loved doing it. It’s an effort to appreciate random women crying over me and thanking me for helping them. It’s human, but more dutiful than loving. I meditate on the positive messages and blessings I receive from my strange work talking about my medical mutilation. It doesn’t naturally fulfill the unmet needs I was burdened to carry since childhood.

The Gen Z focus on gaining and maintaining relevancy online is not only impossible but a waste of spiritual energy.

The high of online attention is quickly replaced by the inevitable diminishing returns of fame. Who wins? The social media apps and websites using everyone's efforts to sell ads while all of us compete for momentary love that doesn't satiate anyhow.It's easy to enjoy the attention and be motivated to make more work ("content") as a priority when life is lonely and dull. Especially from the restructuring of habits since the lockdowns with fewer in person activities and relationships, money and connections are sometimes only available online.

Young people don't even remember the world before this "social" media reward system, or were children incapable of applying analog living to their hybrid adulthoods.

In particular, those with trauma like myself find it hard to leave the reward system because feel-good chemicals are lacking, relationships are hurtful, public presence is tiring all the more for those with dysregulated nervous systems.

A creative personality, I've fallen into the microcelebrity trap, despite my studying of show business from my comedic idols I've long heard discuss the facade of relevancy and soul-crushing distraction of "the business" from genuinely meaningful self-reflection, healing, relationships. None of this is novel, even if the detransition narrative is. It’s the same talk from comedians who realized the hollow pursuit of fame decades after trying to fill their childhood voids by staying relevant and successful, chasing the next thrill, demanding more compensation, more networking, more publicity, more respect.

I shot my shot with my friend, despite the logistical nightmare, because what the hell else matters besides the company of a beautiful soul and creating a family with them? He already had a family, and I had nothing, but through his inclusion of me in his life, it felt for a little while that I wasn’t alone. That was worth fighting for, I told him.

“I don’t want to have more kids, and you need someone who wants to give you babies,” he admitted. “That is going to be a fundamental part of your journey, and it will happen. By doing all the things you’re doing, like the things you’re at least somewhat passionate about, you’ll find what you are most passionate about.” It was the only non-cruel rejection I’d ever had, but still my cruel fate in general was to be alone.

A day before I traveled to the big event I told him I needed time to not talk to him. He said to take whatever time I needed to figure things out. “Figure things out”? I thought. What’s there to figure, I’m in love with you but we can’t be together. What I must do is grieve and pay my bills. I then forced myself to be the responsible public figure I am and talk about my healing at a summit for “Young Women Leaders.”

I won’t denounce myself as undeserving of praise, being called a leader, having the chance to be increasingly visible. It is undeniably good to spread awareness and I am successful at my areas of competence—speaking, writing, articulating truth. Perhaps what I am ungrateful for is that I already know what matters to me, and understand deeply because my heart aches every day for them to appear but they never do.

The work is good, I am good at it, but I’ve lived most of my life feeling homeless like an orphan. The Young Women’s Summit theme of 2024 was getting married and having children. “What a blessing!” All the girl boss influencers like Candace Owens and Alex Clark drilled in their speeches. How ironic for my heartbroken 27 year old pitiful self to be reminded as I went on camera and discussed my trauma history of feeling so unloved and suicidal I thought mangling my sexual organs would help.

I know why I had to stop talking to this man who only weeks ago I confessed I could see a future with. Not because I value attending political events and worming my way into positions of power and influence so I can make a career out of cultural commentary. If I cared about that, I have many tools at my fingertips I could be using to “grow my brand” like making daily Tiktoks, calling out gender medicine and making fun of cringe and abusive nonbinaries—obviously my enlightenment ambition.

No, I allowed myself to die alongside my dreams because my efforts in healing my childhood trauma brought me to cherish Family, and I would do anything to obtain the love I’d missed so long ago from my one of origin. I wasn’t expecting to fall in love with someone from Milwaukee just as I moved to Phoenix. I wasn’t expecting to have my priorities set on fire before me to illuminate how far away I remain from my wounds being rectified. I was just trying to do the next right thing by moving somewhere away from my abusive past, warm, and with chances for like-minded friendship.

Thus, moving switched from a triumphant autonomous adventure to a poignant stab in the heart at my isolation trauma I do so much work to avoid. Nothing says loneliness like moving to escape your damaging family of origin while simultaneously being redirected from the first good man you’ve ever known to unpack boxes by yourself and contemplate what the fuck you’re supposed to do with your life now.

I’m obviously quite hurt at the time of writing this. I always am, but sometimes have less fresh pain…I did what I was meant to do—the next right action—to not only move, but to fight for meaning, and to accept defeat and live another day. If what my friend said about providence was true, then this redirection into hellish solitude must serve higher purposes. It wasn’t some flirty demonic joke to squeeze one more unavailable man from Wisconsin into my life just as I broke free to the Southwest, was it?

I care about the movement, it has brought me all my wonderful friends, many amazing times, and helped me find therapy and healing so I don’t have to hate myself so much. But after trauma, what is there? After escaping the abusers, who is left? After realizing your values, where do you go? An existential crisis is to be expected at such a time as this relocation, but man, I wasn’t anticipating such a splendid heartache and clear framing of my problems at once.

Gen Z, I have no advice different from the Candace Owens’ of the world. I wish I could take that advice, but it appears I have other work to do. The things I need to “figure out” I suppose are, how I can combine my channels of accessible work—inner healing, detrans activism, and this new landscape in Phoenix. These are the purposes I have been given. They are not the things I most value or want, but they are the harvests I have previously planted. Resentful or not at the freedom I bare, this is where I am meant to be for now.

What a sad, hopeful place. Providence.