I was a kid.

She once hit me in the lung so hard I fell down and couldn’t breathe. This was right before my tennis tryouts, and my mom saw it happen. She didn’t get in trouble.

She was older than me and would hit me or scratch me with her nails so hard I would bleed. I would get in trouble if I ever tried to defend myself because I was a man. She didn’t get in trouble.

She was in her third year of college. She forgot to pack a power bank and told me to give her mine. When I told her no and she stole it from my bag, she then threw the brick at my head, hard enough to damage the wall. My parents wouldn’t even scold her. Instead, my mom screamed at me and said she should just hang herself because I was begging them to tell her to stop. I left my phone and left the hotel at night in a foreign country, and went to lie down in the dark street so a car would hit me and I would die. My dad had to go searching for me to find me, and he told me he couldn’t tell my sister to stop, and asked me what I wanted him to even do.

I could fill a book with the cruelty I’ve endured at the hands of another person, and not a single sentence would be about a man. My mother would constantly remind me and treat me like a monster because I was born male. What she didn’t realize was I was just a child. I did nothing. Why did I deserve it?