Thread by @EmilyGorcenski

So there's this thing about #SecondCivilWarLetters going around and what I see are a bunch of glib white people mocking white suburbia, so let me post some of my Second Civil War letter, one I actually wrote shortly before I was surrounded by 300 men with torches and gassed.

I've been trying to write my legacy so that my story lives on if I don't. And the hardest, but most important legacy to leave has been about love.

#SecondCivilWarLetters

Christine has been the jewel of my life, and I owe to her a thousand times over a thousand times the love she has given me. I want to get through tomorrow to spend a long life together, crafting new tales, finding new adventures.

#SecondCivilWarLetters

She has been patient with me through transition. Transition is a very self-centered process. It is a process of rediscovery.

#SecondCivilWarLetters

The toll it takes on a relationship is not necessarily one of gender or sexuality or perception, but how a person who was able to give to others must now give to themselves to become whole.

#SecondCivilWarLetters

I thought about writing letters to [my loved ones] in case I don't make it. About what they meant to me. But something I learned from those relationships is that it's so much better to speak what you feel, to live without regrets.

#SecondCivilWarLetters

And I think I want that to be my legacy. That though imperfect, I tried to love perfectly.

#SecondCivilWarLetters

Don't bid me caution, because safety is not my choice to make. Don't bid me luck, because I must rely on skill. I walk in tomorrow to face off people who have told me they want me dead...

#SecondCivilWarLetters

that they want to turn America into a white-only continent, that they want to suppress women, to erase queers, to murder people of color. I don't do this to be brave, or to be strong, or to inspire, or to satisfy an ego.

#SecondCivilWarLetters

I do this because every human being deserves the chance to love as I have loved and to be loved as I have been loved.

One day.

Simply bid me well. I'll see you all on the 13th.

#SecondCivilWarLetters

Within the next 24 hours, I would be attacked by a torch-bearing mob and find myself on-scene during a terrorist attack from someone who wanted to start a race war.

Spare me your fucking Olive Garden takes.