Sometimes I hate the fact that I have a Google setting to alert me whenever someone has written about me. It is both a blessing and a curse.

I received yet another alert today, the first in months. I’m writing this to help me deal with the effects of that alert. While lessened, these kinds of things still cause me great distress, even at this late date. Fortunately, I’m a lot stronger now than I once was.

I will not provide you a link and ask you to not bother googling it yourself, because I don’t want this blogpost to become a conduit to give my critics page views. Suffice to say: a priest overseas wrote something about one of the bravest men of the last century, Alan Turing, whose life is the subject of a new film starring actor Benedict Cumberbatch (I loved him in “Star Trek Into Darkness”), This priest drew comparisons to Turing’s cruel prosecution for being gay, and the ordeal of my seizure, amnesia and subsequent involuntary detransition, to express his opposition to a gender identity bill in his native land. That country is pictured below, if you care to guess.

Far be it from me to ever consider myself worthy of comparison to the hero who ended WWII, with his Enigma code-breaking machine and his brilliant mind. This priest did rightly condemn the mistreatment of Turing and others like him… then, a few words later, to make all trans folks look like lunatics and to make his point, he invoked both Pope Emeritus Benedict, Pope Francis… and the New York Post. In fact, he quoted liberally from that seedy tabloid’s fabricated account of my experiences.

Last time I checked, being trans in America now and being gay in post-war Europe are not at all similar. And even if you’re not an American you ought to know better than to quote The New York Post.

It seems “The Don Ennis Controversy” as the Huffington Post once labeled it, is an albatross that will stalk me long after I am dead. And the truth is, it really isn’t anyone’s business. I am not a public figure, and never was.

All that matters now is that I am me, and I am just one of many trans folk whose transitions were not smooth (even though mine admittedly started out better than I could have ever dreamed).

The really awful part of my transition was that it occurred under a spotlight, which I did not seek nor do not want to ever repeat. I didn’t ask to be famous, infamous or notorious. I hesitated even writing about it for fear some bozo will say “look! She’s seeking attention again!”

No, I’m complaining that my rights to my privacy are being violated, again.

Why can’t they just leave me alone? Seriously, I think I may need to vanish to make that happen.

Siri, Google: “abracadabra.”