Warning: Heavy topic!
This post, despite being my first on this blog, goes into heavy topics like suicidal ideation and dysphoria. Please take care of yourself, and be aware of yourself enough to know if you can read this safely.
A common experience in the queer community at large, and the trans community especially, is feeling like life isn’t worth living. Feeling like a stranger in your own body, but not knowing why is extremely distressing… and even once you figure out why, the prospect of working to fix the things that make you uncomfortable can seem too daunting to approach.
I felt like a freak, like my body was a prison that I had to escape.
So many trans people take their own lives because they can’t find a way out of whatever bad situations exist in their lives, and I think it needs to be talked about. Nothing is gained by hiding it, there’s a stigma that we “shouldn’t talk about it” because then cis people will use against us… and some may, but they would anyway so by giving in to their abuse and not talking about it we’re silencing ourselves and artificially isolating ourselves.
So, here’s my experience with suicidal ideation and what it meant for me…
Most people don’t know this about me, because I don’t have scars and I’ve never physically harmed myself… but I hated myself for many years. I felt like a freak, like my body was a prison that I had to escape. So I turned to digital forms of escapism. I played video games to get away, to stop being “present” in my body, it was a way to pretend that I was somewhere else and someone else.
But I also neglected myself, isolated myself. I didn’t maintain social connections except for the sake of playing games with “known quantity” people, even if those social connections were harmful. I didn’t know why I had to get away from being present in my body, but I needed to so I did.
And then, after the shocking and sudden loss of my mother in recent years, and the sudden introduction of the fact that someone in my family is trans, a lot of things started making sense to me. I’d always longed to be a girl, but figured that was an impossibility. Suddenly seeing someone living as their real self, for no one but themselves was a revelation. It was a tidal wave crashing down, in the months following this the feeling of being a foreigner in my own body had a name and a face… I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I experimented with my outward presentation, and eventually made my way to getting on HRT.
And that helped me immensely, my body no longer felt totally foreign, my emotions and moods felt more like they were “me” than they ever had before. Over the months after starting hormones, my body continued to feel more and more like it belonged to me and I was able to breathe comfortably most of the time…
Except for one thing, something I’m still haunted by: not having a vagina.
It is a constant haunting feeling, and changing that is such a massive and terrifying prospect that it’s easy to feel like it’s impossible… Sometimes, it’s not in the fore of my mind and I’m able to peacefully ignore it… and other times it would leave me feeling like life was hopeless.
With support from friends and my (now ex) girlfriend, I was able to work through it usually. But it was always distressing and came in waves at the most inopportune times.
New Years Day 2019 I made a resolution, the first in over ten years. I resolved that I wouldn’t live to see the year 2021 without a vagina, and I meant it. It was far enough away that it seemed attainable, but close enough that it seemed like a good deadline to set.
So, content that I had figured out what 2021 would be for me (post op or dead) I felt better, I felt like I had solved the problem. Because surely that’s the incentive I needed?
If I didn’t want to die, I’d work out my surgical path before then… right?
Well… that’s not how thoughts of suicide worked for me, instead of being an incentive to action it was an incentive to inaction. If I didn’t act, it would all be over one way or another right? So why fight it?
But then I realized that the only person I’d be hurting with that would be me, by resolving to not go on I had decided that I wasn’t worth it.
I am worth it, though dammit! If all of the other people who felt like me that I’ve talked to were worth it, surely I am? So, with the help of some anti-anxiety/depression meds and a therapist I got the clarity of mind to hatch a plan: a new resolution and a mark to accompany it and remind me of it when I need it most…
On New Years Day 2020, I went with my godmother to make myself a promise, make a new resolution: I won’t give up.
It was harder than I thought to find a place open that day, we walked around the South Street area of Philly for a couple hours looking, but it’s one of the best choices I’ve ever made. It’s a constant reminder, right in view for me and everyone else that I am stronger than my worst feelings… anyway.
I feel like it’s important to work past this stigma that we shouldn’t talk about these things, because these feelings can affect anyone at any time… and by not talking about them and isolating ourselves, we handicap ourselves in the fight to work through them in our journey to be our best selves.