I've Heard It's Painless

Let me preface this by saying the following:

I am NOT suicidal.

It’s funny, because I thought I knew what was on my mind when I got on here tonight. I was thinking about how I’m not a suicidal person, and how this being trans craziness makes someone who is not suicidal, and one who loves SO many things about life and living, consider suicide. It passes through my head from time to time, and in a somewhat-earnest fashion. Now I don’t think that I would ever do something like that (you know, barring extreme circumstances like a debilitating and fatal illness, or sacrificing myself to save the Earth from being struck by an asteroid or something else utterly plausible like that). Being trans, however, makes you consider suicide as a truly viable option. Oh how awesome this all is! I always wanted to throw the option of suicide into the mix under the heading What You Should Consider Doing with Your Life.

The numbers of transpeople who kill themselves are staggering. Various sources have it in and around 30%*. So, 3 in 10 transpeople WILL kill themselves. These are the numbers, and this is without bringing in the number of transpeople who have tried to kill themselves. If you think about it in terms of the scope of everyone you know, and think that 3 in 10 will commit suicide, it seems absolutely ludicrous.

The reason for these numbers is that (and this is coming from a person who is non-suicidal by nature) you look at this daunting mountain that’s in front of you that you’re forced to climb, and it’s SO intimidating that you think about shoving the pointy end of a bottle of Drain-o into your mouth. Oh, and if you choose to actually climb this mountain, suicidal bliss will tantalize you along the way with thoughts such as: whatever I do, no matter how much I do and how much I fight to be me, it’s never going to make a difference; or there’s I’m never going to be what I want to be or be seen how I really am; and then there’s I’m causing all this strife in hopes of achieving a goal that can never really be reached, so what’s the fucking point?

Then, after these thoughts hit you, you consider that not only will you never again fit in with society-at-large, but you always have to worry about people finding out and reacting negatively to it. When you meet anyone new, you have to consider when would be the right time to tell them (if they don’t already know by your appearance that is). Your hopes for dating become slimmer, and the idea of having the “typical family life” is reduced to about nil. You have to worry about where you go, who you’re going with, what kind of people will be there, etc., etc. And if you’re not the worrying type, you at LEAST have to be somewhat concerned about it. If you’re not, you either raise absolutely zero eyebrows, or you’re just fantastically oblivious. Unfortunately, I’m neither of these things, as most people aren’t.

I’m not saying that by going through this all of these things are destined to come about, but they are thoughts that generally assail me on a pretty regular basis. So there’s all of these happy thoughts, and that’s without taking into account the one BIG happy thought that constantly bounces through your head – I don’t feel right in this body or in my life… in ANY way. This one is almost a constant. I feel it at pretty much every moment. It’s like a constant twisting pain in your brain. This feeling by itself is the exact opposite of fun. When you throw all the other thoughts in as well, it can get just a smidge overwhelming from time to time.

And so, due to the factors described above, suicide becomes a legitimately considered choice, like, “Do I try to climb this seemingly-insurmountable mountain of problems and issues, OR do I just make it way easier on myself and swallow a bullet? Hmmm. Just what WOULD be better?”

If you think I’m exaggerating about this you can ask the 30% of people who are like me, yet not here. It’s not a coincidence that the numbers are that high. As I said, I’VE considered it, seriously considered it, and I am not in any way a suicidal person. For me to get to this point is essentially blowing my mind to pieces. I’m shocked that I have. It is COMPLETELY not in my nature.

Being this way, however, living life the way I do (i.e. repeatedly being backed into corner after corner by this issue), just erodes any bit of mental energy you have. It’s fantastically hard to focus enough to make a good go at being successful with work, or things of that nature. I’m not saying that it can’t be done, but you’re trying so hard every day just to see some positive (especially tough when you’re living alone and you subsist in this sort of enclave of human absence), that it gets to be near-impossible to do anything but stave off all the wolves that are already at your psychic gates, because if you don’t do that, you’ll just go hurtling down into this morass of self-loathing, self-hatred, and self-destruction. Good times, all.


I’ve been thinking more and more about how I was when I was a kid, and let me tell you, I was a gooooooooood kid. I wanted everything to fall inside the parameters of the rules, and I obeyed them absolutely as well as I could. You get older, and naturally you start realizing that you can get away with stuff, and that there are many, many rules that are just out and out stupid. So, you generally start adhering to the rules in a more relaxed fashion after those realizations are made.

Even still, I believe in, and by large part act on, a certain code of rules for myself, which is pretty much conveyed by the phrase “try your best to not have a negative impact on anyone else's day”. The problem with this code is that you constantly have to get lost in your interactions a little more than you’re normally used to. You have to dwell on them, and almost over-analyze them, and I’m not sure that anybody has that kind of time.

Then there’s me.
I have that kind of time.

Being at the age that I’m at, most of my friends are in the early stages of parenthood, or they are coupled off in a very serious and domestic fashion. So, that being said, I often don’t have people to do things with. I spend an awful amount of time alone, and when alone, I tend to dwell in and on things; and yes, I almost over-analyze them as well. I indeed have that “luxury”, since I have nothing else more valuable and important to occupy the larger chunks of my time, especially if you take work out of the equation.

Now, I do believe there’s a limit to how far you should go in trying not to be a negative force in someone else's day. You shouldn’t become a doormat, though you should be willing to smile and/or turn the other cheek from time to time. One shouldn’t put themselves in any great peril, or distress, or anything like that. More times than not, all you have to do is be somewhat considerate and use common courtesy. When you do these things, you’re rarely going to have a negative impact on any of the people you happen to bump into during your day, all of whom have no palpable connection to you other than you are both people, and you happened to be in the same place at the same time.

The way I see it, you can make your experience with these people pleasant, even if they may not remember it; or you can make it one that may annoy them, or bother them after the fact, and then they could act on those feelings and cause this bad cascade effect throughout their day, which you would then be the impetus behind. You could be the beginning of this wave of The Bad, all because you needed to tailgate someone, or you felt obligated to get all snarky with the kid in the convenience store, or you just had to fuck with that drifter behind the abandoned train car.

And I’m not saying that you should kowtow to other people’s wishes all the time. I’m saying just to take people into account a little more than you normally would. Just try to NOT be a negative impact on their day in any way that’s under your control. You don’t even have to try to be a positive impact, just try not to be a negative one. That’s it. That’s what I believe in. (Though I do try on most occasions to have more of a positive effect than just a neutral one... but I digress.)

If more people acted in the fashion I’m advocating, I’m quite sure that a lower number than 3 in 10 would be found in trans suicide rates (not to mention that there’d be much less anger and bitterness in general in the world). As of now, however, 3 in 10 is the number.


I got on here tonight with all of this stuff in mind, but after I wrote “I am NOT suicidal” at the beginning of this post, I got sidetracked and had to think about if that was indeed the truth. It is… I think. I am pretty sure that I am not suicidal. I actually had to think about it to see if I was, though. That is where I lie on the scale at this point in time.

All the best to you and yours.


* By the by, the national suicide rate in the U.S. as a whole is .01%, according to the National Institute of Mental Health’s Web site. After about ten minutes of looking, I still couldn’t find the rate for transpeople on the NIMH site, nor a hint of these numbers.