It's been ages since I've posted anything here, or written anything of note, actually. Trauma, however, has always been one of the major impetuses for me to write, and the past two years have laid me lower than I have ever been. I assume that a lot of people could say the same, as the pandemic has really caused the world and all of our lives to spin upside down for far too long and in some truly horrific ways.
The pandemic hit me just as I was getting my legs underneath me with my new public identity and place in the world. It hit me just as I was learning how to embrace and appreciate who I am. And all of that stalled and regressed.
Two years later and I'm now a hollowed-out husk of a person meandering my way through a magnificently pointless and fantastically lonely existence in a world that uses people like me as sick and twisted villains in political and societal theater. Just the other day I saw a political ad of someone running for one of Pennsylvania's US Senate seats that covered three talking points in their 30-second commercial, and one of those points just had to attack and invalidate people like me. This is in the top three of the issues this person wanted to mention. People like me. Like there's nothing else more important going on in the world right now. Fuck us all.
Meanwhile, in Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court confirmation hearing, she was asked, "What is a woman?" by a GOP Senator purely as way to target and invalidate trans people. This, of course, was then covered to a ridiculous degree on conservative "news" stations, began trending on social media, and is now used as a rallying cry against confirmation.
In addition to this, there's staggering heartbreak going on in Texas with the governor there declaring that parents who support a trans kid are partaking in child abuse, to the point that anyone with a trans child who is seeking treatment for them can be reported to the government for investigation and are at risk for having their child taken away from them. My heart is shattered for these families, who already have to deal with so much, and now they live in fear of being separated from each other for no reasons other than sheer cruelty and the scoring of political points.
I can't get into these things on a deeper level to counter them in this post, as that's not the reason I'm writing here. Though there are many great articles about all of these things that you could research and read through if so desired. But keep in mind that this is all just the tip of the iceberg, as there are currently anti-trans bills being proposed in over 30 states, with some of them already being passed.
Why I bring all this up is because these stories and attacks are INCESSANT. Trans people inspire both fervent support and bottomless hatred, so we generate hits on websites, views on stories, and an avalanche of comments on social media. In short, we make the media, and the politicians for that matter, entirely too much money for us to just be ignored and allowed to live our lives peacefully.
I don't know if it's due to all of these things or not, but after kind of existing in the world as myself for several months in 2019 without a whole lot of horribleness to report, the past two years has been rife with terrible shit.
In our world today, it's perfectly okay and acceptable to hate trans people. It's perfectly okay and acceptable to believe the horrible lies about us and to spread them. It's perfectly acceptable to dehumanize and reduce us to sick perverts to the point that it's done regularly by the media and by sitting members of Congress.
Some people may yell in outrage about it, but ultimately we don't matter enough for more than that to be done on any measurable scale. I suppose some boycotts go on and things like that, but nothing substantial enough to get any kind of notice. And, more often than not, I see people telling us to lighten up and anti-trans views get dismissed as overreaction and therefore not important. All of this while the whole trans community is screaming for help.
In our world today, it's perfectly okay and acceptable for people to laugh in my face as I walk down the street. It's perfectly okay for people to literally go out of their way to be awful to me. It's perfectly okay for people to stare and mock and disrespect me, even in spaces I once considered to be "safe." And since trans people have been pushed firmly into conservatives' crosshairs, this just gets worse and worse. When I speak to people about it, even supportive friends at times, I feel I'm just seen as annoying, am more or less dismissed, and then avoided because dealing with me is too difficult and suddenly too much trouble.
And it's like, what do you do when person after person laughs in your face as you're just walking down the street trying to live your life? What do you do when person after person goes out of their way to disrespect you just for daring to exist? You can only say so much. You can't fight everyone who does this because there are just so many people that do so. You can't fight the world. You just can't.
So you try to ignore it and move on. You try to put it aside... until the next person does it to you, which just compounds the feelings... and so on... and so on... and so on... and so on... and so on...
It becomes easier to just hide away than to be out in the world. Every step outside of your home becomes a game of Who's Going To Be Horrible to Me Next? And when you couple in the effects of the pandemic, everything becomes amplified.
So many people have forgotten how to be social during this time. My one friend, who may be the most social and outgoing person I have ever known, said recently that in going through the pandemic she "forgot how to people." So if the most social of us are struggling with getting back in the groove of being around other folks, you can imagine what it feels like for someone like me who, as I said, was just starting to get going with this new life of mine and is now openly mocked, laughed at, and disrespected when I step out of the house.
I've spent the past two years completely alone for about 99% of it. First, you couldn't see anyone when COVID hit. Then the bubble expanded a little and I could at least see some people, but for me, even as things are opening up, going out to meet friends seemed to be suddenly something that wasn't going to be enjoyable because inevitably mistreatment and aggressive contempt was going to be part of the evening. How can something like that even be mildly enjoyable? I constantly have to consider where I'm going and if it'll be even remotely okay for me to be there, because even in open and accepting places I'm still getting shit hurled at me, so how would it be if I stepped into a truly unfriendly place?
And this all goes without even mentioning that my social avenues are mostly closed anyway. I'm so very single and in my late 40s when just about everyone I know is coupled off and doing their own thing. I'm a perpetual third wheel during a time when third wheels are definitely not needed.
Not to mention that some people just don't want to deal with me because they know that it's difficult to be friends with someone who's struggling so much. So it all spirals. And, on top of that, I no longer fit in with my some friends that I've had most of my life. Perhaps because we never really redefined our friendship after my transition or maybe it's just through the natural course of life, so my social circle closed even more because of that. I have very few lasting friendships and I feel more a burden to these friends than I do anything else.
I'm at the end of my rope. So much so that I've actually entertained the thought of detransitioning just to make things a little easier in terms of being out in the world. But every thought of that just leads me to think, "I'd rather die than go back." That said, I'm also keenly aware that I can't keep living like this.
To further complicate things, I've been trying to get back into therapy, but either people aren't seeing new clients or they're seeing them virtually, and as I found out when the pandemic hit and I tried virtual sessions with my therapist of many years, it just doesn't work for me. I'm on at least three waiting lists to get back into therapy at places once they go back to in-person appointments. Even when I reached out to my former therapist basically crying for help, I got a cursory response and then no response. Fun.
I recently had a checkup with my doctor and told her how I was feeling. She prescribed me Prozac, which did seem to take some of the edge off, though before it could really kick in and start working fully, I started to have an adverse reaction to it and have to sort of skip days with it. I haven't totally stopped taking it, though, because I'm afraid not to take it. I have an appointment in a couple weeks (the soonest I can get in) to talk about an alternative medication. I'm trying to hang in until then.
Then, in an effort to actually get out of my apartment and maybe meet some people I could connect with, I found a weekly trans social group at a local LGBT center, so I thought that would be very beneficial for me. But when I emailed to ask if it was still meeting, I was told that due to the pandemic the group is meeting via Zoom call every week and will be for at least the next few months, which really just defeats the whole purpose of me getting the fuck out of my apartment and meeting people. It's also impossible to meet people on a Zoom call with dozens of people on the call. It's all so insane.
So, I guess I should take at least some degree of solace in the fact that I'm still trying, yet I have a voice in the back of my head that tells me my time is running short. I struggle to find any reasons to be here anymore. I struggle to find any way forward. I struggle to find any purpose. And I am just so. incredibly. alone. And in being so alone and depressed it's gotten to be horribly difficult for me to do anything even when the rare opportunity arises to do so.
It hurts to be so alone and it hurts to be out in the world. It all hurts. Everything. The only things keeping me here at this point are that it would devastate my parents (particularly my mother), and, as crazy as this sounds, I also stay because I have a cat I'm responsible for. It's amazing what pets can do for the tragically lonely. The cat I had before this guy served a similar role at times. I guess we all need something to keep us grounded. It's an odd blessing that my responsibility to care for this little furball is keeping me from devolving into something truly tragic. I'm safe for the time being thanks to these things.
I'm now emotionally and mentally spent this evening after spewing all of this. I'm sure you can imagine why. But one thing I will say before leaving is that the world SUCKS for trans people. IT. SUCKS. And it gets worse and worse. It's grueling and relentless the way we're drug and misunderstood en masse. It's soul shattering the way we're dehumanized and vilified. If you have trans people in your life that you care about, check in on them because they're severely hurting right now and we just keep. getting. kicked.
Wishing you all the best and I hope you're all doing far better than I am. Be safe and be well.
