The Making of a Dead Trans Woman
I wonder sometimes what it would be like to become a statistic. No longer a person, but simply a number to represent a larger tragedy. The quote often erroneously attributed to Stalin has it wrong, to be honest. To be one death is nothing to anyone outside of those who you have personally touched. To be a statistic is much more. You become a part of something, but only by ceasing to be. How does one resolve that? That question is especially pertinent with regards to something like suicide statistics. People kill themselves often because of how alienated they are from any sense of community or belonging. What does it mean, then, if the act of killing oneself causes a sort of repatriation with a larger community of suicidal people that one may otherwise be isolated from?
This is not solely about suicide as it relates to depressed people or people who otherwise feel themselves inadequately capable of getting through life. This is more specifically about suicide rates among transgender people. Here, much more so than among the general population, the act of suicide itself can be a way of connecting with a community that one might otherwise feel detached from. Personally, I feel no real connection to any sort of transgender community despite being trans myself. If I were to kill myself, however, as a trans person would there not be some sort of connection to that community that would become established that did not exist beforehand? In becoming yet another statistic for the perilousness of being transgender would I not also become an individual tragedy that had not been before?
I suppose here is a time to outline why I intend to kill myself. It is not because of the difficulties of going through life as a transgender person, but it is because of my own failure to actually manage to do anything to work towards transitioning even after several years. Ultimately the cause is the same society that is unwilling to allow transgender people to succeed and thrive but in a more direct sense it is my own inability to do much of anything to help myself that will cause my death.
I have known that I was transgender since I was around twenty-four or so, and I recently turned thirty without having made any sort of progress towards transitioning. This has been in part due to my own issues with severe depression and social anxiety, coupled with general societal difficulties that exist for transgender people, in both mental health care as well as traditional medical care, but also with my own general incompetence on a personal level. This year, as my thirtieth birthday came this year, I resolved myself that if I do not make any positive steps regarding transition within the calendar year I will kill myself in January. Considering that I know myself and my own limitations, I understand fully well that I will be dead within the calendar year.
Honestly, it has not quite sunk in fully that I will have killed myself before another year has passed. It is not that I think I will suddenly become a functional human being and able to actually begin the process of transitioning before my self-imposed deadline. It is simply that I haven’t quite been able to come to terms with my own death as of yet. I am sure that as the year continues to tick down the reality of my situation will sink in properly.
I do fully intend to go through with what I say. I have never attempted suicide before or particularly seriously contemplated it outside of an abstract sense, but honestly it’s hard to comprehend a way that I can really keep going as I have. Even for the past several years I have simply existed without any sort of meaning or direction, simply floating along. There has been very little hope or ambition for any sort of future. I had given up long ago. I knew that I was transgender, yet still had no real hope of ever transitioning or ever being happy with myself. To be honest I reached my breaking point long ago, and I knew it. I just never reached the point where I was willing to take extremely drastic actions to deal with my own dissatisfaction.
Now, solely because I have set my own ultimatum, I have at least some sort of resolve to kill myself when the time comes, which I am almost certain that it will. I feel no hope for the future. It is not just my own general hopelessness for the future of humanity, which comes about honestly enough now, but a far more specific hopelessness. I know that I won’t be able to do anything to fix my life. I don’t have the means to do so. I don’t have the will to do so. It’s too late and I’ve already signed my own death warrant even though the warrant won’t be executed for over ten months.
I make this anonymous because this isn’t a call for help, even though it is in a sense. I certainly wish that people could help me and that with help I could actually manage to transition and maybe be happy for once. I know better, though, than to assume that’s actually possible. No, I wish simply to vent my own feelings as stupid and irrational and harmful as they may be, because that’s all that I really have. I’ll be dead within the next year, and I’ll be yet another statistic about transgender suicide, and no one will give a shit. That’s the reality that I see coming, and to the extent that I can at this point, I’ve made peace with it.
Is this all frightfully self-indulgent? Yes, of course it is. This is all about my own internal conflicts as I make the choice to end my own life even though to some extent I don’t want to, yet I can’t keep living like I am. It’s all about me me me, and for once I’m okay with that. I don’t know. I want to die and yet I don’t, but I know there isn’t really any other future so what other choice do I have? I suppose it’s better to be a cautionary tale to someone else who might benefit than just another lost soul who withers into nothingness.
