I am Transsexual, and I am Exhausted
There are times I feel like ending it all. I feel as though I need to shuffle off this mortal coil and drink in that dark, peaceful oblivion, after what may seem like endless anxiety and dull, everlasting pain.
Living as a transsexual from the 20th to the 21st century has felt like a slow ache achieving greater and greater feelings of numbness. From the moment of discovery, it felt as if a freezing cold dagger reached into my body, wrenched inside, and slowly healed over a wound which can be opened at anytime. Emotions are a source of health for me. Constantly adjusting my emotional states means the difference between normalcy and chronic depression. Physical wellness is part of the plan but difficult to achieve. I still, however, endure.
Make no mistake. These feelings have more to do with the greater world than anything else.
I do not wish to die because I want those around me to feel pity or remorse. Feelings of longing for life to end only come natural from a lifetime of torment and anxiety inflicted by the world at large. I feel like dying, because there are assholes right now who will stop at nothing to see that I and others like me will never have anything closely resembling a normal, fulfilling life.
We, as trans* people, are not allowed the privilege most take for granted to pursue a life that is normal and uneventful or a life that is wild and free. We live lives of constant danger and paranoia, never knowing when a trusted colleague or friend will be that knife in our back, never knowing when that nice soft bed we lay in after an exhausting night will turn into a bed of grass and garbage covering our broken remains in the morning.
Equanimity is a foreign, rare life skill rarely afforded to most trans* folk, except for the most graceful and hardened among us.
Even before I had the words to describe what was happening to me, people could tell there was something different about me. Kids knew, and they were relentless, constantly reminding me I was always the outcast. I struggled and pushed and dragged my self through adolescence. I was incessant in my quest to prove my self-worth and excel, but I still felt hollow.
When I lived in Texas with my father and step-mother, I let them know my secret. They were not thrilled. They forced me to hide it. In fact, they thought it was some cry for attention or a phase.
I did rather well in high school and regularly made the honor roll. My parents were proud of me in public, but any little quirk in my behaviour would eventually trigger profound displeasure from them in private. Nothing was good enough. They kept it in the back of their minds that they would eventually have to deal with me.
For years on end, I took care of the house while they were gone to work or to play. I listened to their problems with money and work. When it came time to listen me, they would sometimes treat my problems as inconsequential. There were times I felt elated by school and what I had learned. I loved science, history, and literature. Trying to share with my parents would bring mixed reactions. At times, it seemed as if they enjoyed the discourse, but during periods of frustration, step-mother would sometimes shame me into believing I was just being conceited.
It did not matter that I never smoked, drank, had sex-out-of-wedlock, did drugs, or ran with a rough crowd. They knew I was damaged goods. They told me point blank, “Why can’t you be gay? We should have kept on pushing and pushing and pushing till you were normal.” “Would you have rather I’d been beaten to a pulp by strangers until I was normal!” “If that is what it takes. Yes.”
Needless to say, I was floored by their reaction. I felt the need to escape. The noose that I already felt around my neck was getting tighter. They grew tired of having a 22 year old in their house struggling with trying to establish some semblance of a life. They gave me an ultimatum. So I left.
Long story short, I now live with my partner of 11 years. We both are self-employed and have lived mostly without incident together peacefully. We live in a middle-class neighborhood in a house on the hill. My step-mother came back into my life, and we had a fun time in Santa Fe. Yet we still feel under siege. We feel our entire community is under siege. The weight of the world is literally on our shoulders, and it is grinding us into ground. I am of course talking about the continual harassment from people on the political right and every Tom, Dick, and Harry who has come out of the woodwork as instant experts on sex, sexuality, psychology, biology (pretty sure they failed that in school), and the law.
The recent kerfuffle is over bathroom supremacy, who gets to use the restrooms and locker rooms, and what about the comfort and safety of people who do not want to be bothered with the riff-raff? Of course it is about trans* people, even though some say to the contrary. After all, men have been sneaking into women’s facilities for a long time long before trans* people openly petitioned to use them. Yet it never brokered a bit of interest from the self-appointed prelacy of all that is moral and good in the world up till now.
There has been an epidemic of violence against the trans* community but hardly any cases of trans* people committing actual violence against anyone. So far, there have been zero cases of trans* people committing vile acts in the restroom. There have, however, been at least three cases of Republican senators getting caught for indiscretions in the public restroom.
Their names: Larry Craig (pictured), Jon Hinson, and Bob Allen.
We may need laws against GOP politicians using public bathrooms. By contrast, trans people are doing just fine. — http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2016/04/11/more-republican-politicians-than-trans-people-have-been-arrested-for-sex-acts-in-bathrooms/
There was a list compiled on the Democratic Underground website on all the Republican sinners caught for all manner of sexual improprieties from child porn to molesting women to actual child molestation and child rape.
The most recent example was Dennis Hastert, former House Speaker, who was brought up on serial child molestation charges.
The very people who are calling for legislating “men out of the bathrooms” are the very men we should be worried about. Maybe we should just cut the bullshit and just legislate Republican senators from using the restrooms, since they have actually proven to be a credible threat.
This is just so ridiculous and cruel. Why must I and my partner, as well as every other trans* person out there, constantly prove we are not perverted freaks? We are normal human-beings. Yet there are people out there who either do not understand or are purposely misrepresenting us and our dilemmas.
People giving in to paranoia and unfounded fears are constantly concocting imaginary threats without a shred of evidence, and they wonder why we get so defensive, even belligerent. It is the same as walking up to a stranger looking for the smallest difference in his person for the purpose of casting doubt on his entire being. Is it boredom? Some people have no real issues in their life. So they invent enemies instead? Is it just natural tribalism, the whole in-group, out-group mentally? Whatever it is it needs to get sorted out. So everyone can get on with their lives. My partner and I especially want to get on with ours.
We have not been able to get much work done. Our lives feel like they are at a stand still over constantly fretting where the next assault will come from. I personally have suffered from chronic headaches, lethargy, and bouts of depression and anxiety. I seriously doubt, much to their impassioned pleas, that the gender and potty police are being affected the same.
Even though this part of the world may reject me and spits on my very existence, I will endure. We will endure. If not for us, then it will be for the others who will come after. By the very story of our lives, we will carve a path for others to follow through misunderstandings, confusion, hatred, and bigotry. The mountain of our collective experiences rises above the foggy sea of their imaginary fears.
