I'll be blunt; this post isn't really for the feint of heart. If you're the sort of person who has that sort of lacklustre half-empathy that people often do, where you care more about a person's physical safety than their emotional safety, then, don't read this. If you're that kind of person and choose to read this anyways, don't talk to me. Ever. I don't want to hear from people like that. I don't need to hear from people like that.
I've been trying to avoid making posts like this, because nobody wants to hear it. Random strangers subscribed to this feed definitely don't want to hear it, but neither do my friends, although I'm not sure I have many. Or more than one. Or any close friends. In any case, it's nobody's fault; nobody wants to hear stuff like this, I don't like hearing stuff like this, and nobody has any responsibility to listen to it, which is why I avoid posting it. But, then again, it's my feed, what's the point in having a feed that I don't post anything. If nobody wants to hear it, they can ignore it, or unsubscribe. I don't have the energy to moderate my thoughts anymore.
This is going to be a longer post with some of my thoughts. I just recently made a post titled "Computers suck", which talks briefly about some other stuff I'm struggling with, so I won't rehash what's already been said in that post. Everything else is fair game, though. This introduction is already too long though; time to get on with the post.
So, hi. I'm not good right now.
As mentioned in the introduction, the reason I usually avoid talking about my feelings is because nobody wants to hear it. This particular subject is a bit different, though; I don't talk about it because it terrifies me. It's something I avoid even talking to myself about because any acknowledgement of its existence just feels like prying back open a deep knife wound with your bare hands. It's something I not only deeply fear other people knowing about, but also my own subconscious as well.
I'm transgender. I hate that word. It's hard to describe why; it's like using the word automatically means you've admitted defeat. Some words which feel like distance synonyms include the likes of "compromise", "unnatural", or just "wrong". It's a horrible word for a horrible state of existence. It is not something someone wants to be, it's something that's forced on them by the world, because the thing they want to be is completely and permanently unattainable. And that's the most painful part. It's not feeling unnatural, it's not being stared at or misgendered, it's not the knowledge that you can't even participate in normal facets of culture like dating because you're likely to be assaulted and raped or just used for sex and then abandoned, it's the feeling of utter helplessness and futility. People have told me that you shouldn't feel bad for being weird, that everyone is weird, but that's a complete lie. Being unusual is okay when it's something you choose to be. When it's forced on you though, when you don't get a choice, that's something entirely different.
I've started to feel urges to commit self harm increasingly often, but, it's not because of suicidal thoughts or seeking catharsis. This sort of self harm doesn't really lead to suicide, and I've never found any catharsis in self harm (nor have I ever engaged in it for any purpose other than seeking suicide). These urges stem from nothing other than pure unadulterated hatred. It is difficult to describe what I feel when I look at my face, or my body, or even just hear my own voice. The best description I can think of is it's a sort of overwhelming feeling of desperation and helplessness, but that's not a particularly impressive description. It's similar to what I imagine one might feel being in a cramped jail cell, completely trapped, unable to escape. That's sort of where these urges arise from; it's not about suicide or catharsis, but more of a sort of automatic instinctual fight-or-flight response that overpowers you when you feel cornered and desperate. It's an overwhelming urge to make whatever it is you're seeing or hearing go away, and get as far away from it as possible. Of course, the thing about self hatred is that you can't escape, you can't make it go away; it doesn't matter where you run to or how violently you attack yourself, your body will always be there. You can't get away. It's the perfect jail cell.
Some years ago I had a dream; the details of the dream are unimportant, but to summarize, a girl in my dream stopped me and told me with a cold, serious tone, "everyone knows what you are". In that moment, in that context, in that state of mind, those were the perfect words inflict as much pain upon me as humanly possible. The thought of that dream still hurts. But the scariest part of it isn't the dream itself, it's the fact that it *was* a dream; if a real human person had said that to me, that would be one thing. But, nobody did. The only person that said that to me is myself. My own subconscious felt the need to hurt me at my most vulnerable point. And of course, it was not just that occasion; constantly I feel like I am bullied by my own subconscious. Even when I'm doing something completely unrelated and reach into my mind for thoughts, I frequently pull out a random thought of hatred out of nowhere, as if my own brain had scattered them about like mental traps just to ensure I'm tormented at every time of day. Practically every dream I have, whether they be good, or neutral, or nightmares, features some form of transphobia, often so subtle I don't even recognize it until I've woken up. Being tormented by your own mind is terrifying.
I obviously don't know who's reading this; I don't know who you are or what you've been through. But I'd wager that you've never experienced this feeling, that you've never been so completely appalled and afraid of your own image that it triggers a primeval fucking fight-or-flight response whenever you remember that you still exist. I would do practically anything to make this feeling go away, but, I can't. There is no way to change yourself. Yeah, maybe with time or therapy or whatever the feeling might subside into the background, but it will never go away because my body will never change. No matter how little or how hard I try, I will always be a "compromise", "unnatural", and "wrong". I wish that nobody had to feel this way.
When I say I am lonely, I am not talking about whether or not there is *literally* other people around me; certain people are concerned that since I've recently moved out I must now be more lonely, but that's not really even remotely true. The reality is that I didn't have anyone before moving out either; that's not the fault of my family, or my single friend, that's just the way that it is, it's nobody's fault. Loneliness isn't about the physical presence of other people, it's about emotional availability, it's about whether or not you have people around you that you completely and absolutely trust to share your feelings with. I once had a friend like that, but they're gone; they shattered that trust and fucked me over. Before and after that brief interlude, I've felt alone pretty much constantly. It's the second major thing that's wrong with my life, I think, at least.
The only thing worse than the feelings I described in the above section is having nobody to console you about them. No, I don't mean talking to "other people like that"; the last thing I want is for the person I'm talking to to be just as hurt and helpless when presented with those feelings (and others) as I am. That's not helpful. I don't want someone who *literally* experiences the same things I do, because if they did they would be just as helpless as I am. That's like deciding that the best way to fix a crumbling support pillar in a building is to just build another crumbling support pillar next to it; people can't help each other if they both have the same problems, they need different sets of strengths and weaknesses to complement each other, otherwise they'll just drown twice as fast.
What I wish I had was someone to just be there for me; someone to hold me and help me cry, someone to make sure I don't fall asleep alone and don't wake up cold. I wish I had someone who would be intimate with me and tell me I'm safe, and make me believe it too. Obviously, though, I don't have anyone like that. I don't even have friends that I completely trust with my feelings, not anymore at least; I certainly don't have a partner. Lots of people don't have partners either, but the problem is that, when you're struggling emotionally, loneliness is self-perpetuating.
As long as you have nobody, you can't build relationships, you can't meet more people, you can't find anybody to help you. That's the real danger in loneliness; it doesn't just hurt you in the present, but in the future as well, because its very nature means that so long as you are completely alone this moment, you are practically guaranteed to be just as alone the next. Only other people can rescue you from loneliness because that's what loneliness means, but nobody ever will rescue you from loneliness because that's what loneliness means. I mean, and crippling social anxiety and the previously mentioned reasons why it's not safe for me to date or participate in any number of other activities. That doesn't help either.
I wrote another post on suicide prevention, which is very much relevant here as well, and I won't bother repeating the things I said in that post. However, something I was careful to avoid discussing in that post was the actual ethics of suicide prevention as a general concept (since that's obviously an extremely controversial subject, and my goal with that post was to address a much less controversial and even more concerning issue), so, that's what I'll talk about here.
(Also, as angry as it makes me that I have to explicitly and clearly state this every time I talk about this subject, the same disclaimer as in the previous post applies, for the same reasons as described in the previous post; I am not in imminent danger of suicide, do not send cops to my house.)
Suicide is not wrong. Well, that's a lie. Suicide is wrong, but not for the reason that people think. The reality is that to view suicide as a single action in a complete vacuum devoid of context or reasoning is just plain idiotic and, more than that, completely unempathetic. I wish people would get this through their skulls, but unfortunately I don't think they ever will: People do not commit suicide for no reason. People don't just magically wake up one day and decide to take their own life. People commit suicide because of months or years of depression, loneliness, and desperation. To view suicide as a voluntary action at all is fundamentally flawed; the only reason a person commits suicide is because it's the only natural end to a long and painful disease. In that sense, suicide is not an action or an illness but merely a symptom. More specifically, it's a cause of death, in the same sense as a heart attack or a stroke.
When someone has a heart attack, doctors do not respond merely with the intention of making their heart beat normally again. If that was all they wanted to do they could just rip your heart out of your chest and pump it by squeezing it with their hand. Obviously, that's not at all sensible; it technically "stops" your heart attack, but it achieves nothing other than inflicting additional damage and reducing the chances of any kind of recovery even further. Similarly, forcibly preventing suicide achieves literally nothing. Sure, their heart may still be beating and their brain may still be thinking because of your actions, but nevertheless they are still just as sick and far from recovery as before.
I am not saying that suicide prevention is always wrong; continuing with the previous analogy, doctors obviously restart people's hearts all the time, and there's no moral issue with that. The reason they don't end up in prison with their medical license revoked, though, is because they are not just randomly ripping out people's hearts just to restart them and nothing else, but rather are only restarting people's hearts for the purpose of buying themselves a little bit more time to fix the underlying problem, so that the patient will actually recover. Similarly, suicide prevention as a means of adding a small amount of time to someone's life (emphasis on small) for the purpose of fixing their underlying condition and allowing them to recover is moral and respectable. This is not what people do though. More often than not, "suicide prevention" just means restarting someone's heart, and then kicking them back out on the street to continue dying, pulling them back from the brink of death over and over and over again just to make *you* feel good about yourself, with no regards to the victim's feelings. That is not saving someone's life, just making it worse.
Back to the heart attack analogy, if a doctor has realized that there is no chance of recovery, and that although they can just indefinitely continue restarting the patient's heart, the patient's heart will always just stop again, they are expected to accept the inevitable and at least do what they can do make the patient's last moments more comfortable. Why should the same not apply to suicide victims; "saving" someone over and over again, knowing that they are no closer to recovery and will merely be back in the same place again in a short period of time, is not ethical, or sensible. If you want to be a decent person, and you've recognized that you're unable to help them in any way other than delaying the inevitable, why not at least let their last moments be spent in slightly less misery, rather than ensuring that they die alone and in pain. The least you can do is to stop ripping out their heart for your own enjoyment.
This post is already too long. In fact, it's already by far the longest post I've ever made, so I guess I need to finish it up.
I'm not writing this to guilt anyone, or to seek pity, or whatever other nonsense. Guilt is worthless unless it's productive, and the same is doubly true of pity, which is really just the poor man's empathy. The reality is that I wrote this mostly for myself; if even one person has even read this all the way through I'd be surprised. I'm always holding on to this sort of hope that someone will notice that I'm breaking and intervene, that I'll suddenly not be alone anymore, but I know that that's naive and not going to happen. The world just doesn't work that way; nobody who can help me is looking to see if I'm okay. Hell, nobody who can help me is even taking the hints, not that I'm sure who I'm hinting to. I don't really know why I wrote this, but it's not for someone else. I just can't keep masking everything anymore.