Lately I've been struggling a lot with.... I guess the technical term might be "survivor's guilt."
As you probably know, I'm a disabled trans woman. Society hath decided that I am completely unemployable. Depending on who you ask, that might be due to my physical inability to stay standing for more than a few minutes, my laundry list of mental afflictions, the inherent perversion of existing while transfeminine, or just my unfriendly personality. There are many women like me... and yet I find myself one of the lucky ones.
Because I get to be self-employed. Fate has granted me the ability to survive through the creation of online content.
Over the past 6 years, I've spent practically every waking moment building a career out of my online presence. Using everything I knew, I turned myself into an internet personality. Squeezing every bit of blood from the stone, so I might escape the threat of becoming homeless and/or starving.
Year by year, I started attracting attention, I started making money, I moved out of my dad's place, and eventually I got out of student debt. In the meantime, I used the support and the resources I had to transition. For the foreseeable future, I pretty much have it made. And somehow I still manage to fucking hate myself.
Because what about everybody else?
Why are my friends struggling to make ends meet, while I get to sit at home and make let's plays? Why are they working two-to-four jobs while I'm spending my afternoons on guitar lessons? Why are they squatting in abandoned buildings or living with their parents while I get to have a studio apartment all to myself? Why are my friends still struggling with dysphoria every day despite having been out much longer than me, and why was I able to not only access HRT and bottom surgery, but why was it covered by my insurance, and why did I get huge tits and a perfect pussy?
Why is it all so fucking unfair?
And how do I make it right?
Do I throw money at them until the guilt goes away? Do I offer them a place in my home? Do I share my medication with them? I'd fucking love to. But all of these would compromise the personal stability I worked so hard to get. There's no way I could get my work done if I had other people living here, there's no way I could pay my bills if I gave all my money away, and there's no way I could maintain my health if I didn't keep all the meds for myself. So I can't.
But why does my stability go before theirs? Why should I get to escape the crab bucket? My life is not worth more than anyone else's.
I have it made, and I *still* hate my life.
They all deserve to have it at LEAST as good as I do.
I've been trying to get more involved with the local trans scene, to better understand the problems we face and what I can do. But all I keep learning is that I got lucky. I got lucky that my parents never kicked me out on the street. I got lucky that I've never been assaulted. I'm lucky that I'm fuckable. I'm lucky that I managed to maintain my autonomy. I'm a lucky, privileged, sheltered little piece of shit. I like to think of myself as an underdog, but there's always an under-er dog. I walk in there every week knowing I'm the luckiest piece of shit in the whole building.
And so, lately, to alleviate my guilt, I've been throwing money at gofundmes, ko-fis, indie projects, local activism... When a friend needs help I'm quick to offer anything I can. But I can't give everything. And fuck, do I wish I could. I wish I could give it all. Make it fair. Because I don't honestly think I deserve any of it.
But if I fuck myself over too hard, I lose it all, and then I can't help anybody. If I don't hold on to some of this money, the one-woman business that puts food on my table goes belly up.
I have to be selfish, so I can be generous later.
It fucking fucking sucks.
But not as bad as it sucks to be them. So I have to. So I can do what I can.
