below the cut is a bunch of stream of consciousness writing around leelah alcorns suicide, and tagged (hopefully) for appropriate content warnings
ive been thinking a lot today, and waffling back and forth on whether to post anything or not
ive been brushing off my feelings and acting like (telling myself) that im not that affected, that its just like hearing about a celebrity, you feel for the circumstances, but you [usually] dont really feel the circumstances, you know? and telling myself that anything i say wont do the topic justice, that i dont have anything really worth contributing
but this goes so deep, i think ive just been afraid to touch it, to accept how this makes me feel, and that ive been making excuses to myself
its a piece of me that i talk openly about all the time while simultaneously disassociating from it to keep from hurting when i do talk
leelah alcorns suicide mirrors too much of my past and im afraid that in trying to talk about it, in trying to deal with my feelings about this whole tragedy that i will inadvertently make it too much about myself
i dont really know how to avoid that
she said in her note how she wanted her death to mean something, to shed light on our suffering and the inhumane treatment we go through from the micro to the macro
idk maybe thats kind of like permission
maybe this death, out of all the ones before it, will finally be the tipping point to making change for us
i dont really believe it will
i think im probably being presumptuous
and maybe im just selfish and dumb, too
i think about where i was at 17, where i was at 14, where i was as a child
i think about the childhood of abuse i cant really remember much of
and the "i am wrong" feeling that pervaded it all
while my then-stepmother treated me as her living doll
bathed me, clothed me, fed me
and put me in a closet in the basement with the spiders
who touched me in so many inappropriate ways that i remember
and more that i dont, but have been told of
i think about how i went from enjoying girly things and boyish things equally
to rejecting anything remotely feminine out of loathing and fear
i think about before i even knew the words transgender and queer
that i did not like my name
that i did not want what i was born with
that i wanted nothing more
than to have this unidentifiable thing i couldnt reach and couldnt articulate
i cried when i had to get a training bra at 11
i cried when i started my period shortly after
i thought my days of being "one of the guys" with my friends was truly and completely gone
they were treating me different
and i thought god was punishing me, just like the sisters in my very catholic school warned us all
i thought he was punishing me for never calling my step-mother "mother" like she kept trying to force me to, and for hating what was supposed to be god-given, and for never acting "ladylike" enough
and also for secretly touching myself
because id heard and seen and been told that sex and masturbation were supposed to be good things and i had desperately wanted to feel something but i just felt shame and discomfort and dissatisfaction
and then like my body betrayed me again
and again because the physical pain that came with the rest of it knocked me down and out
i learned this was a common thing in our family
and that my already busty figure with wide hips and baby fat turning into curves
that my childhood was over, though it had been over for years before then and i just didnt know it
i think about every damned time i stared at the mirror
and contemplated the knife that could do a great many things
i always put the knife back
sometimes i never even took it out
because it was as much in my thoughts as anything else
when sharp objects were replaced with thoughts of jumping off the wabash bridge downtown
thoughts of every conceivable way i might passively die
because i couldnt seem to work up the... whatever it was.. the verve? to do anything about it myself
i did not--i still do not--really want to die
but i dont want this world and the way it is now
and how do you reconcile this kind of thinking at that age?
how do you cope with wanting to die, because it must be better than any of this?
i think about when i walked away from my parents
literally walked away one night in the slush and sleet
because i had made it to graduation a whole half a year early
nothing had changed like the platitudes promised
there was nothing in me, and nothing keeping me, and nothing to stay for
i think i hoped i would freeze before i made it anywhere
but i did, i walked to a gas station corner
and hooked up with two strangers who took me home, took me in, but ultimately ended up abusing me
i think about their casual erasures of my humanity, my masculinity, my personhood--at once wholly different from my family and yet the same in some ways
i think about the denial of basic rights, the reward system, the bartering for food i paid for with my own paycheck and the lack of a key to a place i was supposed to be living, the lack of a room, and the lack of privacy
that reminded me daily of what it was like when i was a child at my das in chicago
when i knew nothing about how children are supposed to have their own rooms, their own beds, and bathe themselves, and feed themselves, and be allowed to talk to their family on the phone, to get mail, to make decisions for themselves, to... to be a person
i think about when these two kicked me out after i found the courage to finally say no
courage i only found because i met chase, and he made me realise just what they were doing to me, and he swore he would get me out, given time
its sickly fascinating the amount of bullshit and abuse that the abused can rationalise away
i think about when i was homeless for taking back my personhood
i think about living briefly with a kind co-worker
who had a not so kind son
he was bigger, older, had friends always hanging out, and i pretended it was all okay, what he did, what they did, and i said nothing, i was very good at saying nothing, being nothing, doing nothing
i was empty and silent and dead already
i learned a long time ago that the kindness of strangers only extends so far
and i didnt want to be homeless again
and i didnt want to crawl back to my former roommates
and i thought this was normal
to think being used, to being treated as an object, a possession
than going back to my parents
i think about the times in highschool
where i would play roulette with traffic
when walking from home to the mall and back again
id do it when i was with my friends
id do it when i was alone
i never got hit, and i didnt do it often, but even once i think is too much
i think about where id be if my gamble with traffic "succeeded"
or any of my other impulses
and how this girl ive never known (would never know of, likely, if not for this) did succeed
i think about the nights i cried myself to sleep
the nights i couldnt sleep
i think about the self loathing
the indescribable, inescapable emptiness inside
i think about the way i still flinch when i have to hear my birth name or the wrong pronoun
or the days when i dont flinch
because those are actually worse
when i cant recognise for several blessed seconds that this person being referred to
and there is a little bit of nothing in me again for a while
leelah alcorns death reminds me of my frailty, my depression, my loss of all hope
and i ache because she knew what all of that misery was like, being unable to fathom any other existence to the point that only death made sense
only death promised freedom from that nothing
the pain and the emptiness and the loathing should be behind me
but i guess it isnt because hearing about her, reading her last words, reading the casual way her mother erases her even after her death
brings it all rushing back
and i cant seem to cry for me or her or anyone
which is silly because i cry at the drop of a hat at the most stupid shit
maybe thats the nothing still here
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