Darkness of the Outer Limits

I can't stop thinking about the logical end of things. That's vague, but I wanted to save the word "death" for later on in this post because it feels like the sort of word you could overuse, y'know? Take out the sting. I've trampled any delicacy, so let's continue on in the neverending spirit of artlessness.

Source

So if you ever read trans message boards or infographics or get even a little near Tumblr, you've heard that 41-47% of trans people have attempted suicide. Which is a hard number to put any veracity into. Assuming that the study was conducted in a somewhat representative matter, you're only polling people who self-identify as trans, and not all the unlucky souls who threw themselves in front of a train once they realized who they were and what that meant. Can't poll the dead or those in denial. But still. 47%. Big number, right?

I always talk about this when I talk about death, but I used to do this drug called DXM. It's a dissociative anesthetic, which means it makes you talk like a robot and feel like you're 8,000 miles from your body. It was scary stuff, because every time I took it I felt like I was dying, was convinced that I'd ingested some fragment of my own nullification. I looked it up and pieced it together: due to its effects on the NMDA receptors, my best guess is DXM simulates the mental processes that accompany death from hypoxia. I felt my own death, I saw the tunnel of blue light. I feel like I spoilered myself for that last big adventure.

Even still, there's something sexy, something frighteningly irresistible about ceasing to exist.

There's this feeling that I get, when I realize that the hormones are at best glacial in doing their work and my body is perhaps too incongruous to ever get over to the other side of the river Passing. This total, what-is-the-point desire to just kinda stop trying. With it comes the fucked-up fantasy of taking my own life. And sometimes it sends me to this depressive lay-on-the-ground type of space, but a lot of times I just feel darkly exuberant. Wallowing in my death ecstasy.

Because, honestly, it feels way less than 50:50 that I'll get to a point in my life where I get accepted as a woman by anyone beyond the one person who I love. (I'm going to change the name of this blog to "Sorry, Leigh.") The grim fear of being unpassable for me isn't street harassment, isn't employment discrimination. It's having completed 90% of my transition plan and being recognized as one of those awful euphemisms, as a "genetically male person who identifies as female." To have people give lip service to who I am while in their heart of hearts thinking of me as that quirky guy they know that gets uppity about pronouns. It's not the people who spit at me that I fear, in the end. It's the polite ones.

As a teen, going into wealthy suburbs as a black (enough) kid in a black hoodie, I got followed around shops and saw the micro-purse-clutchings. I'm quite painfully aware when I'm under the microscope. I hate the scrutiny, but I can't live this dumb sham anymore either. So thanatoxic thoughts have become this big release, the lottery ticket you buy on your way home, the magical thinking that gets me through the day. A dip in the destrudo jacuzzi. Even though I'm too vain for a fake-y suicide attempt and too scared of dying for a real one. Clutch your pearls, girls. This story isn't feeling like it's heading toward a happy ending.

Addendum: I wanted to name this Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, but it seemed awful grim, more than I could justify. I'm pretty sure it won't be my hand that takes my life, so don't get up in arms about it.