Author note: This is not a story. It’s bit of memoir.
Context: I wrote this in November, 2012, the year after my sister died. The file name is nanowrimo2012.rtf. I must have been trying to do Nanowrimo that year. I have no memory of having written this. I rediscovered it years after I wrote it and then could not remember which file it had been in. Finally I found it again.
I don’t know what the first line means. If it was part of a story I didn’t write or if it was meant to go with the rest of the essay.
This essay is depression, self hate, dysphoria, and grief. It’s a snapshot of who I was at that time. Part of who I am now. I’ve grown as a person but I recognize myself in these words.
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In the dark we traveled to far away lands.
Th buzzing angry hurt feeling doesn’t stop. I can ignore it for a time but it’s always there. Waiting for my distractions to end, for my mind to blank so it can fill the void. I feel as though I will never be rid of it. The bones in my hands and arms ache from despair. Breathing is tiresome, moving my body exhausting, and thinking almost impossible.
I have no future. Nothing waits for me. This trial, this ordeal known as life has no end for me. There is no win condition no goal to strive for. Just death. Maybe now, maybe later. I’m so tired of life. I wish to rest forever.
I dreamt of my sister. We were looking for somewhere to talk in private. There was a chapel or rectory. We went inside and we talked. She talked mostly. Ordinary shit that had no real consequence but it was nice to talk to her. I miss her so much. I’ve been thinking about her more lately. Remember in “The Body” when Buffy imagines she revives her mother and the paramedics come and they have a “gosh that was close” moment in the hospital. Yesterday I thought what if my sister hadn’t died and I could see it and feel it and goddess it was wonderful. It only lasted a second or two and then I was back here alone wishing for death or relief.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live in a world that didn’t hate me. I don’t suffer as much as others because I keep a low profile, I don’t push too hard against the bars. Sometimes I just wish I could be normal. That I was thin and cis and the right kind of beautiful. Sometimes I think I could starve myself and lose weight. I would never really be thin but I could be less fat. I could be closer to acceptable.
Most of the time, when I’m alone, I don’t think about being trans. I just exist as myself and that’s fine. When I have to go out, be around people, I have to think about how they see me. How they gender me.
A couple of days ago, I woke up feeling like shit. I cried lying in bed before even getting up. Crying helped. It emptied me of feeling left me a husk that I could order around. I took some pain relievers and caffeine (together they work as a crude antidepressant). I made tea and made lunch and twitched from the caffeine but felt okish. On the walk to work I started to feel better than just ok, almost good. Then I got to the mall and saw a few women and remembered I will never be able to just be me. It will always be a struggle for me to be seen as a woman.