Deconstructing My Depression

Please be warned this has very heavy topics of transphobia & suicide.

I am not in the best mental state right now, as I am sure so many other people feel the same. I am sure that even if our struggles are different, many other people battle the same emotions. It can feel isolating, even though intellectually I know I am not alone in these feelings.

I feel as if the very hope of a happy future is being stripped away from me day after day. With each news story about transphobic laws being passed or even debated, stories that seem to multiply relentlessly, hope grows dimmer. And if it's not that, it's another story of a missing or killed person in some other minority group, or my own, each headline another stone pressing against my chest.

I am constantly mourning the death of my childish optimism, grieving it quietly each day like an old friend who slowly drifted away without a goodbye. It is a song and dance that I have been suffering through my whole life, which so far has managed to be almost forty-one years long. However, I almost did not make it to this point.

I was too scared to try and check out of this world at the tender age of eleven years old, and that theme of fearful hesitation has constantly been there to save my life, even when I didn't recognize it as strength at the time. That has not stopped the rampant depression that has come with such a struggle, lurking like a shadow.

I suffered alone for so long with my unknown monster, yet even within that loneliness, I was lucky to have a mostly understanding family. My mother supported me through every stage of my gender journey, even when she did not fully understand it herself. She shut down the ways that a small part of my family tried to force me to conform to a gender role I had never identified with. Her advocacy was quiet but steady, enough to let me know I wasn't entirely alone.

I have lost that supportive person in my life, due to bigoted and ableist viewpoints, and her ignorance-based narcissism. She actively ignored the trauma that I went through in life, putting herself in the victim role, and not wanting to do the work to address her own traumas. She cared about looking good and staying comfortable in her small world, and in the end she chose people offering money and an echo chamber for her victim mentality.

I no longer have a single family member that gives a damn about me, no matter how much I loved and supported them while I was growing up. That alone has left me reeling and mourning so much of my personal history. I grieve those lost connections constantly, even as I recognize the necessity of my boundaries. Anyone else who supported me has sadly passed away long before this detachment.

I digress. The point is that it took twenty-three years for me to find the vocabulary even to understand who I was. It was just like turning on a dim light in a dark room so that I could get a clearer picture. Even so, that picture has taken almost another twenty years to come into a more focused image, emerging slowly from confusion to clarity through seeing others share their experiences. The last three years have been more progressive and transformative than ever before, as if everything before was just practice for finally finding myself.

I know that all of this 'trans trend' is nothing but complete bullshit. It is not a trend; it is the result of people not only being forced to self-reflect during the pandemic but also of people with shared experiences building supportive communities, often online, and often quietly out of necessity. Once that happened, so many people discovered the language to explain their journeys and viewpoints; language I desperately wish I'd had much earlier in my life journey.

I now have yet another child in my life that I could take part in raising, and once more, I have offered as much information as I can so that they can have words to understand themselves. Something denied to me forty years ago, but that I now fiercely protect for them.

I am raising a young human who now feels empowered enough to speak their truth and explore their identity as shamelessly, and bravely as they can. It breaks my heart to see the pain that they still face, even now in a world where, for a brief moment, it seemed like it was safe for them to be who they are. Clearly, in the face of disgusting laws and openly hateful rhetoric, that is not the case. Watching their innocence challenged daily fills me with both fierce protectiveness and sorrow.

I no longer fight just to keep myself above the dark waters of depression. I fight fiercely to keep this innocent child afloat on a lifeboat of validation in their existence. I fear now more than ever the suppression of such beautiful happiness I see in that child's face, a happiness I desperately remember feeling in my childhood, before the world taught me otherwise.

I want nothing more than for all children to live in that optimistic, whimsical existence that I once had when I was a kid. No matter their gender, sexuality, or skin color. Why is that not the goal for every other parent in this world? Let alone every person. We all deserve to live without fear of being ourselves. We all deserve to be happy, just like our children.

I have been here on this earth for over forty years and have yet to medically transition. Hell, I only just started testosterone about two years ago. Children are not undergoing gender reassignment surgeries; it is hard enough to do so as an adult, navigating barriers, financial burdens, and systemic prejudice.

I do not even know when I will get the ability to have top surgery, or for how long I will be able to take my lifesaving HRT shots. It is life-saving because without it, I know for certain I would have been dead two years ago. Hormones have given me something resembling hope when nothing else did.

Trans people are people; we are not a trend. We have always been here, despite the many attempts to erase us. Just like I am still here, surviving despite all of the hurdles and struggles I have faced in my lifetime. Our existence is not up for debate.

Without allowing us the care we need, trans children and adults are going to die. They are dying right now as you read this because of how hard it is to get the treatment we need while this debate over our existence drags on relentlessly.

I used to be a trans child, confused and terrified, and now I am doing all I can for the next generation, hoping desperately to save at least one of them. They represent the hopes and dreams I once held for my own future, back when I still believed the world was kind enough to allow it.