Any Day, Happy Day!

Any day, happy day, today.

I cannot even begin to impart how I feel tonight. Like I stated to my friends who were there for me today, I have so much mixed emotion. So much joy. So much pain. So much.

I feel joy, knowing that I have tangible hope. I feel pain, knowing how long this journey has taken. I feel anxious, knowing how far I still have to go. I feel excited, knowing I’ve done everything possible to get there.

I feel afraid, knowing that anything can happen from now through next year. I feel uncertain, knowing how I still have hurdles to sort through. I feel confident, knowing that I will be moving forward with who I am. I feel loved, knowing friends are supporting me, shielding me, caring about me.

I feel.

And I feel so incredibly fortunate with where I am. What I’ve done. What I will be doing.

I feel so very late. That all my time going through everything has always felt behind everyone else. That I’ve always been taking too long with everything. And yet, I feel myself progress. I feel myself getting better. Feeling better. Happiness. Joy. Love.

I feel desire. Something I have never experienced quite like this. With body and mind in balance, I’ve found a drive and attraction I’d never known through my life. I feel conflicted, knowing that with my age, with my development, with who I am, I may not be able to fulfill any of those feelings until I am whole. I know I am not attractive in any conventional sense. And yet, I know that I may be beautiful. Maybe. Which is so much more than how I felt not too long ago.

I feel as though the totality of my life has tangible ends. That these goals that I have had for myself and my transition are very, very real and that I only need push just for a little longer to achieve all I have ever wanted for myself. That I can be complete. That I can be me.

I cannot begin to impart how I feel tonight. How the entirety of my life has felt so difficult at times, how close I’ve come to ending everything, how dark and how awful I’ve felt about myself and lack of future.

How utterly devastated I have been.

And how completely hopeful I have become.

I cannot being to share with you how I feel, because no one person knows the story of my life save for me. And when I walked into a room full of friends, having been told such beautiful and wonderful news that I’d never known, I finally didn’t have to fight. Every emotion hit me at once, being in a place I knew was safe. That I didn’t have to hide or keep things together just for appearances.

I felt allowed to feel.

And I felt supported. I felt possible. I felt as though not everything was fighting against me.

For once in my life, I feel that my transition is no burden.

Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself though. There’s a small chance I will not succeed. And keeping myself pragmatic, I cannot celebrate entirely just yet. But one day, should all come to pass and I find myself where I need to be…then, on that day, I will have joy. Elation. Bliss. Ecstasy.

To know, that one day, my surgery may very well be possible. And much sooner than I thought.

I know I probably scared a number of people with my reaction in the Pride Center. And I know that I should not apologize for my emotions. However, I will thank each and every one of you for understanding. For your care. Your love.

I think about how I might have been if I’d gone to another school other than this university. How I might have transitioned sooner.

But then I think about all of you. My friends. Each of you who have made my life so much richer and better for knowing you.

And for being out on a campus that certainly needed transgender representation. To know that, like it or not, I have helped forge better understandings of transgender people just through my presence and articulation of my experience. That my advocacy has been important in a place where advocacy is desperately needed.

And in all of this light, knowing where I’ve been and how I am now, I have found utter and complete gratitude for each step I’ve undertaken. That each delay, each challenge, has actually been the essence of what has made all my experiences possible today. I cannot hold my feelings of disappointment with the speed of my transition for very long, knowing how very fortunate I am to be here now.

And yet, I still have not been able to share the entirety of how I feel. There are no simple series of words that I could say or write that would share all of my being. I could remain awake all night continuing to add to this post, continuing to elucidate all of my emotions here and I would still not be close to encapsulating just how liberated and free I feel knowing that all I have wanted for myself is not only possible, but incredibly likely to happen.

Instead, all I can do is offer a nice hug whenever we meet again. To embrace and know that sense of support, security, and warmth. That tactile and tangible sense of closeness. Feeling accepted. Feeling comfort. Feeling love.

There are no simple words. Only a totality of what “family” must mean, a word I’ve only just started to know completely thanks to all of you.

With so much love,

Sophie

Any Day, Happy Day!

“How to Kill a Transperson” by Ceridwen Troy

On Saturday, Sanesha Stewart, a transwoman of color living in the Bronx, was murdered in her own apartment. She was 25 years old. Her accused killer, Steve McMillan, had known her for months, yet when he was arrested, he claimed to have been enraged to find out that she was what the media coverage called not really a woman. He stabbed her over and over again in the chest and throat. She tried to fight him off; there were defensive wounds found on her hands.

On Tuesday, eighth-grader Lawrence King was in a classroom in Oxnard, Calif. He was openly gay, and often came to school in gender-bending clothing, makeup, jewelry and shoes. According to another student, it was “freaking the guys out”. One of them shot Lawrence in the head. He was declared brain-dead on Wednesday.

It is easy to look at cases like this and think, how tragic. How random. How senseless.

But then, you forget how easy it is to kill a transgender person.

You forget that all across this nation, faith leaders of all stripes, men and women who claim to speak for God Himself, call us sinners, call us abominations, call us evil.

You forget that at best the media depicts us as something to be pitied, something that our families must be strong and overcome. At worst, they depict us as abnormal, exploiting our bodies for ratings, exploiting the public’s fear of us for shock value.

You forget that on a good day, law enforcement agents are neglectful of us, and that far more frequently they join in our harassment. You forget the transwomen of color who are rounded up on suspicions of prostitution. You forget the beatings that go uninvestigated. You forget the molestation and rape we face when we are arrested.

You forget the medical establishment that drains our wallets for the therapy and hormones and surgeries they tell us we need. You forget the way we are then refused treatment when we are dying, dying of treatable diseases, dying of easily patched wounds.

You forget that, by the law of the land, it is legal in the majority of states to deny us employment, to deny us service, to deny us housing.

You forget the shelters and the rape crisis centers that will not allow us through their doors.

You forget that many of us do not even have family to turn to when we are at our most desperate.

You forget that the leaders of our own community have told us that it is not time for us to have rights, that it is not pragmatic for us to be considered worthy of the same respect as other human beings.

You forget that in our own circles, it is considered a negative thing to be too flamboyant. You forget the way our pride parades have been derided by our own community. You forget the scorn heaped upon drag queens by other gay men. You forget the fear to be seen in public with a friend who is considered too open, too queer.

You forget the way it seeps into the minds of transgender people, too. You forget the way a transsexual will shout that she is not a crossdresser, as if there were something wrong with that. You forget the catty names we call each other if we don’t “pass”.

You forget how many of us take our own lives every year.

You forget because the noise is always there, a constant drone in the background. Every newspaper piece that calls a transwoman “he” instead of “she”. Every talk show host who spends an hour talking about our genitals. Every childish taunt about “looking like a tranny”. Every transperson who talks about themselves as “true” transsexuals. Every activist and politician who tells us “now is not the time”.

You forget too, how easy it is to kill a person of color, with myths about “gangstas” and lies about immigrants. You forget how easy it is to kill a person living in poverty, cutting off her welfare because she is supposedly being paid to breed. You forget how easy it is to kill a sex worker, with sex-shaming language, slinging about slurs like “hooker” and “whore”.

You forget the message hidden inside every single one of those statements.

“You are less than I am. You are not worthy of the rights and respect that I am worthy of.

“You are not human.”

It is very easy to kill something that you do not see as human.

It is very easy to kill a transperson.

(Source: rufflebutts, via cctcd)