It seems like this week, I've been surrounded on all sides by discussion about suicide. I don't know why; my usual response in situations like this is to bitch at God. Sunday, talking to folks after church, the overall conclusion of one woman was that everyone thinks about suicide at some point, just most of us don't get to the actual contemplating doing it stage. Which is where I smiled and nodded and didn't make eye contact.
Sunday night, my assistant editor told me he'd found statistics on the attempted suicide rates of trans folk as opposed to the general population: 41% (and that doesn't count successes or closeted-to-pollsters)... to 1.6% of the general population. It was the second number that staggered me. Seriously? Only one point six percent of "normal" people have tried to kill themselves? I found myself filled with something like desperate, angry, weeping jealousy. I literally cannot wrap my mind around the idea of going through life without ever thinking seriously about suicide, without having at least come close to trying it. I can't imagine life without the refrain of "kill yourself / kill yourself / kill yourself" fading in and out of the background noise. I don't understand how people can lead lives so good death never looks like an option.
In fact, my first thought was "Wait, that can't be right, I mean, after all I certainly-- oh, right." I keep forgetting where I do and don't fall into General Populace numbers.
It keeps coming up in class; art history, seems like we talked more about suicide than penises, for once. (Native history, on the other hand, we talked about how the French Jesuits were basically awesome (especially compared to the Spanish, but then, Daleks don't come off so bad compared to the conquistadores, let's be honest). We also had one kid insist that Catholics weren't actually Christians, so that was fun.)
Yesterday was the weird one, because it popped up that the only way I could extricate myself from the community of love and support that appears to have grown into existence all around me would be by death, somehow. (I briefly became convinced that I had Screwed Everything Up and needed to leave before people got mad at me. Look, I don't run my own consciousness, I just keep a record. The moment passed.) It was a bit frustrating to look down that wall again, knowing full well I couldn't do it, and be unable to beat my fists against it...
I don't even cut anymore. The closest I come these days is when my fingernails start digging against my hands when I feel like shit in a social situation where it's impossible to run and hide or yell at God. (Look, it's hard to say things like "Respectability is bullshit" while surrounded by respectable people, especially people you actually respect. But I don't know how to say "The reason I never felt welcome in the church is because it has such a stigma of being a place where well-dressed, well-polished, respectable people are. And those people don't like me. You people aren't the kind of people who approve of my kind of people." Especially because, that's the thing, they do. The dude leading the theology class is my kind of people! He's the furthest thing from respectable (once you get to know him, anyway), and yet commands respect. Church people are my people, mainly because these folks are those strange types of persons who open their hearts to just about everyone who crosses their path, and I think that's the point, but it still staggers me.
Bah, I don't know. The point is, I seem to have managed to get rid of my crutches of self-destruction, and there are enormous parts of my system that are whining, hard about that, and they keep reminding me they're there, and look, sometimes I just want to go back to the cold comfort of being alone and unloved, but I can't. I can't go back to snarling into a cold ice storm that I'm all alone and I don't give a damn what you do to me. I can't go back to burning and cutting myself as an outlet, I can't go back to staying up all night and punching trees until it hurts, wandering the streets crying out to the stars alone.
See, all that melodramatic posturing (yes, of course I know how melodramatic it was) was in reaction to the acute pain and loneliness of being... well, me, in a world that I knew didn't want me. And, as it turns out, that's something of an illusion. Even if I turned my back on the community of Grace (tough to do, even as an act of imagination), that feeling of love, of being accepted and... loved, for who I am, that doesn't go away. It's like ever since I finally opened my heart and found out God actually loved me after all, I can't go back to ignoring Him. It's really hard to extricate yourself from love, once that love is there. I imagine it could probably be done, but it would actually hurt way worse than the other normal oh-hi-mental-illness pain. And, let's face it - pulsing urge to slam my fists into a brick wall notwithstanding, my stomach for needless, pointless pain is just about gone. Damn it.
But I gotta say, having suicide as a concept waved in my face all the time is getting a little old.
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