loss...

I don't know if I will end up posting this. I was drafting another entry and haven't yet resolved that one.

I guess hearing about the death of Heath Ledger has brought up a few things for me. Thinking about this idea of consumption. They found his body surrounded by multiple types of pills, and thus far, his autopsy is inconclusive as to whether his passing was accidental or intentional.

What I want to share is something that were are not supposed to talk about in public. I want to talk about depression. More explicitly, I want to talk about my experiences with depression. Something we have been conditioned to not talk about in casual conversations. Since I have no clue who my audience is exactly, it grants me a kind of anonymity on both sides of this equation. I don't know who you are exactly, and I guarantee there are things about me that you do not know.

In my posting about leaps of faith, I think I made a reference to my life pre-transition as living a slow death of sorts. That there were challenges that really threatened me to my core, and that I was not very skilled in knowing how to manage those kinds of crises. (Ironic considering that I studied Conflict Resolution in college, and all of my job experience relates loosely to project/crisis management.)

A few days ago, I received a wonderfully eloquent email from my friend Emily about scientific evidence and margins of error in the medical world. (I was hoping to get permission from her to post excerpts from that email here, as I can not recount it as gracefully.) But in this email, Emily had referenced my comment about a "slow death," as she went on to say how it was a figurative gesture. In reality~that is not true. It was quite literal.

I have actively tried to end my own life many times over the past (and present) decades that I have been alive. This statement is not intended for shock and awe, as much as it meant to shed light on a subject that is forced into the darkness of shame. Like with most things in my life, I wear my heart (and its weaknesses) on my sleeve. And just as transitioning signalled the end to my codependent strife, severing my ties to the old abandonment issues that haunted me~it also called for a new sense of candor. I have no shame about being trans, as much as it might be too weird or "freaky" for some people to deal with in context of their own relations to me. I talk about it openly in hope to give a sense of dimensionality to what previously could have been a blatant caricature.

In that place I speak of a lot of unflattering things. I am not the hero in my own life. I am just one character. A flawed, and very human one at that. And perhaps it is what has made me approachable to so many who on the surface seem so radically different from me.

To me, the point of living is connectivity. To be able to relate to another being's experiential knowledge, and help us on our own wobbley paths. (My favorite author, Alain de Botton said something so brilliant in one of his last books ((paraphrasing here)): Why is it that we learn necessary lessons _after_ we needed them most? That the chaotic and provocative experiences that call for that missing link of needed information are exactly what create them, but never quite fast enough. We often feel like we simply have not learned enough to handle the strife in life's minutia _as_ it is happening.)

I live openly because I crave the potential for connection. I crave the possibility that I might have some huge revelation brought on by a casual conversation in line at the bank, or on a quiet walk home from the autoshop. I live to connect with anything willing to connect with me. (Which one can imagine has left me too vulnerable, and too wounded at times.)

To be honest, this has been one of those times. I have been grieving the loss of someone I loved very much. And thoughts of my surgery, and dreams of subsequent adventures to follow left me perfectly distracted from that grief. Yet, I have learned that distraction are fleeting, and grief is resilient, with-standing. It has found me. Many months later, in a different body, a different head space, with a different walk~it still recognized me, and followed me home.

But who ever wants to grieve? It is a process that no one looks upon eagerly. It is something that we are resigned to do. And all the while, others have kept themselves walking just fast enough to not yet submit.

This is the first time in my like where my grief has not pulled me under. Where I have not willingly become a victim of my own despair. Sure, I am sad and mourn the loss of things once cherished, but the depression has not settled in its old seat at my table. After decades of fearing my own inability to ever be "well" or stable, I am here, for the first time in my life. And it is from this place that I want to admit that I have never been here before.

I have spent years plotting my own demise. I have exhausted week upon week not being able to leave my bed, in a semi-paralyzed state. And I have consumed more handfuls of sleeping pills, mixed with other meds and alcohol to make the combination fatal. Yet it wasn't. Any time. (Having grown up straight edge, I find it baffling to think that my body could have tolerated such disgusting abuses.) These attempts were not cries for help. I did my research, knew what to do, and yet my body decided otherwise.

None of this implies that I am "unbreakable" or any stupid idea of that sort. But it has helped me sift through the bullshit now from this other side. Even though I lived, I saw that something needed to die: These patterns that kept me tethered to (and seeking out) unhealthy dynamics with people who were willing to drown me in their sorrows. I almost died there, but I see now that I can stand up, that I won't drown in the pain that people who are hurting inflict on others.

I transitioned last year because I felt like I had nothing left to lose. I tried to end the life that was so painful, and it didn't work. So, what if there was a way for me to end what was painful, instead of the life itself? What if there was a way to live the life that could make happiness an option? What if I could live the life that was worth living? That was the moment I knew what needed to be done~and it didn't consist of taking anymore sleeping pills, but finally forced me to really be conscious for the first time.

My point in sharing this is not to scare people about my history of instability. I have lost a few friends because of my transition, and also because of my admitted battle with depression. But I have also gained many insights from those moments when people I love have been able to connect with me about those most primal fears, and the most excruciating places of momentary pain.

I am struggling now because I feel like this life has to have some significant meaning, like it can't just be in vain. But what does that significance look like? How does it manifest? I haven't found traction with those answers yet. There has been a tremendous sense of relief to feel liberated from that darkness, and also to find amazing friends and exes who have resurfaced in my life, where we can commiserate about the (yet) "unanswerable."


Having only dabbled a tiny bit in cognitive behavioral therapy, I learned that there is a difference between perceptions and reality. Being cognizant of those fleeting moments of sadness and frustration I see the bigger scope, that we can change the way we feel _about_ things. If we modify our perceptions, then our relationships to those things being perceived then have to shift with the changes. (Not to say that if we "perceive" that we are rock stars we will be~but just a good reminder that the entire world isn't really against us on the especially tough days...)

I will get through the grief and the loss, and eventually learn whatever it is that I wish I knew now. And I will be okay again, and even inspired. To be living in a body that finally feels like home, within the context of a life that feels more like my own~and to be liberated from the depression that sabotaged everything~I know this is what it feels like to be whole. Maybe I needed to lose what I loved most to learn that lesson.

To all the people we have loved and lost too soon. And to all the rest that help us get through it. Much love and gratitude for this life which is still so full.

(God, I sound like such a fucking doped up hippie. Please forgive me~)