forest_ice
she/her 🏳️⚧️
- Aug 18, 2023
- 12
i was "saved" last year. when the police showed up at my place for a "welfare check", i was put in handcuffs, dragged through triage intake (don't forget the covid test swab), and ultimately hospitalized. i was later told---in involuntary therapy---that the vast majority who attempt suicide regret it and say that it always gets better.
*insert spongebob knee slap gif*
ok yeah we all know why we're here lmao.
the really fun part is just how bad it gets after they said that. what i'm about to share is worth a dozen content warnings. if anything in particular triggers you, just assume it's in here.
to revisit the last year or so, i was spending a lot of time lurking sasu, no account, no posts. i was a phd student. i had recently lost my funding and was put on a different job that worked me eighty hours a week. i was failing my classes with all the time i was spending on my job. my research fell off a building as i was narrating in the foreground, so to speak. i had also recently made the mistake of trying to buy a house. couldn't afford it anymore. even more, i was simultaneously suffering from a different abusive job as an intern for the military, where they were ramping up their expectations of me, wanting lethality enhancements across all of their guns, etc in that branch. yes, you did read that right. all. (i'm not really into missiles being used for killing kids, so...) to summarize, i was: struggling with my job, research, classes, affording a home, the military, oh and did i mention i'm trans? yeah i was having a gender crisis at the same time too. i really can't stress how awful it was to come out to myself during a time like that. in the height of covid, i'd go to bed at two in the morning and get back up at four just to go straight back to work. the thoughts that carried me to sleep were the lyrics of songs coded with so much gender envy and mental illness.
for the sake of vagueness, i'm just going to say i found a method on here that i liked. i got in trouble with the authorities in my country when i bought stuff though. in fact, there was even an undercover cop. the cops showed up and i got thrown in crisis stabilization for over a week. it was a nightmare. the cops were transphobic. i was stripped at the facility where i was held. i wore the same clothes the whole time. i was never given basic toiletries (e.g. a toothbrush). they forced medication on me. and in many other ways they also disrespected consent. being strip searched was pretty traumatic though because i had to do it in front of a mirror in a bathroom. when i got out, i was forced to come out to my parents, their presence the only reason i was even released.
so did it "get better"? surprisingly, sort of?
just a few months later, i actually met someone really special. i know there are a lot of other trans people on here, but yeah, being trans already makes that kind of thing hard enough. we had so much in common. if only we didn't live on different continents. if only love didn't sprout from a fucking queer-hacker culture joke. you know what though? we actually made it work. i went there, and we spent a whole month together. gay kissing under surveillance cameras, on top of logs in the forest, at a lesbian party, while drinking in the streets. writing code in bed together, doing graffiti together...just being gay and doing crime in general. even though wanting to die was something that very much brought us together in the first place, it was like everything in the world had melted away. it was my first time ever being happy. and i made sure she knew she made me feel that way. i eventually had to go back home. months pass. i wanted to graduate---and move there. she broke up with me. (bonus detail for the hypothetical trans people reading this: her words were "i don't feel like i have a girlfriend". yeah don't say that to your girlfriend.)
let's play the game of 'how hard did i take it?' if your guess is that i flew all the way back to see her, you'd be mistaken. if you did guess that i met someone new and spontaneously moved across my country for them instead, then uh..you win i guess... so um yeah, i actually moved. after all, i graduated. i had to do something. on top of it, i was desperate to leave the area i was in... trans people were being murdered and the government was doing everything they could to try to ban us out of existence. so i wasn't staying there. i met someone else in a similar way online who was also looking to flee. we mutually found a place together somewhere entirely different in our country, and we moved in together. i just wouldn't know how much of a mistake it was to ever meet them, and even more of a mistake to date them. i was just...so vulnerable to being manipulated after getting dumped like that, after losing something that special.
when we fled, neither of us had jobs lined up. we were uh...fleeing. i'll come back around to it, but at this point in the story, i got in very late at night to the new rental. only one bed was unpacked, so we shared it. we woke up in the middle of the night, them leaning on me. dating just kind of organically happened from that. we had been talking for a month or so up until then, so yeah. it just turned out to be so much more abusive than i could have expected. they started fights, gaslighting me. they never looked for a job. they were so incredibly disgusting that I (later) had to clean up a lot of blood and feces. they also raped me. they were also grooming kids online. (oh, did I mention the girl i flew to see turned out to be kind of a pedophile too? oops, all pedophiles)
we of course broke up very early into that encounter, but i eventually asked them to move out when i realized that i was the only one applying for jobs. they were terminally online, having "e-sex" with kids. i started staying out more, trying to avoid being in the same place as them. it got scary. one day i got home and there was a knife missing from kitchen drawers flung wide open. i was not doing ok. and neither was the new girl i was seeing at the time, probably out of desperation as well as some response to the abuse & rape i went through. she actually wanted to murder my roommate. i'm going to briefly jump forward in time here because it's relevant: i did finally report my roommate to the police. i told them about the rape and the pedophilia. you know what they did? they said I should just drop the case, that they didn't even understand why i reported it in the first place. surprise surprise, cops and trans people.
once the roommate was gone, i still had the problem of being alone and very traumatized without a job. oops. i went through hundreds of job applications. i eventually started working some physical labor job, handing literally everything straight back to my landlord. i was unemployed for six months. i got injured at work too, nearly breaking my foot. things were getting really scary that i was about to lose my home again. but i did land a job. i did meet someone new. and things have been more and more stable for the past few months.
the thing is...i hate that i had to go through all of that just to get here. i had ptsd before all of this. and now i have even more ptsd. it really really doesn't matter that things feel "stable" to me right now, i can't live with my own brain. the dysphoria, the trauma, the struggling to exist. there is nothing about this world that makes me want to live, and waiting, hoping.. to find that next special someone that makes me feel "right" again is just way too much to ask. who the fuck would want to live like this? i'm at a point again where those thoughts in my head go on repeat every day, how much i hate having to be alive. i'd be lying if i said i haven't made attempts since being hospitalized last year. i just never can, for some reason. too much of a coward, i guess.
my year in review: i wish i had died back then
*insert spongebob knee slap gif*
ok yeah we all know why we're here lmao.
the really fun part is just how bad it gets after they said that. what i'm about to share is worth a dozen content warnings. if anything in particular triggers you, just assume it's in here.
to revisit the last year or so, i was spending a lot of time lurking sasu, no account, no posts. i was a phd student. i had recently lost my funding and was put on a different job that worked me eighty hours a week. i was failing my classes with all the time i was spending on my job. my research fell off a building as i was narrating in the foreground, so to speak. i had also recently made the mistake of trying to buy a house. couldn't afford it anymore. even more, i was simultaneously suffering from a different abusive job as an intern for the military, where they were ramping up their expectations of me, wanting lethality enhancements across all of their guns, etc in that branch. yes, you did read that right. all. (i'm not really into missiles being used for killing kids, so...) to summarize, i was: struggling with my job, research, classes, affording a home, the military, oh and did i mention i'm trans? yeah i was having a gender crisis at the same time too. i really can't stress how awful it was to come out to myself during a time like that. in the height of covid, i'd go to bed at two in the morning and get back up at four just to go straight back to work. the thoughts that carried me to sleep were the lyrics of songs coded with so much gender envy and mental illness.
for the sake of vagueness, i'm just going to say i found a method on here that i liked. i got in trouble with the authorities in my country when i bought stuff though. in fact, there was even an undercover cop. the cops showed up and i got thrown in crisis stabilization for over a week. it was a nightmare. the cops were transphobic. i was stripped at the facility where i was held. i wore the same clothes the whole time. i was never given basic toiletries (e.g. a toothbrush). they forced medication on me. and in many other ways they also disrespected consent. being strip searched was pretty traumatic though because i had to do it in front of a mirror in a bathroom. when i got out, i was forced to come out to my parents, their presence the only reason i was even released.
so did it "get better"? surprisingly, sort of?
just a few months later, i actually met someone really special. i know there are a lot of other trans people on here, but yeah, being trans already makes that kind of thing hard enough. we had so much in common. if only we didn't live on different continents. if only love didn't sprout from a fucking queer-hacker culture joke. you know what though? we actually made it work. i went there, and we spent a whole month together. gay kissing under surveillance cameras, on top of logs in the forest, at a lesbian party, while drinking in the streets. writing code in bed together, doing graffiti together...just being gay and doing crime in general. even though wanting to die was something that very much brought us together in the first place, it was like everything in the world had melted away. it was my first time ever being happy. and i made sure she knew she made me feel that way. i eventually had to go back home. months pass. i wanted to graduate---and move there. she broke up with me. (bonus detail for the hypothetical trans people reading this: her words were "i don't feel like i have a girlfriend". yeah don't say that to your girlfriend.)
let's play the game of 'how hard did i take it?' if your guess is that i flew all the way back to see her, you'd be mistaken. if you did guess that i met someone new and spontaneously moved across my country for them instead, then uh..you win i guess... so um yeah, i actually moved. after all, i graduated. i had to do something. on top of it, i was desperate to leave the area i was in... trans people were being murdered and the government was doing everything they could to try to ban us out of existence. so i wasn't staying there. i met someone else in a similar way online who was also looking to flee. we mutually found a place together somewhere entirely different in our country, and we moved in together. i just wouldn't know how much of a mistake it was to ever meet them, and even more of a mistake to date them. i was just...so vulnerable to being manipulated after getting dumped like that, after losing something that special.
when we fled, neither of us had jobs lined up. we were uh...fleeing. i'll come back around to it, but at this point in the story, i got in very late at night to the new rental. only one bed was unpacked, so we shared it. we woke up in the middle of the night, them leaning on me. dating just kind of organically happened from that. we had been talking for a month or so up until then, so yeah. it just turned out to be so much more abusive than i could have expected. they started fights, gaslighting me. they never looked for a job. they were so incredibly disgusting that I (later) had to clean up a lot of blood and feces. they also raped me. they were also grooming kids online. (oh, did I mention the girl i flew to see turned out to be kind of a pedophile too? oops, all pedophiles)
we of course broke up very early into that encounter, but i eventually asked them to move out when i realized that i was the only one applying for jobs. they were terminally online, having "e-sex" with kids. i started staying out more, trying to avoid being in the same place as them. it got scary. one day i got home and there was a knife missing from kitchen drawers flung wide open. i was not doing ok. and neither was the new girl i was seeing at the time, probably out of desperation as well as some response to the abuse & rape i went through. she actually wanted to murder my roommate. i'm going to briefly jump forward in time here because it's relevant: i did finally report my roommate to the police. i told them about the rape and the pedophilia. you know what they did? they said I should just drop the case, that they didn't even understand why i reported it in the first place. surprise surprise, cops and trans people.
once the roommate was gone, i still had the problem of being alone and very traumatized without a job. oops. i went through hundreds of job applications. i eventually started working some physical labor job, handing literally everything straight back to my landlord. i was unemployed for six months. i got injured at work too, nearly breaking my foot. things were getting really scary that i was about to lose my home again. but i did land a job. i did meet someone new. and things have been more and more stable for the past few months.
the thing is...i hate that i had to go through all of that just to get here. i had ptsd before all of this. and now i have even more ptsd. it really really doesn't matter that things feel "stable" to me right now, i can't live with my own brain. the dysphoria, the trauma, the struggling to exist. there is nothing about this world that makes me want to live, and waiting, hoping.. to find that next special someone that makes me feel "right" again is just way too much to ask. who the fuck would want to live like this? i'm at a point again where those thoughts in my head go on repeat every day, how much i hate having to be alive. i'd be lying if i said i haven't made attempts since being hospitalized last year. i just never can, for some reason. too much of a coward, i guess.
my year in review: i wish i had died back then
