trans day of remembrance
written by ida deerz on November 21, 2023
this post was previously published on cohost.org!
fuck remembering, honestly. fuck it. you would all remember me sooooooo hard. you'd be getting such a good score in remembering me, something which is totally possible and realistic to want to achieve. go light a candle for me or some shit while i'm still alive to see it.
everyone would reminisce. everyone would say i helped so many people and i did so many great things for my community; the kind of stuff you want to hear but nobody bothers to say it to you when you're still living. everyone would say they wished they talked to me while i was still there.
you know you have a shot at doing that right now, 24 hours a day, right?
let me be clear here. the past half year has been hell. my support network, all the people i had intimacy with, stopped being a part of my life at the same time over their own shit they couldn't work out. i barely get out of the house. i haven't had sex in ages. i only have a single trans person i'd consider a friend here irl, and she lives too far away for us to regularly hang out. i've only seen her like, four times in the whole year we've known eachother for. besides visiting the US this year and a trans meetup i don't visit anymore because someone keeps attending who sexually abused us both, i haven't interacted with any other trans people irl in the past year outside of those four times.
and you know what all of this means? it means i have nowhere to go. it means i have nowhere to express myself. it means that besides the internet, i have no outlet for who i am as a person. it all means that if something happened to me, it would by default be too late for anyone to check up on me. this is a horrifying thought. i'm never actually going to hurt myself. i have been too hardened by trauma to truly give up. but i know that if it did happen, i would not survive. i broke down several times in the past half year. one time i struggled with suicidal thoughts that just wouldn't stop coming. and i had to deal with it all on my own (and the help of an online friend). there's nobody i could call. no friends near me who could show up to check on me. nobody who can get me food and help me with tasks if i get sick. no polycule in my house i could directly ask for a hug.
it doesn't matter how tirelessly i work on myself or my local community. it doesn't matter that i am literally the only one in my city who recognizes these hardships and works on providing material support to others here who struggle in the same ways. but nobody seems to take it. nobody seems to know or care. even if i give every single piece of me away, nobody seems to want to take it. i might as well stop trying, but i still hold hope that it'll be worth it some day and i'll get all the friends that i fought for all my life. and no matter what i do, none of it translates into the resources and support i realistically need to survive right now, at this stage of my life. but you'd all sure remember me very hard for everything i did, wouldn't you.
stop fucking remembering. start reaching out to us, so that we can liberate eachother from these conditions and you won't ever have to remember me in the future.