The Trans Bathroom Issue No One is Talking About

We all have seen the posts on our social media. Facebook videos of bible thumping bumpkin breeders, Better-Be-A-Vagina vigilantes, and fame hungry Facebook dads all aflame with the newly found need to grope strangers. Of course, this isn’t a new idea, as trans issues have always been something that the American public, for the most part, have reacted quite harshly to. However, instead of inciting mass outrage and passionate public demonstrations, trans issues have normally been taken as a joke; something to be laughed at, made into a meme, and forgotten. But here is the time of trans visibility, as tumultuous as it is.

We aren’t ignoring this issue, mainly because people are ignorant to the actual statistics on sexual assault, which results in social media rants about transwomen preying on your next-door-neighbor Tammy’s daughters. While roughly 17% of women and 3% of men in the United States have been victims of sexual assault, according to http://www.rainn.org, 64% of transpeople have experienced sexual assault. No body wants to belittle the concept of sexual assault, however if we are going to form a fact based argument, which almost none of the anti-trans posts are, then we need to take statistics into account. If anything, transfolk need to be boycotting the rights of cispeople, on the sole argument that if anyone is going to be sexually harassed the statistics show it will not be little Becky Sue.

So with the groundwork laid for this post it is time to address the issue that no one has been talking about: lookism. Plenty of idealistic “pro-trans” posts have been making their rounds on our dashboards and feeds, but they all are centered around the same concept. There are photos of young transgirls standing next to cisgirls and asking the viewer to determine which was born with a vagina. Sexy photos of transwomen models that ask whether she belongs in the men’s bathroom. Although these posts mean well they undermine what it truly means to be gender nonconforming, as well as further the ideals of a lookist society. With every like and share these photos reinstate the notion that you must be this attractive to be relevant.

From the beginning of the LGBTQIA+ rights movement transpeople have fallen through the cracks. In addition, while transpeople gain visibility more and more transpeople suffer. Hollywood celebrities, such as Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner bring with them bittersweet tidings, such a hopeful air of trans-acceptance, as well as setting standards for beauty among transwomen (which is no fault of their own). Forgotten are the atypically beautiful, the transpeople that do not pass, the women and men that present themselves in a manner that does not conform to gender binaries.

It does no good to cater to the ideas that beauty and gender should determine our humanity. While the trans bathroom issues come to a head we need to remember that there are women and men that dress, present, and look differently than what society would define as typically male and female. Remember that there are women with beards, chubby transfolk, boys that like to wear makeup, and other variances in appearance and approach. While we embrace beautiful and inspiring transpeople we need to remember that there is a very real danger in ignorance, and by combating the ideals of lookism we may chip away at the beliefs of those that still pander to a patriarchal society. One’s appearance should not define their worthiness of rights.

 

I Built My Own Cage (Narrative Essay)

 

“Did you get the gift I left with you?” My mother asked. I roll my eyes, “Yes, mom. I got them,” I reply. Of course I found the little gift bag my mother had pushed me out of the door with. Of course I had opened them after I drove the two hours back to where I was living, only to find shaving cream and razors. I had laughed, not because it was particularly funny, but because it would have almost been ironic if my mother hadn’t have given me something like this. “I’m not shaving,” I say into the phone, feeling almost mechanical, like an automated line answering questions of annoyed customers. “Well, you’re living with Phil now! You have to shave,” she exclaims. Have to. Have to. She’s always used that phrase. I’m living under her roof, so I have to. I’m young, so I have to. I’m a woman, so I have to. No matter how many years I tell my mother I’m not shaving, or that I don’t feel like dressing up, or that I like short hair, she still finds ways to slip in reminders that I have to be feminine. Have to. “Mom, I’ll talk to you later,” I say, “I’m not feeling too great.”

From an early age I learned that my role was to be a woman. My sex defined my life, my personality, my disposition, and my actions. If I was gaining weight I was asked if I was pregnant. If I was depressed I was told to smile. If I was upset I was asked if I was on my period. Not only did these assumptions seem preposterous, but they also reinforced the fact that if I was something I had to be something else. If I had feelings it had to be because I had female hormones. If I was gaining weight it had to be because I had “gone and got myself knocked up.” If I was human, I had to be woman. I didn’t know that the way I had been raised was sexist until I reached college. I took a history course above being taught new information I was being taught new ways to think. I was taught to question my education and the opinions around me, instead of accepting things for what they were.  For the first time in my life I was taught that I didn’t have to believe the things that people forced onto me. I didn’t have to.

After my first year of college I started researching gender, sex, and race. I started learning, instead of being told. I moved in with my best friend at the time, and eventually her boyfriend moved in. Scotty wasn’t a good person, not by any means, but he was a good person to have been in my life exactly when I needed him. He wore a mullet, a camouflage shirt, and a denim vest, which sounds as though he were a six-foot-something, shotgun-toting macho man, but really he was just a man that seemed to feel he needed to be the idea of masculinity. Man-incarnate. I don’t know if he was over compensating for the vagina he was born with, or if he really was a big fan of looking like he just left a monster truck rally, but I looked up to him all the same. This was a young man that overcame constant struggles, with his traditional Mexican upbringing, his mother still referring to him as his birth name, watching his friends do drugs and steal, and feeling like he wasn’t worthy. Scotty was taught that he was optional, his existence was something that could be ignored, but his gender was open for societal control. That didn’t change who he was, if anything it made him more sure of it, he was a man above the comment of others.

After cross-dressing for months, reading studies, and researching the horror modern science calls “phalloplasty” I decided it was time to be myself. Finally, after twelve years of hiding I decided to come out on Facebook. “So, if you haven’t already seen my blog then you wouldn’t really know. Here’s my “coming out” post. I’ve always felt like I should have been born a male. I would be super feminine still and most likely cross dress all the time. I love glitter, pink, and leopard print, but my genitals don’t make sense to me. I’ve thought about transitioning, but it wouldn’t really have a point. Bottom surgery will never do anything for me. It can never be what I want, need, or should have been born with. So… now you know. You can refer to me as Mahala, Blu, or Oliver, and I use any pronouns. So… yeah,” I posted to my wall. I didn’t message any family, I didn’t come forward in any dramatic or heart-touching way, I just typed what I felt and hit send. The backlash was unimaginable.

I reread the texts my mother had sent me a few days before, “OK but I want the money back that you get from your dad for college… Oliver..” Not only was my mother’s lack of grammar heinous, but her message was repulsive. I felt my stomach drop again. I had no mother. I had no family. Again it flip-flopped. “Are you ready, sweetheart?” The hair stylist asked. “Yeah,” I sat down in the styling chair. I looked at myself in the mirror. I noted my glasses, round, tortoise shell, clearly a statement on my pale face. I counted the piercings in my face, four without counting my ears that were almost stretched to an inch. I let down my hair, feeling it rest against my breast. It was heavy, after having been grown out for five years it was thick and reached the middle of my lower back. I touched my extremely split ends, the likes of which had seen many different colors. I looked my reflection in the eye and breathed one more deep, indecisive breath. “Cut it all off.”

“I hate growing my hair out,” I absentmindedly commented as I gelled down the side. “Well you shouldn’t have cut it off,” Phil touted. He was so proud. He was always right. “You know why I cut it off,” I alleged. I knew that he knew my reasoning, but did he really believe me? “Good night,” he said as he attempted to kiss me. I felt my stomach turn. “Good night,” I replied and went back to my tarot reading. I didn’t love him. He wasn’t someone I wanted in my life. I felt ashamed at using him, but I felt even more ashamed that I couldn’t tell him. I didn’t want to hurt him. “Phal-“ I type into Tumblr and before I can even get the word typed out it recognizes my search. I sigh and click the previous search. Images of healed phalloplasty surgeries flood my browser. Huge scars litter the sides of men where skin had been torn off while they show off their newly healed skin tube. I would call it a penis if it even remotely resembled one. I feel the first tears start to sting my eyes, knowing that this is the only option for my future, if I decide to transition. I cry, silently sobbing for hours, only stopping when the sun comes up to feign sleep when Phil gets ready for work. I walk into the bathroom and stare at the reflection I have become so familiar with. Every night I barter with it, begging with it, hoping each day will bring a new image but never seeing the results I want, the results I need. “You’ve been crying again,” it addresses, as if I didn’t know. “Of course I’ve been crying,” I counter, “Why wouldn’t I?” My reflection looks me in the eye, as I mirror its actions. Its eyes seem to plead with me ‘this isn’t you.’ I analyze the face, the tortoise shell glasses, the facial piercings-four to be exact, and the hair cut to the skin. “Then who am I?” I ask myself. I think I know the answer. I’m sure I do. “Who are you?” My reflection asks me. “Who am I?” I ask it back. I feel images of leopard print, pastel hair, light pink cardigans, and the giant five foot teddy bear I used to have flood my vision. I feel love for these images, these inanimate pictures of things I enjoy. My head gets fuzzy and I start to weep again. “Who are you?” My reflection seems to interrogate me. “I’m… I’m Me,” I whisper audibly. Why am I whispering? No one is home. Why am I even speaking? No one is here. I look at the reflection once more, staring it in the eye and I finally cease crying. “I am myself,” I say to my reflection. I wipe my eyes and look back to the mirror, about to brag to my reflection, but all I see is myself.

Twelve years of denial, twelve years of repression, eighteen years of being told that who I was was directly correlated with my genetalia, eighteen years of being told that I was someone that my environment had taught me to be. I struggled with myself. I rebelled against the role force upon me from birth only to build my own cage of hyper-masculinity. I thought that if I am not one extreme that I am another. I have to be. I cut off my hair, I wore baggy jeans and ill-fitted shirts, I discarded the name I loved, and I bound the breasts that never bothered me. I built my own system of oppression. Still, I found myself wanting: wanting for myself. I spent nights weeping, spent days begging my reflection, spent years suppressing who I was, and spent a lifetime being told I had to. Then I found that gender was not a concept of two binaries, but a spectrum of many different expressions. I found that masculine and feminine are nothing but words that define societal norms. I found that people are not made up of definites, but rather display a variety of differences. Eighteen years to freedom.

A Short Response to an In-Class Viewing of Killing Us Softly 4

Please excuse the casual tone of this piece, as it is just a response to a prompt in a college level course.

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In today’s society woman’s highest compliment is beauty. You must be sexy. You must be attractive. You must fit society’s standards of aesthetic. Very rarely do you compliment someone on their strength or their intelligence. For hundreds of years women have been taught that nothing else matters, as long as you are beautiful, but recently we have started fighting back. We have decided to claim our equality by shucking the status quo. We aren’t pieces of art. We aren’t made to be admired and shown off as a gallery piece. We are women, with imperfections, feelings, and thoughts. We are human.

I found Dr. Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly 4 very interesting. I have always been very interested in feminist ideas, but only recently have I started thinking about internalized sexism and society’s inborne disposition of inequality. In the film we see a variety of advertisements showing women in a multitude of ways. In the video some women become objects, like cars, beer bottles, or even kegs. In some adverts the women are shown on the ground, or at a lower level than men. In most of the adverts the focus is on the breasts of women, instead of the women themselves. Female ideas are used to sell almost everything, but how often are the women themselves actually used? I was very intrigued when Kilbourne brought up the concept of piecing women apart to advertise. Women quite literally become objects in most of the ads, by making the focus of the advert some part of the women, instead of the women as a whole. If I held up the said ad at the link provided here, https://kbrown49.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/skyyspoof_pt2.jpg, and asked a class what the photo of, most would answer, “legs”; when asked, some students may even crack a joke about the ad being a photo of date rape, but how many students would say that this is a photo of a woman, focused on her legs? I can tell you that before this video I would not have answered correctly.

Inspired by Dr. Kilbourne’s work I found my own advertisements that I felt conveyed sexism. In the image found at http://doralfitness.homestead.com/Tran_s_ad_Woman_op_640x960.jpg there is a strong woman, typically attractive in the face, but atypically shaped, as she is muscular and fit. Quite a few women would find this empowering; however, I find it an ideal example of internalized sexism. In this ad the woman says that confidence is the sexiest thing a woman can have, therefore not only telling women that aren’t confident that they are not relevant, but also catering to the idea that you must be found sexy. Very often women in popular culture will attempt empowering the masses by telling them that you don’t have to fit a certain mold to be found sexy, however almost always they are putting down another category of women, be it stay-at-home mothers, sex workers, or women that are typically found beautiful by society’s standards.

In conclusion, I found Dr. Kilbourne’s work very interesting and incredibly educational. I did not see the whole film, but I would love to have her lecture on the concept of internalized sexism and the idea that beauty is not the highest achievement a woman can achieve. I know she spoke shortly on society’s “ideal woman” being literally impossible to achieve, but I did not notice her mention that society’s “ideal woman” is completely irrelevant to how women should view themselves. Of course, in the statement I make about how women should view themselves is entirely hypocritical in itself, as women are entirely entitled to view themselves in any way they see fit and hold themselves to their own standards:  even if that is an internalized idea of an impossible image rooted in their minds by society. Rather than find fault in the way women view themselves, we should find fault in the way women are taught to view themselves. There is no possibility of viewing yourself as human if you are taught that humanity and womanhood are a completely infeasible pairing.

Cat and Mouse

There’s something to be said about fearlessness. The amazing feeling of being untouchable. Invicible. Everyone has those certain moments in life where everything is blissful. There is no worry, just an unshakeable feeling of freedom. However, there is also always a moment where euphoria comes to a screeching halt, leaving us with a wakeup call and severe whiplash.

My moment was earlier this year when I woke up to about two hundred text messages. They said a variety of things, some calling me fat, some calling me ugly, some saying, “I’m enjoying this.” Those messages don’t really bother me. If I let that bother me then I’d never be where I’m at today. It was the messages that said, “I’m still waiting for you to call the police” that made me slam on the brakes. See, this person has been cyber harassing me for some time now. He’s left threatening comments on my post about domestic violence, telling me he’d show me what domestic violence was. He’s spammed my phone before, bombarding me with hundreds of messages degrading me. It’s been a year and a half now and it’s still going on. Sometimes he goes a few months without harassing me, sometimes only a week. It’s an obsession for him, but it’s become a trauma to me.

“I’m still waiting for you to call the police.” I remember reading it and instantly being filled with white hot fear. He was taunting me. He knew he was untouchable. Well, okay, he thought he was untouchable. It terrified me. Honestly, it still does. His enjoyment doesn’t bother me, it takes a pathetic person to get his kicks from bullying. What bothers me is his fearlessness.  His feeling of being untouchable. Invicible.

Every night I would lay down for bed, only to stare at the open door until dawn. I started locking myself in my room, but found I could still only sleep in the daylight. ‘He works nights. He can’t possibly hurt you now.’ I tried to reason with myself. ‘His car barely works. He isn’t going to drive an hour and a half to get you.’ But my brain doesn’t work like that. All I was was blind terror and paranoia.

I’ve dealt with depression for almost all of my life, I’ve overcome years of mental abuse, but PTSD isn’t something I’m well versed in. Every day became an argument with myself. I wanted to live a normal life again, but it’s hard to move forward when you’re constantly glancing over your shoulder. I even bought and installed security and surveillance systems in two houses, because even if he couldn’t get to me maybe he could get to my loved ones. Because some disturbed child decided to play a game of cat and mouse with me I’ve paid the toll emotionally, mentally, and literally.

I’ve gone back and forth between pressing charges and letting the whole thing die down. But that’s the thing, it hasn’t died down and he isn’t going away. He keeps pushing: seeing how far he can slither before he gets caught. And I’ve let him. I’ve told myself that this will be the last time. Every time.

But, today it stops. Today is the day that I make a promise to myself. I will not be a victim. I will not be another statistic. I will not let him bully me. I will not let him harass me. I will not let him snap. I will not be just another face on the nightly news. Today I’m the Cat.

Not Trans Enough

(Punctuation in this piece is for mood, not for grammar)

I like men. I love dresses, purple lipstick, and have a mean addiction to overpriced eye shadow. I am the ideal example of femininity incarnate. And yes, I was born with a vagina. But I’m not cis.

Femme. It’s almost a dirty word in the trans community. It’s like being bisexual in the mid 2000’s. I’m confused. I am just another kid trying to be a special snowflake. I don’t exist.

I wish that being trans had a handbook. I wish that somewhere there would be a friendly fairy handing out pamphlets on the correct way to be trans. But that’s just it. There is no handbook. No pamphlets. And more importantly, there is no correct way to be trans. As a transman I face all the everyday hardships that the other members of my community do, but as a femme I face the speculation of my very soul. People question the things that make me Me, because “If I were really trans I wouldn’t…”

I’m told that there is no point in calling myself trans. I’m not really trans. I’m that kid from middle school that just wants to fit in. I’m a poser. My gender isn’t valid because I do not fit my community’s standards. I am a transman whose being is seen as irrelevant. By strangers. By family. By my community.

People balk at my gender. Some whisper behind my back, most tell me I’m pointless, and some even poke fun. In a world that preaches acceptance I am subgender. I am not trans enough. I am not real.

My community, my loved ones, my world. They’ve told me I am nothing. Nonexistent. They’ve taught me to become comfortable with being invisible. But I won’t be. I will never be.

I exist.

God Doesn’t Like Assholes

Scrolling through my newsfeed I’m filled with an incredible feeling of euphoria. It is full of love. Marriage equality has been passed. Finally. Finally we are all human when it comes to love. My friends can’t stop talking about it. We are all ecstatic. Well, almost all of us.

Two people. Two people on my entire friendslist are anti-LGBTQIA. That’s it. Out of three hundred people there are only two that are not filled with the loving joy that the rest of my friendslist is. Now, does this make me sad? No, oddly enough, it doesn’t. It makes me proud. Proud of the people I have surrounded myself with. Proud of the people I have chosen to be part of my story.

Now, these two people are religious country folk: arguably bumpkins based on popular consensus. They both never branched out, both parents before the age of twenty, both never moved out of a thirty mile radius of our small home town, but the most common thing that ties these two together is their blind faith that people will believe them when they blame their opinions on religion. They use a religion that preaches love and forgiveness as a shield to protect themselves from taking responsibility for themselves. Guess what guys, your God is forgiving, your Messiah preaches acceptance, and you, well… You’re just an asshole.

As someone that was raised in a strict Christian household I know what it can do to the members of the church. Too often do preachers use their power as a soapbox for their own beliefs. Sure, God isn’t supportive of homosexuality, but he also isn’t too big on shrimp, pork, or tattoos, and don’t even get him started on divorce. Christianity, and other closely related religions, were not formed on the basis of human judgement. They were formed to guide believers to a righteous path, not to teach them to hate because others were not on the same path, or because they took a different approach to the path. As a church-going Christian my mother was a truly terrible person. As a self-taught Christian she is a beautiful, giving person. The only difference is that she took the time to think for herself.

God doesn’t hate anyone. He doesn’t want anyone to go to Hell. He wants to teach people, he wants to forgive, he wants to test people. Now, when faced with judgement by the only power that is qualified to judge you, will he be proud of your actions or will you be cast out for your unabashed disrespect disguised as gospel?

My Favorite Form of Self-Harm

Waking up to someone you feel inexplicable attachment to is almost always incredibly beautiful. Feeling their skin and knowing…  Sensing the bond between your soul and theirs is almost always something to cherish. For me it is the exact opposite. I wake up to someone new and think of ways to get them out of my bed. I want them to hate me like I hate myself.

Sex is, and always will be, my favorite way to hurt myself. No kissing. No cuddling. No eye contact. I want you to use me and forget me, because a part of me will never think that I am worth more than that. I don’t want to love you. I don’t want to know you. I want to fuck you and then cry for hours while I cradle myself, because no one else will. Sex, for me, is something so sacred that I don’t even strive to achieve it. I just try to fuck.

This is what sex means to me. This is why I am the way I am. Years of abuse have made me this way. I don’t ask anyone to understand how I feel, I just ask that they understand why I feel. Self-harm and depression are things so unique and exclusive to each and every individual that suffer with them that asking anyone to feel the way I feel is like expecting a field of identical snowflakes. It will never happen. I don’t ask that anyone save me, change me, or justify and rationalize my behavior. All of these things are impossible. I don’t want, nor do I need anyone to understand how truly miserable I purposely make myself. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. I simply need people to see that I am sick. This is who I am. This is who I will always be.

I acknowledge that I use sex as a way to hurt myself and for the most part I do a very good job of keeping it under control. Sometimes I need help along the way, and that is absolutely okay to ask for. No one can be expected to overcome mental and emotional instability by themselves. I write this now because I need to let myself know that what I’m doing is unhealthy, but more importantly, that what I am doing is only temporary.

I am strong. I am loved. I am deserving.

Self-harm is something many people suffer with. Some people cut, some people abuse substances, and my personal indulgence is warping intimacy. I realize that I have a problem. Almost everyone that self-harms does. I quit for a very long time, but sometimes I relapse. I realize I have a problem. I acknowledge my addiction to mental and emotional pain. No form of self-harm is good, healthy, or in any way productive towards recovering from abuse or emotional pain. If you suffer with self-harm I plead that you seek help before it becomes a more serious problem. Always remember that there are people that love you and that want to see you succeed. Sometimes you can’t see past the pain to see that there is love around you. Never forget that you are valid and someone somewhere is hoping that you overcome all the obstacles before you. You deserve to be happy.

God Made a Mistake

For hours on end I spend a night or two a month looking at the “Female to Male” tab on Tumblr and cry until my eyes swell shut. Silently, I question my existence and wonder why I was made this way. Why I was constructed incorrectly. Now, out of all of the years I have dealt with dysphoria I never gave any thought to the religious/spiritual reasoning behind my gender. Of course I had the comments saying that God made me this way and God doesn’t make mistakes, but I wasn’t really religious until recently and the comments just seemed liked empty jabs from people using religion to hide their insecurities. But now that I give it some thought, I realize the base of their comments were correct; God doesn’t make mistakes.

An hour ago I was going through my routine of scrolling through phalloplasty surgery results, sobbing until I get nauseous, and then staring at myself in the mirror when I decided to text a friend of mine. I asked her why my penis looked like a vagina. I laughed and then I gave it some thought. Why did the Divine create me like this? Was there a mix up with the chromosomes? Was there a Y shortage? Since I had never really considered the idea that a higher power had made a mistake the thought hit me pretty hard. Was I an accident? Since I had never really taken that question seriously the idea hit me pretty hard. I asked myself, “Did the Divine make a mistake?” and almost instantaneously I knew the answer. No, of course not.

God doesn’t make mistakes. God teaches lessons. God gives you what you can handle and sometimes it seems a little goofy or wrong, but it always teaches you something. God made me strong. God created me, crafted me, and made me into the beautiful trans-person I am today. God gifted me with a vagina and the mind of a man. God knew that I would know that my genitalia weren’t quite right, and gave me the incorrect anatomy for a reason. God is teaching me a lesson.

We all have our hardships, whether it be depression, body image, dysphoria, or even sexual orientation. We think that maybe, just maybe, our life was supposed to be different. Easier. Happier. We doubt the Divine’s plan for us, because it isn’t what we want for ourselves. God, the Divine, or whatever you identify with as a higher power, made us to their exact specifications. God made us strong. God made us flexible. God made us capable of weathering the storm. God gave us the foundation to survive our adversity.

My vagina doesn’t belong… This I know. Every day I deal with the pain my sex brings me, but I don’t let it defeat me. I know that none of this was on accident. I was made for a reason. My body does not define me. My body does not determine my gender. God gave me the tools to endure my trials, and I learned how to become the victor.

Loving You Ain’t Easy

Sometimes you can’t help but smile when you think of someone. Sometimes you catch yourself thinking of all the good things about a certain someone, even though you know they have just as many flaws as they do good aspects. You know that the flaws don’t really count though, in the end. All that matters is that you love that person.

When was the last time that person was yourself?

It’s 3 am on February 15th and I sit here, writing you this message, because I find myself in the same situation much too often. I can be too critical of myself, and sometimes I make unconscious decisions to punish myself, or I start thinking about my flaws, but luckily I catch myself and give myself the attention that I need. I am worthy, I am a good person, and I deserve love. And so do you.

Lately I have thought a lot about what impact my decisions have on my mental health, and luckily I understand that sometimes momentary happiness has to be sacrificed for overall well being in the long run. I have a strong grasp on the fact that sometimes cutting someone off is necessary, though painful, because what really matters is what’s good for me. If you’re reading this you probably know that my life hasn’t been a walk in the park, but that hasn’t stopped me from becoming a healthy and moderately well adjusted adult. I contribute most of my well being to my sacrifice of ignorant bliss for the paths I needed to take, which usually started out rocky. Though I got a few bumps and bruises along the way I knew that wounds would heal, and the momentary pain of a stubbed toe were much easier to heal than the mental lesions that unhealthy happiness would inflict upon me.

Valentine’s Day is commonly used to celebrate the ones you love and reflect upon the good things about that person and your relationship, but so little do we take even an hour to look ourselves in the mirror and notice the good things about ourselves. We see the little differences that we consider imperfections, but we rarely see the whole package, which is a unique gift of individuality. Self love isn’t easy, but I promise you its worth it.

So how about we leave Valentine’s or Anna Howard Shaw Day to the lovers… or the Liz Lemon’s… and take February 15th to celebrate ourselves. We deserve it.

Suicide of a Comic

“Heard joke once:

Man goes to doctor.  Says he’s depressed.  Says life seems harsh and cruel.

Says he fels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain.

Doctor says “Treatment is simple.  Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight.  Go and see him.  That should pick you up.”

Man bursts into tears.

Says “But, doctor…”

“…I am Pagliacci.”

Good joke.” Rorschach (Alan Moore)

Robin Williams’ death has been all over social media this week. People are astounded by the idea that someone so seemingly happy could harbor all that pain. It’s wracking the minds of many to attempt to comprehend that he’s gone. When I was on the phone with my mother she mentioned that it seemed like it was always the funny ones. Of course, suicide transcends your disposition, but as one of “the funny ones” I can explain how depression affected my personality.

From childhood I was always the class clown. I always felt the intense urge to be louder, funnier, and more outrageous than I was that day before. I felt the need to make people laugh. As I spoke with my mother on the phone I started to think about how easily you can feign happiness, when in reality you are suffering just to breathe. I know what it’s like to feel in a constant state of loneliness. I know how it feels to open your eyes in the morning and mentally give up on the day from the moment it starts. I know how awful it feels to be sad, to be truly sad. I know what sad feels like; I’ve felt it in my bones, in my mind, and in every part of my soul. I have felt sad. Having dealt with depression for years I know how sad felt for me and I made it my goal to make sure that no one felt sad while I was near them. I wanted to alleviate that pain, even though I knew mine would always stay rooted in my being.

I knew that it would always be with me, my depression. I knew that it would always keep an icy grasp upon my sanity, but I also knew that just because it took me everything I had mentally, physically, and emotionally to get out of bed in the morning didn’t mean that I should give up. There were nights when I thought I couldn’t keep going. There were months straight when I had to lock the door while my mother drove so it wouldn’t open in case I decided to pull the handle. What people don’t understand is that the urge wasn’t just an urge. It was the need to throw myself from the moving car. It was the whole-mind-and-body pull to end my life in that moment. Suicidal urges can be a nagging voice in the back of your mind, they can be poetic tragedies that your mind romanticizes, and they can be mind-numbing, judgement-lapsing cravings to end it all. Sometimes suicide seems to hold more promise than life does, offering sweet, blissful peace, as opposed to the hustle and bustle of everyday monotony.

Suicide is not the answer to the pain that life sends your way. Suicide is also, contrary to popular belief, not a cop out. Suicide is momentary blindness to the world around you. It consumes you. For me, it was the idea that I could save someone else that always kept me going. Suicide saved me, in a way. It pushed me to try harder, to be more attentive, and to love with all my heart. Suicide convinced me to live, and to make those around me find the joy in life, because I always kept in mind that you never knew what lay beneath the surface of another person’s smile.