Queer as me – Part 19: Desolation and final decisions

• Posted on 6 October 2016
• By Rachael
• Posted in Personal Stories, Queer as me, Trans
• 0

This post is PART 19 in a guest blogger series following author Rachael's transition from an A.M.A.B (Assigned Male at Birth) individual to that of a self-identified trans woman.

If you are just discovering Queer as me, start the story from the beginning here.

As the next few days dragged on, I became more reclusive and despondent. The numbness had taken over all aspects of my personality. I tried to put on a brave face but even the councilor could tell that something was going on.

I couldn’t tell anyone you see.

What if it got out to my family and then to the church that I was starting to believe that I was Transgender?

They would come for me and fix me again. I’d rather be dead. I couldn’t survive another “fixing” I realized that I didn’t care one way or another about anything anymore. It would be better for me to just stop trying to be alive now. I started to plan for my death. I knew from years ago, that there was a place in the city that I could do the job proper this time.

During the first few weeks of January 2013 I had been seeing a second councilor concerning decades of  past abuses that had never been resolved in my childhood. Although the one at Outlink was great for LGBTQIA2S issues, they couldn’t help me with my past sexual and physical abuses and, so together we were able to find a low cost one that specialized in terrible childhood traumas.

I was working through those abuses, during that fateful second week of February. I felt utterly and completely destroyed. Life had lost all its color again, I had just stopped caring. I knew that it was wrong and frightening to be this numb emotionally, but I couldn’t stop myself from saying goodbye. I told him that I’d doubt I’d see him again and that I thanked him for all the help he had given me.

But, it seems that although I didn’t want to care, he did though, and he wouldn’t let me leave. I had to promise him that when the hospital crisis team called me I would answer, as he couldn’t physically keep me there. So I left his office, and wandered around downtown although I am still not sure why. I guess my mindset was showing more and more, as I didn’t get asked for change or people would take one look at me and walk off. I didn’t care if someone else did the job, I just didn’t want to be brought back into the Catholic Church once more. I couldn’t take it, what they had done to me under their so-called guise of lovingly fixing me. Not now, not anymore.

I got on the southern leg of the LRT to go home. When I was nearing the Southland LRT station area, I got a call from the crisis team, they wanted to meet me at a hospital. I said I’m sorry I’m not going to waste your time. They asked me what was wrong and I explained that I couldn’t explain over the phone, and there was nothing they could do. I will not allow myself to be fixed again. They ask me to promise them that I would go into the hospital located near the downtown library after work the following day.

I was so tired, I didn’t care but I needed to go home and get some rest, so I said yes.

I would go.

I never imagined what would come to pass because of that promise.

Rachael

Editor’s Note: To read Queer as me – Part 20: Consequences of keeping your word, click here. Or click here to read the previous blog post Queer as me – Part 18: Sexual identity, For the latest LSOP blog posts and so much more, make sure to add us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.