Another one bites the dust. (suicide)

Last week the body of a 13 year of boy was found in the woods near an adjacent town. The sister of a friend of mine went to the same school as he did. 2 steps away. So close but still a total stranger. Even though I didn't know him it still shook me. The death of a 13 year old child is never a good thing. Immediately people started speculating what had happened. Murder or suicide? I talked to several people about this. I was told that he was a singular boy, quite different from other children his age, and,therefor, was bullied. There were also speculations on whether or not he was gay. But, there were also a lot of witnesses who claimed they saw him going into the woods with a man. I heard the boy was covered in bruises and therefor it must be murder. That he had bruises in his neck that looked like he had been choked. I don't know if that is true. All I know is that, 2 days ago, the police confirmed it was a suicide. His mother and sister are getting support. There was no mention of help being provided for his father who claimed it was impossible that it was suicide.


I don't know what really happened but fact remains that a young boy felt he had no other option then to end his life. I remember when I was 13 and felt the same way. I was about that age when a girl at my school committed suicide. I didn't know her well, only spoke to her a few times, but respected her greatly. She was one of the first openly lesbian girls I ever met. When she died part of me felt sad, because I didn't believe the world was a better place without her. Part of me felt angry, because the world had failed to help her. Part of me felt jealous, because she had done something I had thought about a lot but never had the courage to do. And part of me felt a little proud of her for being brave enough to take control over her own death and with that her life like that.


About 20 years later another one bites the dust. And I don't know why. I made it. I'm okay now, mostly. I don't consider suicide an option anymore though sometimes I regret not having succeeded at it because life can still get to me. At times like this it does. I know I'm not the only one.


"The Suicide Prevention Resource Center synthesized these studies and estimated that between 30 and 40% of LGBT youth, depending on age and sex groups, have attempted suicide." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_among_LGBT_youth

I find these statistics staggering. That many? Really? Of course, I don't know for sure if this boy was gay. I didn't know him. But LGBT youths are 4 times more likely to attempt suicide then heterosexual youths. Those are the odds. You do the math.


The COC that I have told you about has an education program. They provide a sort of workshop at schools to teach about diversity, bullying and LGBT issues. The Trans*-initiative will be providing a training for the educators on trans issues so I decided to come along and see how it works, how the kids respond, what kind of questions they have etc. so I knew what the educators are facing when standing in front of a class. It was an amazing experience. In the end someone always tells his/her own story so I decided to step up right away as the kids had loads of questions concerning transgenders. The kids were great! I was really blown away. I had so much fun. It felt great. I felt like I had done something worthwhile that would help make this world a better place. But clearly, it was not enough. I don't blame myself for the death of this one child. I blame all of us for the deaths of so many children. We say we have come a long way in accepting people who are different. That's great. But it doesn't help these kids that are getting bullied for bing different, these kids that are not being accepted by their own parents, these kids that feel like they have no place in this world. 20 years of progress and still a family has to bury their son, their brother because this boy did not feel safe, did not feel loved, did not feel strong enough to fight this immense force around him that would not accept him for who he was.


This may sound silly but I have literally cried for this boy. Not just for him, for all of us. And I probably will cry every time I hear something like this has happened. I hope this doesn't mean I will continue to cry the rest of my life. I know I'm not the only one who is upset about this. We all should be. But what do we do? The kids at his school are wearing colored pants for a few weeks, because he used to do so. They have no idea what kind of hypocrites that makes them. And how pointless it is if they don't change the way they treat each other. We need to educate our children. To be able to do that, we need to educate ourselves and ask ourselves some tough questions. Are you really open to people who are different from you? Do you accept and respect other people? Do you? Really? Or do you judge them behind their backs and think they won't notice? Are you being honest with yourself on this? Do you practice what you preach? The only way we can change this world is by first being honest with ourselves, change what we need to, and then help others gather the information they need to be able to find acceptance of and respect for those who are different from them.


If you feel like you want to do something more and have the time, check the website to become a volunteer and help educating our children: http://www.cocleiden.nl/nieuws/voorlichtsters-gezocht. One person CAN make a difference. Why shouldn't it be you?


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It's not easy being trans.

When I first came to the conclusion I would be better off being a dude I didn't realize what it all meant. The statement in itself is simple: I identify as male. But it has huge consequences. It impacts your life on every level. One of the things it affects, that most people don't realize, is the past. Suddenly everything you have done in the past has a different light on it. A friend of mine once told me, ages ago, that her boyfriend thought I had anorexia because I wanted to be a boy. It freaked me out because I felt caught. Back then wanting to be a boy was my deepest darkest secret. But it also pissed me off because he was wrong. Wrong in the way that I didn't have anorexia because I wanted to be a boy, but because I was trying to be like a girl. And clearly I failed at it. I started dawning on me a few days ago how much of my past has been determined by the fact that I am a transgender. I hated my body and tried very hard to destroy it. But I didn't want to die. I never wanted to die. I just wanted to pain to stop and this horrible thing that seemed to decide my life for me that I was stuck with, would go away. Looking back I'm amazed how little damage is left from that period, call it a life time. My teeth are bad but some people have that without throwing up all the time. The nerve damage is pretty much gone these days. Healthy diet helped a lot with that. And I have a bunch of scars on my arms, legs and torso that most people don't even notice anymore. Not bad for over 20 years of self-destructive coping devices. But that's just my body.


The mind is a totally different thing. So is time. I can't turn back time and undo those bad things and replace them with events I wish had happened instead. I can't erase that pain, the feeling of loss. Looking back it seems like it was a different person all together who did those things, who lived that life. It wasn't me. It was some sort of alter ego that I created to survive in this world that would judge me for what I seemed to be but was not. When I look back I see this scared little girl, hurting and lonely, and there is nothing I can do to help her, because she isn't real. She never had a chance. And now she is gone and I am here. But I am left with her pain, her trauma, her memories of blood filled nights and the cold hard floor underneath her knees in front of the toilet bowl. I can not make that go away. I thought I had put it behind me, that I had moved on and in a way I have. I just hadn't looked at it from a trans perspective yet and that makes a lot of difference. It all makes a lot more sense now. It also feels more useless. If only... But no such thing. I missed out on most of my childhood because of this, my puberty and adolescence. My early adulthood is overshadowed by my transition process. And what will happen after that? Right now I'm afraid I'll never be a real man, even though I know I already am, boobs and all. But I will never have been a boy growing up, I will not have a past as a man. I will have to start from scratch from here on, as if I was a foreigner moving to a different country. The Land of Man. And I can try to fit in as much as I want but I will always be different. I will always be castrated, no matter what.


So right now I am trying to deal with this. I am mourning. Mourning for my past self who never had a chance at all, and for my future self, for I will never be truly whole.



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Three generations.

A friend of mine got a text today from her mother, stating she was in distress and needed help. Of course my friend went. This is not the first time I have heard about something like this: a parent asking a child for help because they were in emotional distress. Somehow I always get slightly mad about it. A parent should not have to ask their child for help in that way, no matter how old the child is. But it happens, more then you'd think. So I started wondering why.

Why is it that such a large chunk of the previous generation has such trouble dealing with their emotions? Why have they never learned how? So I looked at the generation before them, our grandparents. And there it is. The Second World War. We tend to forget our grandparents were survivors. They saw horrible things and survived them. Concentration camps, the horrible winter, living in constant fear. We forget these things. In times of peace, war seems so far away. No, we are not living in total peace, there is a war going on somewhere every single second. But we don't feel it. We don't see it. Most of us don't anyway. We shy away from the soldiers that come back from fighting wars in countries a lot of people can't even locate on a map. It's not OUR war. We know nothing of war. And we certainly don't notice how quite a few of us, more then we think, are still battling the results of that great war over 50 years ago.

Our parents were taught not to be vulnerable. Showing how you feel, or talking about it, made you vulnerable. At the camps, such things could mean instant death. For fear of losing their children the survivors taught their children what they had done to make it out alive: keep your head down, keep everything locked inside. A very effective survival strategy in the camps, but now the war is over it backfires. A lot of people don't know how to react to how they feel. Sometimes they don't even know what they feel at all. But humans are emotional creatures and not being able to express what they feel is not healthy. So they get confused and sad. I once read somewhere it takes about 3 generations to get over a war trauma. Yes, I believe it really does takes that long. I see it happening all around me; people my generation giving in to the confusion and sadness, allowing it to be present and working through all the emotions to come out more complete, more alive. And then they end up seeing the pain their parents still carry, not resenting them, but feeling sorry for them that they were not able to recover. They still have time. They can still claim their own lives and make something more out of it then sheer survival. I hope they will.

 

Having thought about this I came to realize I'm not mad at those parents. I'm mad at the war and the lack of help for that entire generation. That sure puts things in a different perspective. Seeing the bigger picture might help some people to let go of some of the anger and move towards a more healing attitude. Good luck to all of you.


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