Transition is Lonely

TW: suicide, depression

I know loneliness. I was its constant companion: lifelong. From being a kid with a confusing secret I didn’t know how to articulate, to being an adult, late-twenties, googling if it was possible to die from lack of shared physical proximity to social contacts. I felt its hands particularly tighten at the end of 2020, after a solitary Christmas, and New Year’s Eve spent dancing solo in my living room with vodka and orange juice clutched in hand, uploading it all to the internet. On the 1st January 2021, I sat with a packet of pills and contemplated (not for the first time) ending my life.

Since starting testosterone in July of this year, I have felt the call of that bone-deep isolation return, the urge to disappear myself. There is a logic to it. See: I have always been physiologically alone. As a 30-year-old, it has baffled me watching my mother attempt to hug me whenever I come around, as this felt so out of reach to me when I was young. See: I have always been hereditarily alone, aka my family history. My father, depression gripping at his edges, making him blur; his dissatisfaction all-consuming. My grandad, recently gone, who I suspect was relieved of duty; every winter tiptoeing past the room he sat in, mute, drowning in the dark. And to recently learn of my nan, my light: apparently it wasn’t easy. Hospitalised in a mental health institute immediately following the birth of her youngest children, time spent away from them, how much does she recall? These lines… these tethers.

See also: being trans in the UK. Being the only trans person I know intimately. Being confusingly trans, inexplicably trans, not-quite-sure-of-anything trans. I know taking testosterone was the right decision: I do not know for how long that will be the case. (And there’s nobody I can talk to about that.)

Whether it’s the hormones intensifying my emotions or just the act of putting on the gel each day reminding me I’m different, I feel basically unsupported. I feel flung out to sea, and really, really, there’s only me to sail this boat. My arms hurt and I keep passing out at the wheel, bumping into rocks. Those rocks are people, and ones I’ve hurt with my rapidly changing mood swings. I’m terrified of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, of othering myself into oblivion until the suicide I hypothesise is my logical end, becomes it.

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I don’t know where to go from here, as this post is more of a diary entry than anything easily resolvable. Just so you don’t worry about a relative internet stranger: I have friends in the ‘meat space’ who, though perhaps not quite well-equipped, are well-intentioned, and do support my transition (in principle) at least. I’ve been keeping things from them, yes, the extent of my misery but don’t we all have shit going on in our thirties? I’m not trying to burden anyone.

So here is this post. A way for some of the weight to be taken off my ailing hands. I’m no good at endings. I hope it stays that way.

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