The End of Suicide Prevention Month

A few days ago, during the last week of September which is Suicide Prevention Month, another LGBTQ teenager killed himself because of bullying. He was 13.

First: Please remember that there is always someone to call.

The Trevor Project
1-866-488-7386
http://www.thetrevorproject.org

A few weeks ago in a town near Appleton, a young gay man did the same. A local man named Paul Wesselman was so touched by this student’s lost life and the pain his friends were in that he wrote a piece for them, young people who were struggling with being who they are. I found what he said smart and true and asked if I could reprint them here.

1. This is awful.
You are going to feel lots of emotions, and it is going to be difficult for some time: you’ve probably already figured out that being a teenager means lots of complicated, conflicted emotions. Add the suicide death of a friend and the mix of grief, anger, confusion, frustration, sadness, and devastation becomes even more cruel. Your family and friends may not always say or do the “right” things, but I suspect they are mostly motivated by a sincere desire to ease your significant pain. The sad truth for us is that we cannot erase your anguish, because this is just awful.

2. Things will get better.
Don’t hate me for saying this, and I’m not saying it to diminish the extraordinary pain you currently feel. This probably occupies every second of your life right now. Next week you will likely still think about it every few minutes, and for weeks after that you may still find yourself reminded of Cody or of the loss every hour of every day. Eventually, your heart and your mind find a good place to store the positive memories while the grief (which never disappears entirely) will fade into the larger quilt of life.

3. Positive things can evolve from horrible situations.
There is nothing we can do to bring Cody (or my friend Steve) back, and we cannot go back in time and change the circumstances that led up to these awful deaths. We cannot change these tragedies. AND: we do get to choose how we respond to them. I’ve noticed how frequently you post such kind, loving, AMAZING words on each other’s walls. Those heartfelt expressions are profound to all who see them and are tiny examples of the light that may come out of this extreme darkness. (Please note I’m NOT saying “God did this for a reason,” or “This tragedy happened so that good things could happen.” I personally don’t agree with either of those statements. I do believe that when blechy things happen which are beyond our control, we can, if we want, CHOOSE to make sure positive things come out of these awful circumstances.)

4. What you do next is up to you.
After my friend Steve died, his mother Judy transformed the grief and frustration into energy and passion to prevent future suicides by creating LifeSavers. http://TheLiveSavers.net/ has helped thousands of students to become caring listeners and observers. I found these words posted on their website:

USE YOUR POWER OF CHOICE WISELY
Choose to love . . . rather than hate.
Choose to laugh . . . rather than cry.
Choose to create . . . rather than destroy.
Choose to persevere . . . rather than quit.
Choose to praise . . . rather than gossip.
Choose to heal . . . rather than wound.
Choose to give . . . rather than steal.
Choose to act . . . rather than procrastinate.
Choose to grow . . . rather than rot.
Choose to pray . . . rather than curse.
Choose to live . . . rather than die.
-from The Greatest Miracle in the World by Og Mandino

Not only do I hold you in my heart, I also have deep compassion for the tremendous pain that he must have been experiencing. My high school and college years were significantly challenging and I thought about ending my life frequently. I tried more than once. The excruciating pain I felt seemed insurmountable and never-ending. I’m so glad I lived to find out that neither of those were accurate. With time, healing, counseling, and considerable help from a remarkable tribe of friends, I found the strength to face and conquer the darkness and I believe that I eventually found success and sustainable joy not in spite of those hurdles but in part BECAUSE of them.

I share these words not to take away the pain you are feeling, nor to fix what cannot be fixed. I just wanted you to know that you are not alone, and that by relying on your friends and family, your inner strengths, and other resources (school, church, community, etc.), you will remember something that Christopher Robin once reminded Winnie the Pooh:

You are braver than you believe,
stronger than you seem,
and smarter than you think.

What I want to emphasize is that plenty of us left high school and were surprised by how much more power we had in the world than we thought. Not record-breaking power, but the power to find friends we liked, who would support us; power to live where we wanted, where we felt safe or interesting or amazing; the power to make decisions about who we would be and how.

& Finally, to close out Suicide Prevention Month in the hope that we won’t have to have one next year, and with the knowledge that many, many, many trans people struggle daily with grim, hopeless thoughts, here is a resource guide specifically for trans people & their allies put together by NCTE.

It gets better.

My Husband Bitchy

Every once in a while, I will hear that some MTF trans person has vigorously insisted that I am a bitter feminist nightmare and that no married crossdressser or transitioning transsexual should “let” their wives read My Husband Betty.

Really, “let.”

Usually, this charge is on the grounds that I ask people who are MTF trans identified – if they are not living as female & aren’t feminist – to maybe do some research into women’s lives before deciding they will and can live as one (& before expecting absolute, unquestioning acceptance of their trans nature from their female spouse).

Recently I decided to respond:

Asking a trans spouses, especially one born and raised male, to be aware of modern women’s lives isn’t too much to ask, I don’t think, if what the CD/TG is asking for in return is acceptance of their trans nature. In a nutshell, it’s a lot to ask of a spouse or a girlfriend who has just been broadsided by their partner’s trans identity. There is often an expectation that the partner will want to know things, and learn things, and go to support groups, or accompany their spouse to outings. Their gendered feelings may also need to be expressed during sex.

That is, the raised-male spouse is asking his/her wife (depending on how the person identifies) to learn a whole lot about gender variance.

In exchange, I recommend that the person raised male learn something about being a woman, to learn about feminism, discrimination, sexual harassment and violence. Most women know most of these things as a result of living in the world as a woman (and many trans women come to know these things a few years after transition). But while a male-bodied trans person is living in the world as male, they won’t be exposed to these things. (Some MTF trans spectrum individuals, like some males, are feminist and always read about these things. I’m talking about the ones who don’t.)

In a sense, then, you could say I’m asking a lot, if you think asking the trans spouse to learn as much about his/her wife’s experience of life in her body and her gender as s/he is asking her spouse to understand about what it’s like to be trans.

You know, equality, even-steven, a little give and take. It’s a nutty idea, I know.

So crossdressers: read as much about women’s lives as you want your wife to read about crossdressing, and then read some more.

Derelict

Sorry I’ve been so unusually absent from posting here; I can’t really explain it except to say that my mind has been on other things – what things, I don’t really know. The sad fact of it is that I’m having a lot of trouble adjusting to living here; Betty & I both feel like odd ducks, not just in Wisconsin but in academia, too.

So bear with me. I’ve become a little bit of an iceberg, most of me submerged.

Welcome to the Midwest?

I went to Appleton’s Oktoberfest today & tried a deep fried Snickers – disgusting, but still Snickers. What a country: you take a candy bar that’s already a day’s worth of calories and add more fat. Unbelievable.

Still, Oktoberfest was otherwise fun and I got to see a great little ska band from Milwaukee called Something To Do. They were.

Overheard:

Wait, you can go into the bars too?

and (FTW):

Guy #1: I think I got something from that girl.
Guy #2: Are you on antibiotics?
Guy #1: No, I don’t have health insurance.

Betty horrified a couple who were looking at some bottles that had been flattened. I think they were supposed to be kitchen art, the kind of thing you hang up somewhere. Loudly, she exclaims, “Oh, they’re NOT paddles?! Damn, & I thought Oktoberfest finally got an S&M booth!” They skittered away (but there’s a little part of me that hopes they got home & had an interesting evening discovering new things to do with wooden spoons.)

“It Gets Better.”

Dan Savage & his husband Terry talk about growing up gay, the assholes in high school, families you grow up in & families you create. Really beautiful stuff, and please, LGBT teens, watch it.

DADT Repeal Efforts Fail Because Republicans Suck

Amazing that in a country that loves its military, and especially by the party that is notorious for doing all the flag-waving, today failed to pass a bill that would make the military stronger.

And they didn’t pass it because of some old-school bullshit prejudice.

Pathetic. When do we start up the rhetoric about these Senators being traitors to our country? Because making sure our military isn’t as strong as it could be seems like exactly that.

(They never want to fund Veterans’ stuff either, btw.)