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End of pride month thoughts
Jun. 30th, 2022 11:36 amPride month is over and as usual I've been thinking about what that means. The Pride march has been illegal for many years, since before I came out, so I've never attended one.
Am I proud? The truth is that, after everything that has happened to me (a lot of which is because of transphobia) I consider myself lucky to be alive. Well, it's partly luck, partly the way my nervous system protected me, and partly because I continuously made the choice to stay alive. Even when I was at my lowest points, I clung to the idea that I could be safe and happy, some day.
And things are slowly getting better, so I'm damn grateful to my past self for hanging in there and I fucking WISH she could see me now so she'd know all her hard work isn't for nothing.
Being proud to have survived feels wrong, because I know that if things had gone a little worse for me, I could have been (and still could be) just another dead trans woman. There's no shame in death.
But I am proud that I survived to become a kind person who generally makes the people around me happy. I'm committed to healing so I don't bleed all over the people I love, which is something not everyone has the strength to do. THAT, I am proud of.
Am I proud? The truth is that, after everything that has happened to me (a lot of which is because of transphobia) I consider myself lucky to be alive. Well, it's partly luck, partly the way my nervous system protected me, and partly because I continuously made the choice to stay alive. Even when I was at my lowest points, I clung to the idea that I could be safe and happy, some day.
And things are slowly getting better, so I'm damn grateful to my past self for hanging in there and I fucking WISH she could see me now so she'd know all her hard work isn't for nothing.
Being proud to have survived feels wrong, because I know that if things had gone a little worse for me, I could have been (and still could be) just another dead trans woman. There's no shame in death.
But I am proud that I survived to become a kind person who generally makes the people around me happy. I'm committed to healing so I don't bleed all over the people I love, which is something not everyone has the strength to do. THAT, I am proud of.
