"If a trans girl decides to die, that is her decision, and I will not shame or pathologize it. But there is a big fucking difference between not shaming or pathologizing a suicide and being complicit in it... And the truth is, given even the slightest chance of something changing for the better, I think most of us would choose to live."
- Kai Cheng Thom (2019)
(Art by Rana Mehanny @_rourri 2021)
I can’t keep a plant alive, maybe because I used to faint in public from not drinking enough water. I’m still learning to take care of my body, to honour it’s growth and needs. I’m still learning to love my next breath… I can’t keep a plant alive though sometimes I feel as trapped like a houseplant: dehydrated and neglected, subtropical colours surviving North American winters; root rooting, and veins tired of reaching for the Sun… I can’t keep a plant alive, but I don’t know if they should live here like this anyways; I don’t know if I should live here like this anyways...
It’s not just that I want to die, but also it’s that I don’t know how to live… My depressive spirals bring me back to suicide ideation on a daily, I ponder on the possibilities of death as I wonder my worth. I don’t know how to love this world better as I fear my softness not enough to heal. I don’t know how to live in a city where concrete represses the earth and where glass reach for the sky without care for the wind. I don’t know how to love myself in a world where we act as if it seems, and feels not enough care to go around… What we come to know and compromise as “community”, isn’t community through empathetic collaboration, and we still choose convenience over compassion because we have never experienced the care that we deserve. Thus I say we must consider community softer. Perhaps it’s empathy, and you say it’s being the “bigger” person but I say, it’s about becoming a better person. And perhaps it’s sacrifice, maybe it’s ego death, but it's what does it take for us to love and forgive, both ourselves and those that have harmed us ? Not that forgiveness ever mean access, but we must not give in to the thought of ever being “good” enough while breathing complicity, we must not pretend we have not harmed or deserve forgiveness either. I think maybe in order for some of us to humanize our harm-perpetrators that we must be able to villainize ourselves, as not all victims are “good”, the line between violence survivors and violence contributors is a breath thin. I may be cynical but I believe no true justice in our binary systems of good vs bad, and maybe we’re all bad trying to be falsely good. So why be falsely good when we can be "really" bad, and we still choose to do better ? It’s not the most rewarding nor profitable navigation of a colonial-capitalist society it seems, thus we’re here... As I still walk with ghosts among trees to feel alive, even if I can't keep a plant alive.
I planned to die at 18, and choosing love helped me live as I decided if I can't breathe for myself, I will breathe for community. Yet I still wonder, while surviving at 22 in 2022, I still wonder why we can't keep each other alive. I still wonder, as I get hired to speak every trans day of remembrance, I still wonder why we don't get the flowers we deserve while we still breathe. I still wonder, death after death and moon after moon, I still wonder and fear that "if I die, everyone will be too tired to remember my name" (TASHA 2018)... Thus I stay soft, and I hope we take care. As even if we don't know how to live or love, I hope we don't choose, wish, and cause harm or death. And perhaps knowing that our existence includes both in-direct and direct harms is the step towards minimizing grief. Perhaps that's a plan of a softer care for community, through the balance of ego-death and empathy. There's no right or wrong plan for our survival, but I've been staying soft to allow myself take another breath. And self-awareness/acceptance is certainly not enough, as the violent impacts of colonial-capitalism seduces us through comfort, into complicity... Getting better at the expense of others will never save nor sustain us. And I'm sorry, that it aches and tires so much that we wish to forget, we wish to become better no matter the cost, we wish to believe that it takes more of us on top to change the climate. I'm sorry that being "successful" in this game of a society will not save us, even if we think being the first will not change us, even if we wish to bring as many of us to the table, even if we believe in more seats with our hands tied and tongues censored to keep our seat or access... I'm sorry "that the only way we have been taught to heal is to hurt" (Alok Vaid-Menon 2017).
As Kai Cheng Thom wrote in her essay 'Stop Letting Trans Girls Kill Ourselves' from her book 'I Hope We Choose Love' (2019): "I am uncertain - I have regret - because I think underlying of all the apparently political arguments for passively allowing - or in some cases even supporting - the suicides of trans women are powerful aesthetic and emotional undercurrents that reflect our (queer, trans, racialized) communities' trauma histories and deep ambivalence about relationship building and care. I think the idea that we need to support trans women's decisions to die - in other words, let them die - comes from the ways we understand and feel about love... The arguments around body sovereignty and consent are, to me, clearly rooted in a misunderstanding of what it means to provide care (the action of giving help) and caring (the feeling of being cared about). The predominant (white, colonial) queer/trans narrative of 'proper' consent to being cared for goes something like this: Someone expressed that they are in pain, or you happen to see that they are. You offer them help. If they refuse, you back of, no questions asked. Any further attempt to help could be considered a violation... This narrative holds a lot of resonance for me. Both body sovereignty and consent politics come from movements around medical care and sexual/romantic intimacy. But I believe this approach also comes from a traumatized place: it is rooted in queer and trans experiences of abusive families and intimate partnerships in which we were not allowed to refuse, we were not allowed to leave. So our reaction is to swing to the other extreme: we encourage people to leave, we don't question the refusal of love, even when it is clearly needed"... We still don't know how to care, thus why we still hurt even in community, and we still don't know how to leave or take, we still don't know how to be loved. So I don't expect community to be perfect, as nothing is, and I still think it's beautiful to want or ask for more, not because it's right but because we deserve. It's the love for life that fills beyond politics or poetics, and it's the possibilities of transformative justice for all that keeps me going. As it is the complicity of accepting things as is that keeps violence, poverty, and exploitative/extractive labour or relations going... "After all, we are the society that surrounds trans girls and sends them these messages about life might be worth living. It is our responsibility to change the stakes, to offer different options, to keep reaching out and sending message that we will never stop trying, never stop caring, never stop loving" (Kai Cheng Thom 2019). We must never stop choosing care, even as we still learn to love. And "I don't think we will win, [but] I don't believe hope should be a prerequisite for trying anyways" (Alok Vaid-Menon 2017), I don't believe we need to win this game but it shouldn't mean a lost either. I don't wish we want to win, when we deserve better than continuing this pattern or "nomality" of binary concepts and violent hierarchies... "It is our responsibility to change the stakes", and I believe that it's possible to offer different options, to show the different ways we can survive softer. I believe that we can care more without carrying more, and to love better without hurting more. I believe that we can unlearn to sustain, that we can take turns if we tire, and that we can learn to change. I believe in transformative community, because I have been changed for the better from community. And still everyday, I thinking about and thank everyone that have held me when I needed company or guidance in essence of believing in my worth even when I thought I had none. And still on a daily, as I wonder my worth I will think and thank those who have believed that I can live without contributions but just with care instead. Especially when I spiral depressively, I feel nothing but confusion to the offerings of kindness and love that people give, even if I don't know how to receive... Thus I move towards care as I dare to imagine a return to empathy - I choose to actively show the care that we deserve. I hope that my love lives, so perhaps even if I die and when everyone is too tired to remember my name, they can remember my softness beyond time.