(no subject)
I should be doing homework, but I don't really feel like it, and if I don't write this now I don't know if it'll ever get done.
The English teacher I have a huge grudge against (he's kind of the one who pushed me to socialized and made me cry and by proxy has traumatized me to the point where I have difficulty looking him in the eye) made a speech today as part of a promotion for a suicide prevention walk. There are intensely personal reasons for his doing this, and while I won't go into those here very much, he did end up discussing his own fight with mental illness briefly. He then talked about how great the therapy he has received in the ensuing years has been for him, and he went on to explain that here on campus we have a great community of counselors and teachers and friends. He concluded that bit by saying "Just remember, you are not alone here."
This, of course, lead to me smiling bitterly in my pew. Because to my knowledge, I am alone--not in the world, of course, but certainly here at school. I've sought out the counseling services here at school, and they're just not equipped for kids like me--kids who aren't cisgender, or kids who are intensely uncomfortable with their own bodies. It turns into a huge talk, as I'm trying desperately to educate the person I'm seeing in the hopes that she'll be able to find some kind of solution. But even the terminology I'm using to describe myself is beyond her, and in the end I know that really, there's nothing she can do, or anyone can do. It's why I don't find it necessary to come out to people, because I know that even if they know, there's nothing they can do. It's not going to change anything in the way they view me--they'll still refer to me with female pronouns, still call me by my given name, still think of me as a girl. And that's fine, because they shouldn't change their entire perspective just for me.
But that knowledge doesn't make the discomfort--I hesitate to call it dysphoria, because I imagine it's a 150 times worse for other people, therefore I can't really be dysphoric--go away. This week especially has been bad--Sunday and Monday I was practically sick I was so uncomfortable, and today I was just. Uncomfortable. And I want to reach out, but there's no one to reach out to--because the people that know are either too busy or can't do anything anyway, not even sympathize. I know that all gender experiences are intensely personal, so you can't really know what the other person is going through, but there is some comfort to be found in having someone else say "I went through something like this, and it sucks, but it's going to be okay." And there's no one like that here. I'm willing to educate, and I do as much educating as I can, but sometimes I get tired of leading the way and I just want to listen to someone tell me how the hell you do this, or how I CAN do this.
It's just. I don't know. Stupid, because I shouldn't be this focused on it, but it's so hard to ignore sometimes. I feel like the dumbest teenager in the world saying this, but here? I am alone.
The English teacher I have a huge grudge against (he's kind of the one who pushed me to socialized and made me cry and by proxy has traumatized me to the point where I have difficulty looking him in the eye) made a speech today as part of a promotion for a suicide prevention walk. There are intensely personal reasons for his doing this, and while I won't go into those here very much, he did end up discussing his own fight with mental illness briefly. He then talked about how great the therapy he has received in the ensuing years has been for him, and he went on to explain that here on campus we have a great community of counselors and teachers and friends. He concluded that bit by saying "Just remember, you are not alone here."
This, of course, lead to me smiling bitterly in my pew. Because to my knowledge, I am alone--not in the world, of course, but certainly here at school. I've sought out the counseling services here at school, and they're just not equipped for kids like me--kids who aren't cisgender, or kids who are intensely uncomfortable with their own bodies. It turns into a huge talk, as I'm trying desperately to educate the person I'm seeing in the hopes that she'll be able to find some kind of solution. But even the terminology I'm using to describe myself is beyond her, and in the end I know that really, there's nothing she can do, or anyone can do. It's why I don't find it necessary to come out to people, because I know that even if they know, there's nothing they can do. It's not going to change anything in the way they view me--they'll still refer to me with female pronouns, still call me by my given name, still think of me as a girl. And that's fine, because they shouldn't change their entire perspective just for me.
But that knowledge doesn't make the discomfort--I hesitate to call it dysphoria, because I imagine it's a 150 times worse for other people, therefore I can't really be dysphoric--go away. This week especially has been bad--Sunday and Monday I was practically sick I was so uncomfortable, and today I was just. Uncomfortable. And I want to reach out, but there's no one to reach out to--because the people that know are either too busy or can't do anything anyway, not even sympathize. I know that all gender experiences are intensely personal, so you can't really know what the other person is going through, but there is some comfort to be found in having someone else say "I went through something like this, and it sucks, but it's going to be okay." And there's no one like that here. I'm willing to educate, and I do as much educating as I can, but sometimes I get tired of leading the way and I just want to listen to someone tell me how the hell you do this, or how I CAN do this.
It's just. I don't know. Stupid, because I shouldn't be this focused on it, but it's so hard to ignore sometimes. I feel like the dumbest teenager in the world saying this, but here? I am alone.