by Annie Muse

The National Transgender Discrimination Survey in 2011 found that 41% of its respondents had attempted suicide at some point in their lives . Annie Muse suggests that keeping oneself safe from self-harm is not so much about “coming out” to others as it is about “coming in” to oneself.

(This piece came out of a recent private discussion about suicide statistics and whether it’s tougher to come out as transgender than as lesbian, gay, or bisexual.)

As someone who has dealt with gender issues for a long long time, I have found that discussions based on hearsay and politics are a little hard to take. I can’t speak to whether it is easier to come out gay or to come out transgender but I may have a little insight into the question of suicide amongst transgender people.

I was nearly a statistic myself.

For me, it has been less about “coming out” to society and those who are close to me than about “coming in” to who (and what?) I, in my deepest most being, am.

As a young person I struggled with acceptance of my true self. I have lived with two realities — (1) the reality that everyone around just assumes, based on appearances, that I am a male, that I will relate to others as male, that I will have the interests that are “male”, etc…. along with the baggage that comes from being externally gendered, at least in our society, and (2) an internal reality: a reality of how I perceive my body and how I perceived myself subconsciously. For example, my dreams have always been “in female”… For many years my only safe place was in my sleep.

When I have been in intimate relations I have wished (needed?) to be “more” for my partner.

Anyway, when those two realities collide with seemingly no way to get consensus, it is not only confusing mentally and emotionally but actually painful. Often, people don’t seem to appreciate that real pain is involved in the transgender experience. It is a pain that never lets up as long as the the psychic dissonance exists; it is a pain that reappears with every reminder of the mismatch.

So was my true self based in my brain or my body? What can be “fixed”?

Suppose a person has a heart transplant. Their true self remains unchanged, they now just have “a medical history”, but a history that doesn’t change who they really are.
Now, suppose someone gets a brain transplant. Is it a brain transplant…? — or a body transplant? This was the sort of philosophical quandary I found myself in. Something had to change. Something had to be fixed. It seemed to be the kind of thing I could best deal with psychologically: I would just learn to accept my situation.

I spent a lot of time in psychological counseling at my time of crisis, now, many years ago. Therapists were helpful at teaching me to care for myself but when it came to coming to terms with my issues, neither they, nor I, could quite get our heads around it.
I lacked a vocabulary for describing how I felt and perceived the world.

So the therapists would include me in group therapy with gay guys, I suppose with the hope that I could accept my sexual orientation and “learn how to be gay.” But this never quite got there. I didn’t identify with the gay men I met. Their struggles were not my struggles. It never quite “scratched the itch”….

My depression deepened. It was a very sad, frightening, deep black time for me. Eventually, I committed myself to a mental institution just to protect myself from myself.
Fortunately, I survived all this and with an enormous dose of denial I moved on, living the way a male is supposed to live.

I have lived a good and a full life.

And as an older person I finally was able to come to terms with who I truly am and how I need to live the rest of my life.

So now I live as a “Woman with a Medical History.” As I’ve “come in” to myself, to a very large degree my dissonance has subsided. It can be very difficult though. But I have found peace.

I’ve done what I could do.

So that’s a little of my story.

Other posts in this series

• Who are you? I really want to know! (23 Jan 2012)
• White lines and a bell-shaped curve: The Rule of the 68% (25 Jan 2012)

Resources

If you are feeling depressed or having thoughts about suicide, please get help!

In Alaska, contact the Identity Helpline at (907) 258-4777 (in Anchorage) or (888) 901-9876 (toll free outside Anchorage) from 6:00 to 11:00 PM 7 days a week.

National LGBT hotlines: Contact the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender National Hotline at (888) 843-4564 (toll-free) Monday to Friday, 12 noon to 8:00 PM (Alaska time), Saturdays 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM (Alaska time), or The Trevor Project at (866) 488-7386.