stella

yesterday, i decided not to die.

yesterday was trans day of remembrance. i was at a demonstration. they read out names. every single trans person who died this year – that we know of. the count was around 350. hearing that list was chilling.

every single one of those names is a tragedy. and then there is what i can only conceptualize as a vast, formless void of suffering and death, covering all the thousands more people that we cant count, that we cant name, that we cant remember. every single one of them is a tragedy as well.

i miss these people. i never knew them, and yet i feel their absence, i feel the emptiness they left behind, i feel as if i lost someone. i want to learn about each and every one of the people who were named. connect with them, learn what their lives were like, understand their suffering and pain.

i dont want to be on that list. i dont want others to hear my name in the wave of names at a future tdor, crying for me because i didnt make it. and i dont want to be part of the void, eternally doomed to be forgotten, unable to do anything to help others.

so i decided not to die. i wasnt sure on that in the past – i considered it, maybe it would be a better idea than to keep suffering through life – but now i know. i wont die. i cant. i will live and fight to the end, in the name of all these people who didnt make it. im not sure what im going to do yet, in what ways i will fight, but i know that i will. and i hope that those around me can find the strength and courage to fight as well.

🕯️🏳️‍⚧️✊

CW: Trans thoughts about age, brief HRT mention

I've been thinking about this for a bit now.

I've always felt a bit younger than the people around me – probably because of autism, slowing certain areas of brain development or whatever. I've always been a little more socially inept and immature than others around me. But until recently, it has been mostly unnoticeable and inconsequential.

But now, I am getting physically older, while going through a second puberty thanks to HRT, which makes me feel even more like a stupid teen (as puberty does). More and more, I am confronted with this mismatch between my physical age (20 and growing) and my desire to just be a cute teen girl, doing teen girl stuff.

I feel as if the years were rushing by, as if I was losing time, as if I was getting too old for the things I want to do, want to enjoy, because people around me grow up, while I am ostensibly growing down in a certain way.

Would it be accurate for me to label these feelings as “age dysphoria”? I think it doesn't feel too different from my experience of gender dysphoria now – a strong (and strengthening) mismatch between my physical age and my felt experience of age and maturity.

At 20, I am not the youngest of first-semester students at my uni, but even the people significantly younger than me are a lot more mature and “grown up” than me. It makes me increasingly uncomfortable knowing that I will get older. I feel as if I missed something very important during my first puberty – because I was so busy being depressed and (in hindsight) dysphoric, I wasn't ready to enjoy the things other people around my age, other teenagers, did. I feel ready for that now, but everyone else has moved on to early adulthood.

The idea of growing up scares me, and I deeply wish there was some way to stop it from happening and instead letting me experience what I've missed, with the people I like. But knowing that this will never happen makes me sad. Unlike gender dysphoria where I at least know what steps to take to alleviate it, I am at a loss here. My age dysphoria is growing and I doubt it will ever really go away, with no real way to fix it. My body is too old.

I guess that's all I have for now. Please do let me know your thoughts.

Meow