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While I've written a couple of stories that dealt with suicide, I've never had the nerve to describe my own experience. Until now. Please ... please be careful, before reading this story, and make sure it's something you feel you can handle. Knowing other people are okay is a lot more important to me than knowing this story is read.
=-=-=
It was ... a small cut.
Well, it was relatively small.
But ... it was big enough for me to escape.
When I say me, I don't mean this hunk of flesh people point to when they point to me.
I was talking about the red, fluid me; the real me, hiding in the cage that had been mangled by testosterone.
The cut through which I was escaping had been easier than I'd expected to make.
After shoving the last rack of dishes through the industrial dishwasher, and stacking the last of the plates where the chefs could easily reach them, my boss had asked me to take out the trash. After tossing the trash into the dumpster, one of the bags came open.
Sticking out of that bag was a restaurant size can of tomato puree. The razor sharp top was almost, but not completely removed from the can. Bits of puree were still attached to the top. The bits were red ... like me. That's when a thought occurred to me.
I could make it look like an accident. Work related accidents happen all the time. And then ... then I'd be free.
I was expecting it to hurt more. There was almost no pain at all when I ran my wrist across the can top.
As I started feeling light-headed, I also felt a pang of guilt. I knew, eventually, somebody would see what had happened. And they wouldn't understand I was escaping. And my boss might get in trouble. He was really nice. I didn't want him to get in trouble.
My wrist was slippery when I covered the cut with my hand. I wobbled a bit while walking around the dumpster. I weaved like I was drunk as I wandered towards the back door of the restaurant where I worked. I leaned against the doorframe when I reached it, but didn't have the strength to knock, so I banged on the door with my foot.
I'm not sure what happened next. I know I survived, because I'm here today writing this story. There's still times when I think of escaping, but I know of more options now than I knew then. I'm glad I have those options now. I've decided living in a world where people can see the real me, even with the body I'm stuck in, is better than escaping.
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Comments
I understand the pain,
I've been near that point myself too many times. I'm glad you are still here!
Thank you!
I'm glad to be here! If I wasn't still here, I wouldn't have been able to meet you, or any of the other awesome folk here at BCTS.
Tough Subject
Well done.
Supposedly, there is a strong thirst involved in bleeding that much. Maybe a thirst for life?
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Hrmmm...
I don't think it had been a thirst for anything. More of just ... wanting to escape something. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you had meant. My brain doesn't seem to be firing on all cylinders today.
I've been on the edge at least 3 times
somehow, never managed to go through with it.
huggles hon.
I'm so glad ...
... you didn't go through with it. The world woulda been a darker place without ya.
*hugging back*
There are so many people who
There are so many people who life you can touch and make better. So many people can touch your life and make it better.
The internet can be a force for good as well as bad.
Reach out like you do on here. This life is just to prepare us for what comes next.
Take care , escape in your mind , if not with your body.
Leeanna
I've been learning ...
... to reach out. It wasn't much longer after the night in this story, I had decided to start searching for others like me. At the time, I didn't know even the word transgender, let alone how it applied to me and others. While I won't say I'm all better, at least knowing I ain't alone, has helped a bit.
So here I sit trying not to cry……..
I know pain - it’s an old friend, one that has often kept me comfort as I lie in the dark not sleeping. Physical pain has never been an issue for me as I was graced at birth with a very high pain threshold. Neither gunshot or shrapnel, rifle bayonet or scalpel, bodily pain is merely an inconvenience.
But many is the night that I have suffered the soul crushing pain of dysphoria. Pain so bad that I too have sought death, both at my own hand and at the hand of others. My own sense of duty and the love of my family and comrades kept me from dying at my own hand, and my sense of honor and duty to those I was responsible kept me from death at the hands of a foe - that and actions of my troops.
Eventually I was forced to face my demons and I realized that only by becoming my true self would I find any peace.
But there are still nights where those demons haunt me, my old friends.
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
Coping with dysphoria ...
... can be pretty awful. There's been times I felt I couldn't move forward. There's been times I just wanted to hide. There's times I've wanted to give up. But, with the support of others, I've reached a point where things don't feel as impossible as they used to. I'm glad you were able to face your own demons. It's not an easy thing to do, but in my own experience, I've found it's definitely worth it.
-Hugs-
I am also glad you are still here. <3
*hugging back*
I'm glad too! <3
The Cut and Rage
...were both stories that affected me just like those warnings
at the beginning of each cautioned me about + for a while
I didn't know what to comment. I mean wow, intense!
But they can't all be sweetness and light, they're part of your story
and you needed to post them. We can share the bad stuff too.
Some people are in a place where they just can't read
a story with a CAUTION: ATTEMPTED SUICIDE tag
+ they really shouldn't; but it's something many of us have been through.
Maybe some day I'll have to post something like this
and it would be isolating to say the very least
if nobody bothered to read it or said something
like "Well THAT was depressing. Why can't you just be a clown?"
But that's life. There's ups and there's downs,
and like the old song goes, sometimes
the Merry-Go-Round breaks down
and it's not a Merry Melody...
~much hugglez, Veronica
Well shit, I guess it really CAN happen here..,
.
To be honest ...
... I almost always avoided reading stories with tags like what's in this story and Rage. It wasn't because I thought those tags made the stories bad. It was more because I was trying to keep myself safe, and I knew stories like that would trigger, stuff, and I just didn't feel strong enough to deal with old wounds being reopened.
Lately, I've been dipping a toe into a couple of stories with tags like that. There were a few times when I got overwhelmed, and just had to walk away, and try to pull myself together again. But ... there were a few stories I managed to get through to the end. It was mostly very short stories that I seemed be able to handle best. That's sorta why these stories have been relatively short.
I think I'm gonna be trying to get back into more positive stories. Even though it has helped to be able to speak up, and let others see into some of the shadows cast across my life, I don't really want to focus on that. I'd much prefer on focusing on how things could be better, and have characters who are kind, loving, supportive, and trustworthy. But it also means a lot to me that you'd be willing to follow me down some of my darker paths too.
{{{hugging you tight}}}
I wrote this in response to a
I wrote this in response to a self castration story, but it applies to this as well.
I often wonder. If men and women were treated the same, dressed the same. played the same roles in society. Would you still have did what you did?
Just the fact that having extra flesh between your legs at birth means society decides you must live in a certain way.
If you think about it, you grab a handful of flesh between your legs, and that handful decides an entire different life plan for you. (I know there are more internal differences).
It's just that, at birth the fact that your genitals look a certain way, maps out how you will be dressed, what jobs you will do, how people will relate to you etc. It's bazaar when you think some flesh that weighs less than a pack of sausages has that much power!
I'm not blaming anyone that's they way most societies have worked for thousands of years.
Many men are emotionally crippled, because society needed/needs big strong men that don't cry to go off and die in a war some day. They often don't get the emotional support that women/girls do. They get "shut up, don't act like a girl/" They are taught to bottle it up.
Then we wonder why male suicides are twice that of women and some men explode and mass murder because they can't talk through how they feel, for fear of being labeled weak.
There should be no need for women's rights, gay rights, black rights. There should just be human rights. Until that day there will never be equality.
Take away the odd pound of flesh, the fact that we love people with or without the same sexual bits as us and our skin pigmentation. We are all just human.
The perhaps you wouldn't feel the need to leave the life you are forced to live.
Leeanna
I can't say for sure ...
... because it's not easy to guess about how I would have reacted if the world was the way you described, but I think, maybe, I might not have felt the need to escape. When I was really little, I remember feeling confused, and frustrated, when I was forced to get my hair cut short, and wasn't allowed to wear anything pretty.
Being told it was because I was a boy had no meaning to me. After a while, my mom finally broke down, and explained the physical differences I had. Even after I realized what made me different from my sister, it still didn't make sense I would be treated different from her.
I think that's why I started writing Janegirl Camp. I wanted to create a place where having been born with certain body parts didn't stop you from being gentle, affectionate, or pretty. While campers at Janegirl Camp don't have to always be like that all the time, they're given room to explore things like that, and decide how much of that they want to be a part of themselves, without judgement or pressure.
So overcome by loss
I was outed 2 days before Christmas in 2004. They pumped me full of drugs that made me think of suicide. Lost a wife of 38 years, and my family disowned me. I lost my friends, church and everything. It's taken almost 16 years but I don't think of suicide any more. I hope that lasts. There is so much more that could be said, but I'm sick of it and I suppose so are you.
That sounds awful!
Losing so much, all at once, sounds like it musta been really painful. I'm really glad you're still with us, even after goin' through all that.
{{{huggles}}}