#i just got tired of hearing the wrong pronouns constantly and I got furious when I found out that this woman outed my coworker

[shingodzillaa]

Im tired of having to weigh the pros and cons between reporting someone for misgendering me multiple times (having been corrected multiple times by multiple people) and feeling comfortable and safe at work.

It’s like, as long as I’m the easy going, super nice tranny that doesn’t overly correct others on their pronouns, doesn’t “shove their identity in my face”, then I get treated somewhat decently. People are nice to me, they seek me out to talk to me. No one is on edge around me or uncomfortable. I’m not blacklisted or a trouble maker.

But then that means they get to be disrespectful and misgender me. Constantly. It doesn’t matter how politely or forgiving I am about correcting them, they will still misgender me, because I’ve shown that I won’t really force it down their throat.

As soon as I complain, as soon as it gets to me and I say something, a switch is flipped. Im basically treated like an outsider. “Ooo watch out, don’t talk to Lukas too much because if you mess up once he’ll report you to HR.”

all I wanted was to be treated like everyone else. All I wanted was to not be disrespected and made uncomfortable by the constant barrage of misgendering.

But it doesn’t help when my store manager basically tells the people who are constantly. on purpose. Misgendering me (and telling other people that I am trans when they don’t know and correctly gender me and my other trans male coworker as well!!!) to basically just ignore me if they can’t get it right.

Like on the one hand, not being constantly misgendered. On the other hand, being actively ignored by people you work 40+ hrs a week with.

It’s just feels like I’m losing no matter what right now and I hate it here.

[deadgodsuggestions]

I’m finally gonna talk about why I’ve been inactive for months. 

This post is going to be solely about me, not my poetry or writing. It’s going to include themes of suicide and mental illness, as well as drug abuse and self harm, so be careful reading. 

The last time I posted was in October, and that’s when things started getting worse. I was prescribed valium, and I fell in love with it the first time I took it. I still love it. I would be high every moment of every day if I could be. But the valium would eventually run out, so I started smoking weed as well. I was working one job at the time, but eventually got another one.

These two jobs were what ended up breaking me. Some days I was working fourteen hours, which was far too much for I think any seventeen year old. My grandparents were constantly out of town. I was living in a three story house by myself, with these dogs that were never happy because no one was ever home. That house is too big to be so empty, and coming home to no one after exhausting myself hurt more than I ever thought it would. 

I was smoking every night to go to sleep, just so I could get some quality sleep. Recalling that time of my life is still triggering today. 

My breaking point was my eighteenth birthday. I was off one job, and got a piercing with a friend. I tried to enjoy myself, but had to go to my other job directly after. I got to work at 4:30 and didn’t get home until 2AM. 

The roads were icy. It was dark. I was going ninety in a sixty-five. I was bone tired, and I was convinced this exhaustion was going to be the rest of my life. I’d been planning for a month at this point to pull the steering wheel and hope my death looks like an accident. I was so fucked up that I spoke to my friend about it. He knew a shitton more about cars than I do, and he said it’d be easy for me to die in a crash. 

In his defense, he told me this with the thought that I would try to fix some of the issues. 

I called my mom instead of killing myself that night. I laid in the floor and cried, and I don’t think I’ve ever cried so hard. 

I did this for the next two nights. Three nights my mom had to hear me tell her I was going to kill myself with nothing she could do about it. She was on the other side of the country, after all. 

My grandmother was in town at the time. She was meant to be flying out of town Monday morning, and I texted my aunt, her daughter, and 3AM the night before telling her I was planning to kill myself and I shouldn’t be left alone. I was afraid of telling my grandmother, and rightfully so. She was at the airport when she finally answered my aunt’s calls and she lost it. She was furious, and I was the one that got screamed at over the phone. I texted another friend and went to her house.

I still feel shitty about this. I’d just told everyone I was going to kill myself and then I disappeared, but if I hadn’t left I would have killed myself in that house. 

I stayed at my friend’s for a couple hours and played with her dog. Eventually, she and my mother convinced me to go home. 

I did, and my grandmother was waiting for me, more scared than mad now and crying harder than I’d ever seen. We spoke, and she drove me to a hospital. She stayed with me until a car came to pick me up to take me to a mental hospital. They wouldn’t let me have my phone in the car, so I stared at the moon for an hour and a half and listened to the driver’s godawful music until we got there. 

When we did, I sat in a room for close to an hour crying my eyes out. I’d gotten there during a shift change, so it isn’t really their fault that I had to wait for so long. 

Alex was the nurse that finally helped me. She had a pride pin on her uniform and the sweetest smile, and I was such a bitch to her because I was scared. (I later apologized and she said she took none of it to heart and that it was alright.) I disclosed my transness to her and she made my roommate the only other trans guy there. We’ll call him T. Once I finally tried to sleep, that was after roaming the day room for an hour to wear myself out. (It was 2AM at this point and I should have been tired, but my nerves were shot because my intake was traumatizing.)

I woke up the next day to T falling into his wheelchair. He must’ve noticed me roll over because he laughed and asked if he woke me up, to which I responded, “Just a little.”

He laughed a lot louder than before, and excused himself to the bathroom with the warning that he might need help getting back into his wheelchair. I was more than fine with helping him, and I did. We bonded that morning. 

He came with me to get a composition notebook from the front desk and boldly wrote my name and pronouns on the front of it. He seemed so happy to me, and oh so very willing to help. 

I never would have guessed that T successfully killed himself. He was dead for two minutes before they brought him back, and he was pissed off about it. I think about him every day. I miss him every day. 

He introduced me to B, who had discovered during their stay that they’re nonbinary. I congratulated them, of course, and sat around and talked about gender with them. I have their contact info. I watch their streams sometimes. 

I need to talk to them more, because I think about them every day, too. 

We went to the gym one day, with a boy we’ll call Q. He was eighteen, same as me, and lanky as all hell. He didn’t seem like the type that I would get along with, and I’ve never been more delighted to have been wrong. Q loved the idea of the occult, and I am a balls-to-the-wall pagan with a lot of stories to tell. We made a tarot deck with uno cards and I read our fortunes in the day room. We talked about the concept of god with B. It was a great time. 

I need to talk to Q more, too. He witnessed me drunk on seroquel for the first time, where I confessed my platonic love for him and told him he was my type. I have a boyfriend, so I wasn’t hitting on him. 

I’m just dumb, and drunk me never knows when to shut up. 

I mentioned my medication, so I’ll talk about it now. At the hospital, I was diagnosed with bipolar type two. I knew this would be my diagnosis. I’d known I was bipolar for years. My mother is, and now we’re on the same medication. 

I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily gotten any easier, but my struggles are different and interesting now, so I’m less inclined to kill myself. 

Q left the day before me. He wasn’t much of a hugger, so we very seriously shook hands while I told him how happy I was. 

A lot of people left before me. A woman I’ll call C, who held me like a mother would when I cried and told her I didn’t think I could do it anymore. There was a woman I’ll call P, who was a carbon copy of my mother. Hugging was frowned upon, but I probably held her for half my time there. Another woman I’ll call N. She didn’t want to talk to anyone, a real hardass about opening up. I sat in front of her and told her my story, and she told me hers. the first day we met. 

I checked up on the elderly patients every change I got, which was a lot. They usually half smiled at me. I could tell it meant something to them that someone cared enough to tap their shoulder and tell them good morning. An elderly women I’ll call D always called me sweetie in the smallest voice and to this day the memory makes my heart melt. 

It wasn’t all bad. I’ve been out for about two months now. My grandmother is making a real effort to understand my mental illness, because it isn’t an easy one. My mother came to visit when I got out of the hospital and also for christmas. It was good seeing her. 

I quit my jobs. No call, no show while I was in the hospital. I could have fought them, but I let one of them fire me. I’m still unemployed, but I’m volunteering now. I work with a dog rescue on Saturdays, when I’m in town. I made a road trip from Colorado to Arizona and met my boyfriend in person for the first time. I’m in Montana while I’m writing this, contemplating how lucky I am to be alive. 

At the end of the day, it’s difficult. But I’m glad I’m not dead. I’m struggling more with mania than depression now. My violent intrusive thoughts are prohibiting me from working with dogs as much as I want, but I’m figuring it all out. 

I’ll never really be okay, but I hope I can be stable one day. I hope I can have more good days than bad days and more mild episodes than batshit. 

I’m going to text B and Q today, and when I get home and find my notebook, I’m going to text T, too.