I don't know what to do.

I tried to kill myself in early August. Just a week before my 31st birthday. I’ve been suicidal for most of my life so I should have known better than this, but I tried to slit my wrists in the shower. As I sat there waiting to die, I cried and screamed. I didn’t want it, but the constant pain of being alive was even worse. I was a selfish monster and was simply committing one final selfish act — then everything would be fine. Once I realized I did it wrong and I wasn’t going to die, I was too scared to keep cutting. So I just sat there and cried. I wanted my wife to find me there and pick me up and hold me and tell me everything was going to be okay. She didn’t. I had told her I was trans and needed to explore it and I thought she’d accept it and support me. Instead she told me I was a selfish monster who was going to destroy our family and fuck up our child. She was so angry. She was going to leave me and take my daughter and I didn’t know what else to do. Eventually, I took it back. Just told her I was confused, but that my trans feelings were gone. I really thought they were, but they weren’t. They were just hiding. Just until the danger passed.

I’m too old. I’d transition just in time to become an old crone. I’ll never find anyone to love me. No one ever really has. Not true unconditional love. I dream about meeting a girl who will accept me as I am and make me believe in soulmates again. I dream about becoming myself and finally rediscovering my creative spark. That I will write and paint and play music and do everything I used to love before the world shattered me into a million pieces and I began drifting through life in a dissociative haze. I dream that I can bare my soul to the world and be accepted and loved. But those are just dreams. In the most manic of highs, I believe them. I believe them and know someday I will spend every day dancing in starlight and everything will be beautiful. But then I fall back into darkness. Out of fantasy and back into reality. Ever since I was a small child, my birthday wish every year has been for everything to just “turn out okay.” But nothing is okay and nothing will ever be okay. They’re just dreams and wishes. I have a lot of wishes.

I wish I had understood sooner my family didn’t love me and that it wasn’t my fault. I wish I understood what my father was doing was sexual abuse. I wish I understood it wasn’t normal to be so afraid of your parents that you regularly hid under your bed. I wish I knew what my father did to my brother to make him grow up to molest children. I wish I could have protected him. I wish I had understood my mother wasn’t connected to reality and that when she screamed at me, and strangled me, and threw chairs at me, it didn’t really have anything to do with me. I wish when I blacked out and strangled that boy at school, my teacher had asked what was happening at my home instead of yelling at me and then just dropping it when I couldn’t remember doing anything. I wish someone had said something when every single square inch of my arms were covered in obvious self-inflicted cuts. Something other than “faggot” anyway. I wish I hadn’t given up on high school and dropped out because it was apparent my father was never going to let me leave that awful house no matter what I did. He didn’t want me to grow up and live my own life. He wanted me there, telling him how wonderful he was and becoming a little copy of him. I had to fight tooth-and-nail just to get my foot out the door.

I wish I didn’t have to learn to be such a good liar just to keep myself safe. I wish I didn’t have to teach myself how to smile in the mirror as a child. I wish I had been allowed to be myself. I wish I hadn’t stopped being vegan because my family was starving me. I wish I hadn’t given up on my dreams to travel because they said it was unrealistic. I wish I hadn’t stopped writing fiction and creating art because my parents mocked it relentlessly (while still bragging to everyone about what an artistic, gifted kid they had). I wish I hadn’t stopped being an anarchist because I was told I was stupid. I wish I understood when they asked me what I wanted to be, they were really just asking how I wanted to sell my labor. I wouldn’t have answered so honestly and earnestly. I wouldn’t have been so vulnerable. I wish I’d run off the moment I turned 18 instead of hanging around and thinking I owed these people something.

I remember the cold distant anger of my father when, as a little boy, I said I wanted to be a girl. I wanted to skip and dance and play with the other girls. I love skipping. I didn’t like rough-housing with the other boys. I wanted an E-Z Bake Oven more than anything. I wanted the pink Barbie Power Wheels, but I wasn’t sure why. All I ever got were baseball cards and CDs of music my dad liked. I wish I hadn’t buried all that. Buried it deeper than anything else about myself. I buried it so deep I forgot it was there… until it clawed its way out like a furious lich seeking revenge. On fire and screaming and demanding my full attention.

I wish I recognized myself in mirrors. I wish when people asked if I was gay (oh god, I’ve heard that question countless times) and I’d said no, I’d have realized an unprompted ten minute follow-up monologue about identifying as male despite not being super masculine was probably worth examining. I wish when my first girlfriend offered to let me try on her skirt when I was 19, I had done it. I was afraid I’d like it. No. I knew I’d like it. I so desperately wanted to wear it and twirl with wild abandon. I was afraid of what would happen next. I wish I had listened when my other girlfriends suggested I was… different. But I’d deny it and they’d be relieved. If I became a girl, it would be a “waste of a good cock” they’d say. I wish I had better taste in women.

I wish could redo everything. I wish I knew better back then. I wish I knew to fight back. I wish I knew I had been a wonderful person with a bright future who was worthy of love. I wish I understood the people who abused me and tried to destroy me were monsters. But it’s too late. I’m just an empty shell now, worthy of nothing.

I wish I had died in that shower.

I wish I didn’t have a feminine self to apologize to when I told her she had to stay locked away.

She’s beautiful. I know it. She’s beautiful and loving and confident and everything I’ve ever wanted to be and I am her and I wish I was her. She isn’t afraid like I am. She doesn’t cry like I do. She doesn’t shut down and sleepwalk through every day. Every year. She’s vibrant and alive and every fiber of her being is infused with creation. She loves herself and I love her.

I just don’t want to be alone. Somebody please tell me I’m not alone. I feel like my life is rapidly coming to an end and I never spent any of it living. I just spent it trying to survive and scrape together some semblance of the stability and safety I never had but so terribly needed and now it’s all over. All that’s left is a yawning expanse of decay and withering until I finally gratefully thankfully die. I did everything “right”. I cut all the toxic people out of my life, I got the steady work-from-home job that pays almost six figures, I bought the house in the suburbs, I got married and had a kid (who is the most wonderful, innocent being and I’m sorry I inflicted existence in this terrible fucking world on her. She deserves better. I’m ashamed of myself), I started going back to school for creative writing, my first love. I went to therapy and put all my childhood trauma behind me... at least, I thought I did. I did everything I was supposed to do and I did it all with a brain that only half works thanks to autism and “depression” which I’m now realizing is bipolar II. Why aren’t I happy? I’m supposed to be happy now. All I want is to sit in a dark closet with a bag over my head and wait for the end.

Tell me there’s still time. Or tell me I’m not like this. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m cis.

I don’t know what to do.

Submitted October 10, 2019 at 03:41PM by MabelsGoneBananas https://ift.tt/33hgRn0