I cannot call the time that I have spent in this place a “closet.”
I should not need to adulterate my account with the language of queer struggles in order to humanize experiences that are unique to me and not necessarily analogous to those of others. The harbinger of change is not assimilation, but rather, sincerity.
For weeks, I have known, not a closet, but a womb. Yes. Trapped in a dark place, on someone else’s whim, a product of a containment policy. My body belongs not to me, but to the spirit of the times. It is enmeshed in a historical tradition of stigma and a de facto criminalization of my social reality that is founded upon and simultaneously reinforces that subjugation.
A little over a month ago, I attempted suicide. And while the path was complex and one could enumerate multiple causes, it was a single thing that pushed me over the edge.
Specifically, it was the cumulative trauma that I had sustained over the course of my experiences with the psychiatric system and university administrators at several schools that led me to believe I was forever a prisoner.
I cannot stress this enough...it was the system. It WAS the system. The punitive approach, the loss of all autonomy and instrumental value as a patient, the involvement of law enforcement, the devastating fear of incarceration, the blatant abuse at the hands of mental health professionals, the routine institutional violence, the victim blaming, the complete and utter helplessness, the deep and oppressive fear of unsolicited power. Every encounter damaged me, haunted me forever. Every incident plunged me further into isolation and despair and deterred me further from reaching out for help. Every episode added to my high record of iatrogenic trauma.
From my freshman year of high school until now, I feel as though I have endured psychiatric rape. I have carried these experiences inside of me with shame and unimaginable silence. No one has ever acknowledged the depth of the trauma that I have sustained at the hands of the system.
But I am.
A month ago, I desperately wanted to reach out for help. But my multiple suspensions and involuntary hospitalizations in high school (along with the literal policing of my body, such as when the school nurse routinely checked my arms), combined with being reported behind my back if teachers even suspected me of being upset in school, even if I only looked like I was crying because of a torn contact lens, combined with the disempowering hospital experience and prisoner-like/cruel/degrading treatment of mental health patients that I experienced,
the disrespect for one's body, combined with the possibility of a hotline sending police to my residence if I accidentally hung up on them, as they did to a couple of my friends, combined with therapists who ganged up on me with my mother when she tried to control my therapy sessions, combined with a therapist who wanted to hospitalize me to scare me out of being depressed, combined with my arrest by police on my own front lawn, combined with my involuntary removal from TCNJ for suicidal ideation,
combined with the TCNJ guard who actually told my mother where the police station was when she wanted to leave me there because she didn’t want a trans* child with mental health issues, combined with the involvement of RUPD and the threat of emergency transport and almost being kicked out of the dorms, combined with the indefinite possibility of being kicked out of my dorm, combined with the criminalizing language of university policies that use phrases such as “students who threaten suicide” and “disciplinary action,” combined with the stern reminders of every mental health professional I had ever seen that they would need to report me if I revealed too much,
combined with eight years of being made to feel like a criminal when I had hurt absolutely no one, coalesced in order to convince me that the clinician’s agency would always trump my own. And in the process, my very humanity would be resisted, rather than explored and faced.
I think this is why my peers, too, resist my experiences instead of listening to them. For I have found in this past month that re-connecting with others and gaining their acceptance once more means locking away the institutionalization of a human being and succumbing to-or even being bred by-the fear of being pathologized.
This involves creating an alternative space inside.
Let’s revisit that womb. I am expected to nourish others continuously-to nourish the self-centered origin of those in positions of clinical and administrative power by accepting my perennial status as a safety risk, to nourish the paradigm of those in my social circles of positive psychology by surrendering my right to think and feel as I desire, however dark and scary my human legitimacy may be to others.
This is what it means to be in a womb, to live as an umbilical cord, to be an ambassador to another body, to be a bridge between life and death, to be a ghost, with one foot in the world of the dead and the other in the world of the living without fully belonging to either.
It means that people would be sad to see you go, but you are still alone. Your lived experiences are unspeakable. They are too heavy, too serious, too upsetting.
The full recognition of your rights as a living, breathing person is conditional on whether or not you are willing to run away from and never speak about the single most important and meaningful thing that has ever happened to you, because no one wants to hear about something like that.
We are taught that love conquers all, but only when those we love are sterile. And we cannot love someone until they have faced an “effective” intervention, until they have been evaluated, diagnosed, locked up, and given a prescription pad.
Think about what this does to a person, this institutionalized and socially sanctioned demonization of people like you.
Think about the constant lack of consent, the intrusion into your personal affairs, the control of your body, the penetration by cops and people in white coats, and stigma gyrating all of the while with the hips of a rocking horse as you lay backed up against a wall. The constant force leaves you with bureaucratic-induced brain damage and scars that no one can see. You feel trapped, and you make the decision to not be trapped anymore.
When you emerge, you are reborn.
They say that a rose by any other name would be just as sweet. And yet, who you are before an attempt and who you are after are qualitatively different. They are not separate and equal. There is no such thing. One of them remains fundamentally damaged.
But with this observation comes hope. If substantive and qualitative change can strike once, it can strike again.
I came across this beautiful article, and the author says this: “Listen to someone who is suicidal and you often hear a need for change so important, so indispensable, that they would rather die than go on living without the change. And when the person feels powerless to make that change happen, they become suicidal.”
Rebuilding a life is about enacting change. In the past month, I have felt more passion than I have ever felt before. In addition to getting help for myself, I realized that I can use my final semester at Rutgers to produce some kind of lasting and meaningful influence that might in some way benefit people who are suffering in silence just like I was.
I promise to never stop fighting and to never give up...for people in wombs everywhere. <3
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