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Mental Health
Lessons I Learned on a Night I Was Almost Murdered
This writing isn’t another trans tragedy tale meant to program you into visualizing trans deaths…it’s about making choices
I’ll spare you the most traumatic details for both my sake and yours. This writing isn’t another trans tragedy tale meant to program you into visualizing my people’s deaths every time you look at us. It’s about making choices. It’s a lesson in how a normal human brain works under abnormal circumstances. It’s a lesson in humanizing ourselves to whatever the next level is for you.
It’s also a lesson in survival, in healing, and in eventually thriving. You get to write your narrative. Noone gets to write your ending for you. No matter what anyone does, you always have choices up until your last minute of life has passed.
I could have died so many times the way many trans people who experience murder vacate their bodies for the last time: at the hands of a closeted man who hated himself exactly the way our society taught him. One closeted self-hating man or another in countries that have begged us to kill each other since long before I was born. I see a younger version of myself in many of the Trans Day of Remembrance (TDOR) slide show stories, but I wouldn’t have ended up in any TDOR slide show, despite having such a typical trans death.
I was closeted, too.
I’ll focus on one night and what I learned.
He had already tried to kill me once that night. When I regained consciousness, I searched the room for an escape. There was none. We were on the third floor and there were no stairs near the window. The stone floor pressed against my bare feet felt icy cold. I wasted a moment studying it, trying to string together thoughts. There were little swirls of white in the gray beneath my feet, matching the snow in the foggy streetlights outside. Even if I could escape, I had no coat to protect me from the cold.
I’d never felt more alone. I hope I never again feel as alone than I did in that moment.
When I heard metallic clicks down the hallway behind me, I had a decision to make. The clicks were like morse code telling a story…
