Mourning Has Broken
Feeling through the last couple of weeks.
Hello, sisters, brothers, and non-binary lovers, and welcome to Trans Pirate Radio! This trans-mission, brought to you from a Maunsell Fort somewhere in the English Channel, is by trans people, and for trans people, all day, and every day! We play the highest of highs, the lowest of lows, and the transiest grooves this side of TERF Island! Time for a block of music from that poet Yusuf “Cat Stevens”; we’ll get to “Father and Son” soon enough, but let’s start with something bright, something cheery, something to remind us there really is goodness left in the world… here’s “Morning Has Broken”!
(small note: While I realize yesterday was the Trans Day of Remembrance, this is about a different sort of mourning.)
I really need to write that Music for Trans People piece at some point. That said, well… Trans Pirate Radio is on. That’s what this is now. Broadcasting from the middle of nowhere until I get shut down. I don’t know how long I’ll be talking and I don’t know how long I’ll be broadcasting, but I’m going to keep talking as long as I can.
Sorry for the last week or so. It took awhile to go from apocalyptic to angry to, well… sad.
And I am. Sad, that is. I realized, as I went through the last week or two, that what I was going through with members of my family was what many of our friends and family go through with us.
Before I start, though, I need to dispel one of those illusions all of us trans kids have when we’re babes just out of the shell. You know the illusion I’m talking about… it’s the one we tell our friends and family all the time in the beginning.
It’s the illusion that “I’m still me; I’m just trans. I’m not going to change beyond that.”
Those of us who’ve progressed through transition know better. Transitioning is a Russian doll of issues; cracking open the doll of being trans can reveal so many other issues buried beneath. Confronting our gender identity can result in revelations about so many other aspects of ourselves.
So we change. A favorite Doctor Who quote comes to mind: “When everything is new… can anything be a surprise?” With the transition, everything is new. Those around us need to adjust to that, need to mourn that, and that takes time. We try to be accommodating, and give those around us time and space to do that. Maybe they’re here when it’s all said and done, maybe they’re not. We hope for the best as trans people, and prepare for the worst.
But here’s what the last couple of weeks have taught me: We’re not the only ones who change.
We all change. I am not the person I was a couple of years ago. Neither are you. Neither is anyone else. We all change, we all shape and are shaped by each other, and by the circumstances around us. And some people change to the point that we don’t recognize who they’ve become.
That’s what I’m seeing; that’s what I’m processing. I have changed. So have those around me. And what I’ve come to realize is that some people around me have changed to the point that the distance is just too far.
I am mourning that distance that has become too far. Those that listened to conservative media rather than the pleas of trans members of their family… those that decided, for whatever reason, Trump was worth supporting... for those warped by that rhetoric, redefining that relationship is going to happen. And maybe that redefining means distance, or even ending the relationship entirely.
And that redefining… that means mourning. That means saying goodbye. Just as family needed to take time to mourn my previous incarnation, I must take time to mourn theirs.
That’s what this past week has been for me. Mourning. Mourning those family who chose to follow the Republicans and Trump in their madness.
Some family members asserted the right to “agree to disagree” on the election; I won’t go into the exact words, for reasons. That said, from family… hearing those words when this election deals with things like my basic human rights… you don’t forget that. Once uttered and once heard, you can’t take that back. The words they said… those are words I’m going to hear from them when they’re being laid into the ground. A few callous words, undermining a lifetime of love.
I begged. I pleaded. Now I mourn. I can’t help but mourn.
They’ve gone someplace I can’t go.
And all I can do is go my own way.