We see through a glass, darkly

Every single trans person I know, except maybe one or two, has had thoughts about suicide. 

I am sitting on a bench in Rittenhouse Park, doing some work on my computer for a presentation on a project that will change what I do for a living.  And change my approach to life.

This is what the day looked like:

beautiful and filled with people, and I vaguely notice a panhandler coming along the walk from my right.  He’s asking but no one’s giving him money, and he asks me and I say no but I just should have ignored him I realized, too late.

And he looks at me again, and then, stops right near me, I can sense it, I look up from my computer screen, he’s close but not too close, and he says,

“What are you! What is that?” he says. ”Is that a boy or a girl?” real loud, looking around, for affirmation, but no one really pays attention to a bum.

This is what I looked like:

I said, “I’m a transsexual baby I’m both,”which really seemed to set him off. 

 “What’s that?” he said to the guy on the bench next to me, who finally stirred, but that guy was all for me, he just didn’t know what to do.

“I’m God’s creature just like you,” I said to the bum, but he said, “He made Adam and Even, not Adam and Steve,”  

(something kind of surprising in its theological depth I thought at the time)

No one was interested so he started moving away.

“But I’m not a Steve baby,” I said to his back, in a no doubt vain attempt to clarify the difference --  I'm not gay, but trans. 

The guy on the bench next to me made sympathetic noises, and I smiled at him in thanks, but he still didn’t know what to do after he heard and saw what he’d heard and saw.  On his lunch break.  Life in the city.

So we – trans people – get dissed by all sorts.  And that kind of depresses me at times and this was one of those times, sitting there in a sunny park.

*          *          *

After awhile I got up.  Like I said above, I had been working on a proposal to give to a man about a project, a non profit service project for trans people in Philadelphia and environs.  A non profit led by me, a trans woman, to provide legal, social and medical services to my community.  This organization, as God Willing it grows, will provide help to many.   My meeting, the one I was preparing for when I decided to sit in the park, was the first meeting on the project, which has been a long time coming.

So I met with my guy on the plan and everything is looking good.  Really good. 

To do this project – to start and run this project, is to devote my life to a community that is so damaged and brutalized that 20% of trans people kill themselves and just about every one I know has thought about it. 

And what really is amazing is God made me this way, part of this group, to help this group.  I know that better and more surely than I know most things.  So I pray I can help, that I have the strength to give full heart and soul to this group in so much pain.  And my prayer is from my soul to God:

Our bed is in flower,

bound round with linking dens of lions,

hung with purple,

built up in peace,

and crowned with a thousand shields of gold.

Following your footprints

maidens run along the way;

the touch of a spark,

the spiced wine,

cause flowings in them from the balsam of God.

In the inner wine cellar

I drank of my Beloved, and, when I went abroad

through all this valley

I no longer knew anything,

and lost the herd that I was following.

There he gave me his breast;

there he taught me a sweet and living knowledge;

and I gave myself to him,

keeping nothing back;

there I promised to be his bride.

Now I occupy my soul

and all my energy in his service;

I no longer tend the herd,

nor have I any other work

now that my every act is love.

St. John of the Cross The Spiritual Canticle, verses 24-28

*                                  *                                  *

POSTSCRIPT:

It’s evening now and I get home and get the dogs out for their pre dinner walk.  The sun is starting to go down and there is a glow to the air.  The buildings along our path are old and beautiful, most of them, a historical district, and they reflect the sun, and the cobblestoned street does too, and it’s finally warm and the end of a day, till dinner and family and life starts up again, and the dogs and I are enjoying the sun and looking at things and I see, a little up the street, a guy staring at us, standing there. 

“Uh-oh,” I thought for a second.  We keep walking, up to and past him and he watches as we pass him. 

“Those are two lucky dogs,” he says. 

“Thank you,” I say, smiling all the way home.