CW: trans violence, racism, medical transphobia

I’m so tired, y’all.

I am healing from a surgery that took months of bureaucratic fighting from an organization that still call me M on it’s paperwork and I read of another trans body found in the city I call home.

The news says it doesn’t know it was foul play but I know a murder when I see one, and whether that was committed by a fist or an empty cell it is still a fucking murder.

I see a friend of mine, a cis black woman, talk about how tired she is about being “a strong black woman”. She’s strong as that’s the only way to live in a world that kills her family off for the crime of being black in the streets of the USA.

Her story isn’t mine, though. I think of how many cis people praise me and tell me how brave I am to be… me. To be creative and find ways to fight the system and be open about who I am.

I fight the system because I need things to live. I am a cornered rat in a cage that doesn’t believe in rats and I feel like I am being called clever, and not that way in Jurassic Park but in the way people use to talk about their fucking dog.

I am open, yes. I am open because I live in a world where it is a crime to try and hide myself and the penalty is death. I am open because even if people won’t believe who I say I am I still need to remind them that I am also a human being.

I am brave because I feel I can’t exist in a world that demands I be afraid.

Don’t praise my braveness.

Fix this shit so I don’t have to.