On Mourning, Melancholy, and Loss

Personal reflections on a lifetime of grief.

A few days ago, I lost everything. I don’t mean that in a hyperbolic sense—I literally lost everything. A cleaner that I hired came to my house while I was out of town and threw all my items away. They weren’t supposed to do that. It’s all gone, and I cannot get it back.

Since I’ve lost everything, I’ve found myself feeling somewhat at peace. I recognize that the feeling that I am experiencing is grief—a hole in one’s heart that aches when it’s touched.

As I reflect on the things that I’ve lost, I’ve been reflecting more on grief itself; I’ve been ruminating on how much grief trans people must experience in our oftentimes shortened lives [1]. We must grieve everything—our families, our comrades, our childhoods, our lost years, and so on… ad infinitum.

So, grieve with me, as I remember everything that I’ve lost.

My pride flags. When I first left the South, one of the first things I bought was two pride flags (one rainbow, one trans). They weren’t fancy ones (I think they were in the $5 section of Target), but they hung nicely in my window. I wasn’t allowed to have a pride flag growing up; Not because my parents wouldn’t let me, but because it wasn’t safe enough for me to come out. I was so proud of myself for finally hanging up the flags. It finally signaled who I was. I felt at home. After a year of living in the apartment, a man stood outside our window and yelled for three hours that we were disgusting fags because he saw our flags in the window. I’m not sure I will buy another flag.

My ‘crystals.’ When my family was going through all of my great-grandparent’s objects to sell or donate, my great-grandmother was riddled with dementia and couldn’t remember who or where she was. However, when I sat down next to her, she immediately jumped up and ran inside the house. She came back out with a fishbowl filled with rocks. “Crystals” she said, “ones that you’ve collected from the yard throughout the years.” She wanted to give them to me. She died shortly thereafter. After my great-grandmother died, I felt so unbelievably heartbroken. She was my rock. I sobbed when I found out because I couldn’t afford to fly to her funeral. My heart burns that those rocks now sit scattered somewhere. I never properly grieved my Granny. May her life be kinder now than when she walked the world.

My clothes. I have no more clothing. Every single item that I have collected up over my life is gone. Many of the clothes that I lost were women’s clothes, things I had picked up over the years for special occasions—sorority dresses, winter coats, funeral garb. In a way, I’m glad to have them gone. Sometimes I still mourn my womanhood, but most days, it just makes me nauseous. I never have to dress like a woman again, but I also can never dress like my old self ever again. I lost her, but she also never left. Every trans man (I think) will mourn the woman they will never become. If they do not, their parents may (my mother cried all night when I came out, calling me ‘dead’). The grief of ‘losing’ your ‘old self’ is neither good nor bad. It merely is.

My vinyl collection. Some of the only parts of my childhood that ever made me ‘feel like a boy’ were moments with my dad. My dad is a bit of a strange guy—he’s a stoner, an anarchist, and an overtly goofy prick. Growing up, he liked to share his music with me. His tastes were incredibly broad—from Enya to the Dropkick Murphy’s to ELO (much like every other dad, I suppose). Our favorite band to listen to together was Rush. So, I started collecting records; I had a few expensive ones too. I had copies of Fly by Night, Exit Stage Left, all of them. And all of my Rush records are gone. So is Neil Peart, I suppose. But it hurts to think about how I will tell my dad the crushing news.

My cassette tapes. The man who taught me how to shoot a gun was my great-uncle. He was an incredible guy, a biker, big, bald, the works. He looked like the biggest, scariest guy you’ve ever seen. But he had a heart of pure gold. He loved me, through everything. He may be one of the only people in my life who has loved me unconditionally. When he died a few years ago, I was one of the only people allowed inside his house to clear it out. I was told I could keep anything I wanted. I wandered around alone for a few hours, reminiscing on the hugs we shared, the stories he told, the times he told me how proud of me he was. In a nearly hidden drawer in his bedroom, I found his cassette collection. Every single one of the cassettes was a band I loved, so I took this as a sign he wanted me to have them. I took, in total, seven cassettes, two ashtrays, an unopened deodorant stick, and some weed he left in a baggy by the window. He wanted me to have all of it.

Everything I kept in the divorce. A large part of my grieving process has involved grieving my childhood. Growing up being treated as a girl was already so harmful to my psyche. To make matters worse, I got married incredibly young. When I got divorced (due to abuse), I had to decide what things I was willing to fight for and what I was willing to give up—I lost my house; I lost my cats; I lost all my money. I developed severe PTSD. I grieve for my early twenties because I lost them to abuse, permanent psychological and physical damage, and heteronormative marriage.

My cane. I cannot walk. I have now lost my cane. When you are disabled, you have to learn how to grieve your body. Your body will never ‘get better’—you will never not be in pain. Most people look forward to their future—house, wife, kids, whatever—but not disabled people. We know our lives are shorter, our labor is cheaper, and our bodies are weaker. Grief trails behind you like a needy child. Being disabled means nothing for you is secure.

My life has been filled with so much grief. Grief for my ‘old self,’ grief for my childhood, grief for a boy that never was, grief for my comrades, grief for the deaths of people I will never kiss again, grief for my parents who cannot understand me, grief for the shortness of my own life, grief for my body, grief for losing everything I once had, grief for the future.

I remember reading somewhere once that grief is just love with nowhere to go. Trans people love themselves so much it hurts. Our bodies are a testament to the love that we have for authenticity. The scars that adorn our skin is a love letter to our history, to our future. Every single day that a trans person washes their hair and paints their face is a shockwave that reverberates through time.

Trans people remember our lives in flashes between teary eyes. Our hearts carry so much grief. The weight of this grief is oppression, and the remedy to the grief is to love and support each other when we have nothing, unconditionally.

— C.

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Notes:

[1] Trans men don’t actually, medically, live shorter lives than other groups, but it is a common trend for trans men to die before reaching ‘old age.’ An interesting read on this conversation can be found here: https://www.transadvocate.com/ask-matt-do-trans-men-die-young_n_8713.htm.