It's finals week, and that comes with a lot of stress. I have an Organic Chemistry final tomorrow - that's enough in and of itself. But for some people, there are just so many things on top of that.
I'm angry for the friends of mine that are stunted by financial worries. This doesn't stop at anxiety over whether or not they'll be able to return next semester - it's about being stuck with issues I never thought to have. Anxiety over what kind of clothes to wear. Buying lots of stuff you're "saving" on even though you really can't afford to spend money on things for fun. A low-grade freak-out that you're not safe that permeates everything, every day. And let's be honest, I'm still sitting in a college dorm room. I have seen a snowflake on the tip of the iceberg. The people I'm talking about are only a few people. But two of them are my two best friends, so it gets to me.
The exhaustion I'm beginning to feel just by being around the stress induced by others' socioeconomic vulnerability is sometimes enough for me to feel demotivated as well. But financial stress is so far from the totality of the problem. In fact, with sole consideration to the couple people I mentioned above, that stress seems almost negligible in comparison to the trigger factor.
It is fucking impossible to resist the touch of depression as a queer person in West Michigan.
There is a window of time where it doesn't affect you, because no one action is enough to break bones. But when you're beaten down and tripped day after day after day, stress fractures slowly begin to mount, and your own personal struggles add to society's bullshit, and there are so many difficult parts of queer identity that almost seem unrelated to each other but aren't because you're just too fucking queer for anyone to deal with.... that you just begin to break.
Particularly with regard to the trans-female community, whatever power, defiance, strength, and hope I've found (and been so inspired by) is only a thing because there is an absurd amount of adversity and negativity to overcome. If you keep chin-up, at first it's totally bearable. But people so quickly lose the capacity for resilience when depression drives their performance down and their performance drives their respectability down and everything prevents healthcare needs from getting met and life becomes this gigantic spiral of negativity and hopelessness that drives people away and the less people you've got around to support you the less you're able to keep chin-up.
Every time I hear a friend go into crisis because they're self-conscious about being perceived as gay, or because they just can't deal with their family, or because no one likes them, or because there's no hope of getting on hormones anytime soon, or because the dating pool is basically nonexistent (and filled with many hopeless souls where it does exist), I just get a little angrier and a little more restless.
This has been a year. A single year. And I just don't want to have to deal with this anymore. I just want to GTFO like this society seems to want us to. I want a healthy, thriving community in which to become a better person. And goddammit, I want a healthy, thriving, QUEER community in which to become a better person. This counts all the more for people of color and disabled people and nonwestern immigrants and all other minorities. But it seems that this is what it's taken for the concept of privilege to finally hit home for me, because I finally feel the weight of membership in an involuntary beating club now. I feel the burning anger that so few from my own community, my own culture, my own family, are granted free passage to the best fruit from the tree, because their aching limbs prevent them from jumping higher than an inch off the ground. And every time a beautiful queer person goes home to recuperate from the strain of jumping to reach the fruit that day, they return with an empty stomach to depression waiting to cuddle with them in bed, to beat them into submission again - and again - and again - and again . . . just a little bit weaker every day.
Sometimes I just want to kick depression in the balls and walk away. It deserves a beating back.
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