To tell the tale

Content warning: The following column contains references to suicidal thoughts. If you or a loved one have struggled with mental health, please see the resources below the end of this blog post for relevant national and LGBTQ+ assistance.

In April, I participated in a meeting of what’s known as a “death café.” It was a small group meeting including me and about six strangers, none of us with any connection to each other.

The name sounds intimidating (maybe almost cultish?), but I had a therapeutic experience. It was simply a meeting of people whose lives have seen death make an appearance one way or another taking the time to reflect on how that’s affected them. More than six months after my last blog post, I’m ready to face the music again after a trip back to Alabama that came sooner than I would have liked because of death.

When I began writing my second post, I was feeling lively. I had a lot to look forward to in 2023, feeling comfortable with the person I saw looking back at me every time I stole a glance in a mirror. By the time I published my first piece, I learned my former guardian uncle, Larry, had a sudden worsening of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) that reemerged last fall after he experienced four years in remission.

A week later, he was gone. When my dad died during my second-grade year, Larry became half the duo who raised me — along with my guardian aunt, Sheila.

The next week, I was on flights to Birmingham from Boston, connecting through Atlanta. Then, I was back with my family in a place where despite growing up there, it felt somewhat unfamiliar for my reimagined self. It seemed to be a week frozen in time as I toured the state to “re-meet” relatives and friends who had only known my transition online and through phone calls but had yet to meet me face-to-face.

When I launched this personal project, I intended to write when I felt like it, though write semi-regularly. However, once I revisited all that I grew up around as a past identity that was quickly becoming unrecognizable to me, it stalled my inspiration. I posted my second entry when family questioned the background of my name since that piece was mostly ready, if not to also take away thoughts of the ceremony coming a few days later.

It was attending the death café in April and choosing to take time to allow myself a spring and summer where I felt reborn that brought me clarity on what to write about: How I’ve seen death in literal and figurative ways in my life and the mark that’s left on me.

I’ve written this blog post in chunks at various coffee shops over time, even discarding a draft I wasn’t satisfied with. It’s as I sat in a bustling coffee shop in Concord, New Hampshire, last month that I finally wrapped up most of this post so I can keep moving forward. It comes just as I’m two months into a public column on my identity through my role at The Keene Sentinel.

But also in the past month, I learned my grandma died — my last living grandparent — who didn't get a proper chance to see me for who I am. I wrote in memory that I feel she would have appreciated getting to know the “granddaughter she never knew she had.” So, it feels appropriate to keep blogging to reflect on the person I was, the person who’s lived to tell the tale, and the person I see myself becoming.

Death seems like it’s defined my life since I was born. As mentioned, I lost both my parents at a young age — my mom days after I turned 2 years old, and my dad as I was trying to make sense of elementary school, only a couple of weeks after my 7th birthday. It felt like a cruel twist of fate: as I celebrated another year of life, my parents faced the final days of theirs.

In the two years after my dad died, both his parents also passed. I grew up with just one grandparent as my maternal grandpa was mostly unknown to me, and died when I was a toddler. Then, all was quiet for a long while.

That is, until my senior year of high school. It was then that I learned of my uncle’s leukemia diagnosis, only weeks after he and my aunt returned from a scuba diving trip in the Pacific Ocean where he seemed in high spirits and healthful. While it felt like I was watching him break down over the next few months, I also felt like my path to starting college kept him going.

His anticipation also kept me moving; I wanted him to be proud of the person I was becoming. In my first three college semesters pre-pandemic, I remember feeling like I’d learned, loved and lost. Being the only senior from my high school to attend my university, I found forever and fleeting friends, jumped into journalism with my student paper, and took enough college courses to focus on my degree program. I traveled abroad to England and both began and ended a relationship within a year.

Internally, however, I was not OK, especially by March 2020. Much of that I now feel had to do with my identity, at a time I was becoming a young adult and having to figure out who I was besides a news reporter. I realized around eighth grade that I’m bisexual, so I attempted to learn more about what that meant and about the LGBTQ+ community by quietly joining my university’s “gay-straight alliance.” But, I dipped out after ending the relationship I mentioned, then repressed a lot of the exploration I had done — almost another form of death.

I was getting there but hadn’t quite connected the dots that I’m transgender. I was gradually feeling worse because my sense of self was at odds with people’s perception of me as a man. To take the phrasing I’ve used in the first installment of my Sentinel column, I wasn’t sure if I could live as the man my family and society expected me to be, or if there was a way I could find new meaning after college.

That’s when I faced suicidal thoughts, which were maybe a mental death. They happened in that period when COVID-19 had only just been named, and when people were figuring out what safety measures to take to avoid infection, notably masks. What was creating a few eye-raising headlines out of China suddenly upended society across other countries, then continents, then the world. For me, it upended my college town of Auburn, Alabama, and my sophomore year of school, seemingly at the worst possible time.

I can’t pinpoint the specific date, but I recall having a night when I found myself sobbing alone in my bedroom in my college apartment in early March 2020. Auburn had largely fallen silent since the pandemic shifted classes online and students elected to stay in their hometowns. My uncle was immunocompromised and I felt there was more to keep my interest in Auburn rather than the rural backwoods where I grew up, so I chose to stay in town.

That night, I experienced suicidal ideation, overwhelmed by despair about my social experiences and self-expression. But thinking about what was ahead for me in getting my college degree, my curious mind got the best of me and I pressed on.

Until April’s death café, I hadn’t shared that memory with anyone, not even my therapist. Now, it’s appeared in a newspaper and online, reaching potential thousands of readers, and I can’t continue this blog without referencing it.

Some might say in transitioning I’ve experienced the death of my past self, but I’d disagree. In the trans community, people sometimes call their earlier identity their “dead name,” but I call it my “birth name” or my “original name.” I can acknowledge the person I was before and I appreciate everything I did in those years.

That person walked so I could run and make the most of life, when I didn’t know what that would look like, being so shrouded in death for so many years.

If you or a loved one have experienced suicidal thoughts, local and national resources are available.

Call or text the National Suicide Hotline at 9-8-8, or chat online at 988lifeline.org.

LGBTQ+ and young people questioning their identities (ages 13-24) who may be struggling with mental health and suicide can contact The Trevor Project. The organization has online chat, as well as text message and phone call options. For more information, see thetrevorproject.org/get-help.

The LGBT National Help Center provides peer counseling, information and local resources. Call 1-888-843-4564. The center is open to callers of all ages.

For life-threatening emergencies, dial 9-1-1 or go to your local emergency room.

Links and contact information for more LGBTQ+ resources in New Hampshire’s Monadnock Region, the state and beyond can be found on The Keene Sentinel's website at tinyurl.com/MonadnockLGBTQresources.

*This list of resources has been included with permission by its original authors, with some wording edited by Trisha Nail for the purposes of this blog.