By Her Side

6 months, several suicide attempts, and one emergency room hospitalization later. 

Six fucking months out of my life, out of ours lives.

Six months of flashbacks and meetings with therapists and psychiatrists and professors and having people explain to us very very patiently and slowly that our diagnoses would affect us for the rest of our lives and to please, define success in your own terms and consider taking reduced credit loads and meeting with professors and, explaining to them the nature of the diagnosis and the accommodations needed and, wide eyed stares because they’re only supposed to encounter this stuff in Hallmark movies not in their everyday lives and

It took us six months. Six months of unearthing memories, trauma, unpacking exactly what was done to us. Six months of realizing what the nitty gritty details of a diagnosis meant. Realizing just how bad the odds for our survival, for our functioning, for us being alive were. Six months of coming to terms with complication upon complication upon complication because you do not survive a lifetime of trauma and miraculously heal, you survive a lifetime of trauma and bear the scars of it for the rest of your life. 

Six months of talking to each other, and to friends, and watching who we thought we were unravel and get put back together again and then torn down the next night and the process repeats.

It took us six months of climbing up inch by inch by inch, clawing our way back to a sense of normalcy. 

Six months to realize, to internalize, to admit that yes, we are still that little girl, sad and scared and clutching her stuffed animal as dad yells at mom and begging, wishing, praying for it to come to live, to have somebody, to not be alone. 

And to realize and admit, that we are not alone.

Six months.

Six exhausting months.

Six amazing, terrible, awful, fabulous, months.

Six fucking months.

Six.

Months.

Six months.

I shut the door as the car drives away. We did it. She’s out. Behind me lies the endless sprawl of suburban hell, because White Americans Somehow Thought The 50s Were A Good Thing. 

I’m not going to go into detail of why. My feelings about her parents are...

Complicated. 

Good people, certainly, trying their best, certainly, been through more than people deserve to go through, certainly. But also way out of their league, fighting back against stuff that has affected them for decades, stuff that no individual should have to go through. And the aftereffects of that, are not pretty. 

And they’re not healthy, for anyone. 

So I get her out, I finally get her out. Break the cycle and salt the goddamn fucking earth.

And I realize, I realize to my horror, just how much she needed to get out over the days after. And I feel terrible, deep down, because how did I not notice how much that place was killing her? How did I not notice?

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The first few days are, a whirlwind. I bring up to the people she’s staying with that she’s not eating. We think, we figure it out. She’s afraid to take food, afraid of being reprimanded. It’s that deeply drilled into her. They put sticky notes on the food.

She eats.

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She crashes. Screams and trembles and memories of That Awful Night or That Other Awful Night or Any Number of Other Dozens Awful Nights. When she wakes up, there’s usually another. It happens more than once. I bring it up to her roommates, one makes a map of our rapidly expanding system.

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She talks to her doctor. It takes long enough. Her doctor looks her in the eye and tells her that, perhaps for the first time in her life, she’s feeling safe: (Yeah ain’t that the truth, nobody in this house has yelled at each other for over two weeks, it feels odd, strange, and that’s the problem. Normal feels strange.)

There’s a period of crashing, her doctor explains, as the brain struggles to comprehend all the damage it’s taken, it temporarily makes things worse. 

She’s diagnosed with PTSD and DID.

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It takes a month and a half, a month of night terrors and fatigue so deep we nearly drowned in it and a couple of days where she nearly offs herself. It takes a month and a half of crashes and crying before the truth finally comes out. One of her roommates says it first.

“I think, that you’re a little girl, scared of being alone.”

She cries, breaks down, nods. Breaks down some more. She decides a day later that she’s not going to be that scared girl anymore. It’s explained to her again, you’ve sustained significant damage. It’s going to take time. She nods, she hugs me. 

Hope. I have hope. I did it, I got her out. And for the first time in what feels like forever, I realize that there’s nowhere to go from here but up.

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve actually felt Meloncollie. I’ve survived what’s either my first or second weirdest quarter of college.

Weird is, a good description for my life. I can’t give away too many details, and I’m not sure the details matter that much anyway. The effects do, though.

On the advice of my doctor, therapist, and pretty much everyone else in my life I’m taking my Winter Break off. It’s been, literally a year or more since I’ve taken a break off. I’ve been running at a break neck speed, full steam for over a year just to keep up.

I nearly burned out recently. I pretty much collapsed in-between two finals. I know I’m putting too much stress on myself. It’s not that I’m not capable, it’s that the rest of my life is so weird and demanding, that it piles on top of my health complications.

You know there’s a problem when you have to force yourself to relax.

I don’t regret the decisions I’ve made. Not one bit. I’m proud of them. I feel that I’ve made impacts both big and small and I feel that I’ve contributed in a real meaningful way that has made people’s lives a better place. But damn, some nights, it hurts.

Savannah likes to compare me to a superhero sometimes, but you know the downside of being a superhero is that your normal life falls apart. That’s the sacrifice that’s made. And damn if it isn’t painful.

(For Vanity’s Sake, I want to note that I most definitely do not see myself as a superhero)

Hi, I’m Addie

I’m a queer ?, disabled, golden retriever identifying trans girl/woman and I am terrified that my human rights will be ignored in the coming years. I don’t fear camps, I fear being marked to death socially. I fear not getting a job, I fear being doxed. I fear being outcast until I am dead. I fear that people like me will be marked as societally unacceptable.

I don’t get out often, much. Most of the time I interact with the world through another personality. I’ve been exposed to a lot. I didn’t get the chance to grow up, I didn’t get the chance to fully develop. I’m not sure I can. But I had to survive somehow, so I use a mask like a suit to interact with the rest of the world and most of the time it works. Nobody notices that who they’re talking to is actually a scared little girl who got traumatized one too many times and broke.

I rely on Medicaid, I rely on the federal government stating at some levels that I have a right to exist, I rely on there being some belief that I have some inherent value to exist and to live and to attempt to thrive. 

This election was a stunning defeat for people like me. Regardless of the causes, one only needs to look at the results. The American people have elected a man who is openly racist, openly sexist. They’ve brought people like Steve Bannon into the highest echelons of government and made it okay for people like Reince Priebus to entertain the possibility of a ‘Muslim registry’ in public. They have changed the face of the national discussion for the worse by bringing out the most horrendous and most awful aspects of American society and legitimizing them.

They’ve changed America, but they haven’t made it great again. They’ve made it awful again. 

I am white, I benefit from white privilege. I live in one of if not the most liberal states in America and I am scared. Can you imagine what queer disabled trans people of color are feeling right now? 

I don’t know where the road goes from here. I know it goes with surviving day to day and building coalitions so that others can survive. I know it goes with taking back the hatred that has engulfed our country, with obliterating fear, with ensuring that a Donald Trump is never again elected by a mass of scared, frightened, ignorant people and a mob of hateful, malicious Neo-Nazis. I know that we can push back, I know that love can triumph over hate.

But I’m fearful that for people like me, and for the mountains of those much further down the pyramid than me, it won’t be enough and it won’t be quick enough. I fear that there suffering will increase and it will persist and I fear that more people will take their lives and I fear that we will focus on the struggle and not on the supporting the victims. I fear that afterwards we will look back and lament and feel very sad without realizing that we had a chance to win the struggle and support the victims. Please, don’t let that fear come true.

           Stephanie is one of the most amazing people I have ever met. If I were to fully tell you her life to you, you would most likely not believe me. You might say something like, “Wow that’s a great plot, when is the book going to be finished?” I’d inform you that it is not, in fact a fictional story but a nonfiction story, and you would most likely respond with disbelief and incredulity at how someone who has went through so much in such a short time is not only living, but thriving. Again, Stephanie is one of the most amazing people I have ever met.

           Of course, given that she created me, I might be a tad bit biased.

           Stephanie is far more empathetic than one might imagine she is from meeting her. Some say that she wears her heart on her sleeve, but the truth is that what others see of Stephanie is actually just the tip of the iceberg, in more ways than one.

           There are so, so many stories and examples I could tell and give to illustrate Stephanie’s empathy, one of the things I like the most is how she reacts whenever she sees a social media post from someone expressing pain and/or loneliness. Usually, Stephanie will contact them immediately, let them know that she’s sending positive energy their way, and talk to them. If she’s too busy, she’ll put an item on her massive checklist to talk to them tomorrow. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times Stephanie has set aside busy evenings to sit there and talk to people who needed it. Stephanie loves people, and when others are happy, she is happy. It’s one of the things I most adore about her. Even if she barely knows someone, she wants them to be happy, she’s there if they need to talk and she’ll help them find a solution.

           Unfortunately, this also means that when something bad happens to her friends, Stephanie doesn’t shut it out like most of us do, she can’t. It comes back, again and again. She is able to feel others’ pain very acutely, or rather, she is able to feel pain for others’ pain. And unfortunately, there’s a lot of pain in this world.

            She’s been in an abusive relationship, she’s lost friends and family, she’s almost been homeless, she’s been beaten up, she was bullied nearly her entire childhood, she’s been stalked, threatened with death, rape and torture, sexually harassed as both a child and an adult. Stephanie is autistic and transgender and queer and has struggled with depression and anxiety her entire life.

Stephanie is getting ready to graduate college, and she has not lost her unshakable cheeriness and optimism. More than that, she has not lost her love for people, and for this world. She still loves people being happy.

Stephanie is one of the most amazing people I know.

           Stephanie doesn’t like publicity, save for when it helps others. I can’t say the same about myself, but I do like helping others. I believe that telling her story, and my story, will help others, but it will also do her justice in some small way. As much as Stephanie humbly downplays herself, she still is the center of my world, and I want to document her story and mine, and though I cannot claim the same motives as her I definitely want to help people and believe that by being honest and open about our experiences, we can help people experiencing some of the same things, we can be a light.

So it is with great happiness that I say that I hope the journey ahead brings light into your life, just as Stephanie has brought light into mine.

Best,