the Phoenicks.

i am coming out about my suicide attempt and the burgundy wedged heels that stopped me.

i feel like too often as a transgender woman i am misunderstood.

the week was not going too well because i had a life numbing and body immobilizing panic attack on a tuesday afternoon. because of this i had to be taken from a job interview, in an ambulance, to the hospital. when i arrived they asked me if i had been having suicidal thoughts and i said, “yes.” after that, they put me on “suicide watch” ( an intensive monitoring process used to ensure that a person cannot attempt suicide) for about six hours. my suicide watch process involved the doctors making me take off all of my clothes, my undergarments, my jewelry, my shoes, and my phone so i could sit in one of the hospital paper robes. any privacy i perceived i had was gone. i was asked a plethora of questions about my life, then i had to out my self to the doctor. this led to him asking about my genitals and what surgeries i had, then he and everyone else misgendered me for the next six hours while i was in a room with a stranger that was deemed something like my “guardian angel”.

i woke up later that week on thursday in my bed at my parents house. i was feeling mentally numb and so depressed walking to my bathroom that flowers would have been dying as i walked by them the way they do in cartoons. i got to my bathroom and i looked at myself in the mirror for a while. i do not know if i was looking for something, but i definitely did not find anything. no value, no worth, and no hope. because my mind is powerful and depression has a very subtle magic to it, i snapped out of my daze halfway to my university class driving my own car. i looked around at the other cars, the trees, the light and i felt nothing. the light illuminated green and i started to drive very fast out of an angry surge of emotion. swerving through cars and going at a speed that would have definitely gotten me taken to jail…or killed if i ran into a car going fast enough. i was going to do it, i was going to try to kill myself by running into another car. i wanted it so badly in the moment. i wanted to end all of my trans-panic, harassment ,exterior hatred and misunderstanding, loneliness, depression. i wanted to end all of that as i saw the red light and the stopped car. i sped up. i was about seven seconds from getting a release…

i bet you can’t guess what stopped me.

i was speeding at miles per hour that could not be matched by anyone near me. i wanted to die and i wanted all of my hurt to stop. then my real guardian angel appeared. there was a brief two second moment where i thought about the burgundy wedged heels i had just bought for my birthday. i would never get to wear those heels if i crashed my car into someone else’s car. that was not fair to me and that definitely would not have been fair to the person i would have hit and possibly killed if i had gone through with this suicide attempt. so, immediately i stomped on the break and slowed down just in time to not hit the red car in front of me. i slowed down just in time to take another deep breath. i slowed down just in time to let the earth’s colors fill my eyes again. i slowed down just in time to type this story in my newly bought shoes.

-Little x Juan. Moonlight 16′