My impulse to help felt more validated, even in the really hard parts, and I felt less alone.

Some traditions had us more involved in the inbetween parts, transitions from life and death, gender. I felt a bit better hearing all this. ❤️‍🩹

Take care of your trans community and friends. Love them hard and don’t hold back anything. Beat up transphobes, or at least confront them with their bullshit. Words can kill.

Talk about mental health and suicide, especially within trans communities. Hold each other.

Anyway, that’s partly why I haven’t been around here or anywhere outside of work and friends, really. There are things I left out of this thread that haunt me. I’ll find a therapist eventually.

I haven’t been able to sleep very well. The 4th of July fireworks reminded me of gunshots and I hated it more than I ever have. Taking T is both a celebration and a time for grief. I see red stains or smell blood and I get upset. I’m just crying a lot.

I still check in on J, eating with her when I can and getting her in contact with one of my friends and some other community resources. Her dad and best friend are here in town, thankfully, but I haven’t had time to really see her the past week.

Cleaning the blood and gore was the hardest thing I’ve had to do in a long, long while. Probably just as hard as forcing myself to search for Dani in hopes that he was alive, when I felt in my heart that he wasn’t.

I remember when Dani died and how his family misgendered and deadnamed him in his obituary after they took his ashes. I was glad that R could at least stay here and avoid all that. But I was angry. Why do we have to wait till we’re dead for something so simple? That’s not even a guaranteed thing…

I brought all my cleaning supplies and protective gear the next day. I cleaned alone. She and I agreed that she shouldn’t be there for this. Cleaning took a long time.

I honored the space and R’s life, and we talked. And cried.

R was someone who had been on T on and off the past two years. They were transmasc and more genderfluid, and from hearing of them I thought we could have been friends. I just started on T and was having my second shot the day after clean-up.

We’re both super poor and time is of the essence. I offered to clean the blood out of the carpet and the wall, toss the things that were soaked. I’d come tomorrow. The thought of J doing that all by herself… I can’t allow that. That’s what other people, community, are supposed to do.

The people who took R’s body out of the apartment deadnamed and misgendered the both of them. They just threw towels on the blood and gore and left with no resources or guidance. No care.

I needed to get her away from the apartment. Her fiancé died where we met. The blood was still there.

We both bonded over having lost loved ones to suicide. J and R fled the south less than a year ago. But here, R was being bullied at work for being trans. We think the death was a snap decision.

CW for the entire thread: trans suicide, guns, blood, deadnaming, misgendering, grief

A trans community member (J) reached out in an online group I’m in to share that her fiancé (R) also trans, died to suicide by gunshot that night. I reached out the morning after and we met-up to have dinner.

Mostly what I’ve been doing lately is just posting up the Portland Immigration Rights Coalition (PIRC) Know Your Rights flyers with their hotline for folks to call if they suspect ICE is around. Handing out flyers about Occupy ICE. I’ve already seen flyers torn down. 😒