Trauma, Pain, and Suicidality

I’m continuing to read Diana’s old Facebook posts, and it still seems that the overarching issue here was economics, the fear of losing everything and having to start over again, the fear of facing homelessness (or being dependent on others or systems) for the 7th time in her life.

Please don’t tell me this wasn’t really about ‘soul-crushing job rejections’ that would likely have made the other hard stuff in the world a whole lot easier to bear.

Most people have no clue what Diana went through in her life, or what many trans folks (and especially sex workers) have to endure.

I long for a day when our community is trauma-informed, and when those with hiring power make hiring decisions that factor in marginalization.

On November 30th, 2016, she wrote:

Reality Check
also, trigger warning. Not for the squeamish
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It was really nice to put all my bullshit on hold for a week, and go on that cruise. When we planned it a year ago, I had no idea whether or not I’d be able to afford it when the time came.

Bullshit is no longer on hold. Reality is back.

This year has been really hard. Mental health issues, relationship struggles, walking away from the last family I had, burn-out with survival sex work, soul-crushing job rejections, the collapse of the low & mid range internet escort market due to the war on whores & our advertising platforms, Pulse, epidemic trans murders, sick friends, dying friends, dead friends – just to get started on my list of difficult. Add to that all the proxy trauma of being aware of the oppression and suffering of folks I care about, and people I don’t even know. It’s a lot.

I wasn’t actually able to afford this trip (though it didn’t cost much at all), just like I haven’t been able to afford rent for the last few months. I’ve put most of my living expenses on credit cards (including rent), and now almost all of them are in default.

On a bright note, my mental health seems to have stabilized. The meds, and a really good therapist, have done me a lot of good. But I feel like it’s too little too late.

I’ve been through losing everything and starting over plenty of times. I’ve been homeless 6 times in my life. I’ve been married, divorced, raised and lost families, then made more. And I’ve lost my sanity twice.

Honestly, I don’t know if I want to keep on doing this thing called life. I’ve been in existential crisis over what it means or doesn’t mean to go through losing everything and starting over again, potentially going into the shelter system, and trying to get on disability. If that’s a life that I even want to live. Or spending the next months/years couch surfing. Or becoming dependent on someone who loves me enough to take me in.

I see in other countries how people with chronic illnesses and even just unbearable trauma are able to access physician assisted suicide, and die with dignity, surrounded by the people they love. I wish that this were an option for me. I hate that my option for ending things would have to be secretive, alone, and either violent or unlikely to succeed.

Anyway, I haven’t given up yet. Yet. Only a few doors and windows left to check though. The set of constrained choice is fairly minuscule right now. Watching, waiting, hustling, and getting my featherless ducks in a row.

 

Accountability and Change

There MUST be accountability and change in our community. If I am to survive and continue in this fight, to be here for our young people, to be here to offer love and to be here to receive love, I will need you to fight alongside me – – especially in the coming months, while I am deeply depleted and grieving the loss of the greatest love I have ever known.

As the person that was closest to Diana, I really need folks to understand and accept that Diana’s mental health did NOT ultimately push her to take her life. She warrior-style battled mental health issues all of her life, and damn near overcame them entirely in the last three months of her physical existence. She wasn’t anxious, she wasn’t depressed, she wasn’t manic. If anything, in our many recent discussions, she was clear, grounded, rational.

She was also clearer than ever that she was worth more than the world was offering to her (and many other brilliant and highly employable trans folks), and she wasn’t willing to settle. She wasn’t willing to work three jobs to keep her apartment. She wasn’t willing to keep doing sex work. She wasn’t willing to expose herself to systems that might cause further harm to her, just to survive.

For those that missed this, she wrote this on November 19th, 2016, a day before TDOR, and a month and one day before ending her life:

“… I’ve gone through a whole world of hurt this year.

There were many times when I wanted to throw in the towel. I’ve lived a lot of life, and a lot of lives, and my prospects for the future have seemed bleak. Therapy and medication have helped a lot as far as how I feel and think goes, but haven’t changed my circumstances.”

She went on to say:

“TDOR is officially tomorrow. More of my people have been murdered in the United States this year than ever recorded before. Many many more have ended their own lives – children, youth, adults, and seniors – in every circumstance imaginable. Death is an ever-present reality when you are trans, and it rarely waits for old age and infirmity to take you. That was true long before this past election, which has folks so terrified.”

Her circumstances, a result of systemic oppression and trauma, killed her.

We need to really examine and own how we regard and (mis)treat trans folks in our community [especially trans women, sex workers, non-binary, neurodivergent trans folks] — from employment, to health care, to mental health care. This conversation is long overdue.

Systems of Oppression

Diana Hemingway may have pulled the trigger, but many systems of oppression loaded her gun:

-Respectability Politics
-Lack of access to meaningful work
-Prolonged lack of access to quality health care
-Prolonged lack of access to quality mental health care
-Criminalization of sex work
-Societal stigma around sex work
-Societal stigma around trans/non-binary identities
-Societal stigma around neuroatypical people/behaviors
-Lack of accommodations for neuroatypicality in the workplace
-Trauma/abuses of trans people in the workplace
-Loss of autonomy and abuses via the Baker Act process/institutions
-I COULD GO ON

These systems/entities have pushed MANY trans people who take their lives. Diana managed episodic depression/mania (bipolar) her entire life when she had a good income, health insurance, and purpose — all prior to her transition.

If you think that just mental illness caused her to take her life, you aren’t looking at the many things that led up to her decision — she experienced trauma after trauma from 2014-2016, with almost no way to get quality mental health care … because very little of it even exists for trans folks in our community. Take that to the bank. If I’m wrong, show me where it is.

I went to a psychiatrist for the first time two days ago, at a major mental health center, and my experience alone tells me what I already knew.

My love’s most recent bio

I just want to record this here.

Diana wrote a beautiful biography on the fly when she was trying to land a gig in art with an LGBTQ art gallery in Wilton Manors earlier this year.  This is what she wrote (note: we had many conversations about pronouns, including a recent one where she went back to ‘she’ as her top pronoun choice as opposed to ‘they’):

“Diana Hemingway was born in 1970 to a travelling family of Irish gypsies, making their way around the Southern and Western states of America, working flea markets and carnivals. She learned to make folk and indigenous jewelry at an early age, which the family sold along with the jewelry and art her parents made. The family settled down in South Florida in the late 1970’s, returning to her mother’s family home in the Fort Lauderdale area.

Being an intensely curious child, Diana excelled in science and art. She developed a passion for environmental activism, and dropped out of high school – working on campaigns for Greenpeace. In 1989, she attended college to study photography under Teresa Harb Diehl, through which she was afforded the opportunity to work with Michael A. Smith on a commissioned project. Diana’s first published photograph was of Smith working in the field, which was included in Broward County’s Cultural Quarterly. That same year, two photographs of hers were accepted into the Florida 28 Exhibition, a multi-medium art competition among Florida’s community colleges. One of those won an Honorable Mention.

Diana left pursuing the arts as she dealt with the demands of adult life and poverty. She dedicated much of her spare time to pursuing activism and community service, while working primarily in the automotive industry and other trade professions. In her mid and late 30’s, Diana wrestled with her sexual orientation and gender identity. Having been assigned male at birth, she transitioned from male to female, and identifies now as genderqueer and pansexual.

Transition lead to experiencing employment discrimination and loss of family, while mental and physical health issues ended in cycles of poverty and homelessness. Diana turned to nature for solace, which moved her to return to landscape photography and sculpture. This fit well with her volunteer work with environmental organizations. She created works for Trash 2 Art, and exhibited a piece at Francisco Sheuat’s Art Expressions Gallery.

Though nearly destitute, Diana continued to shoot in both wilderness and urban areas in South Florida. Footprints Magazine published her photograph taken while hiking in Big Cypress National Park. In addition, she is also a published writer. She made and currently makes her living doing various forms of sex work, and considers sensuality to be her greatest art. Her hope is to channel a lifetime of triumph and suffering into future work, emotionally connecting the intersections of gender identity, sexuality, disability, feminism, and sex work, to advance understanding and empathy of the multiple oppressions her and others face.”