Hey, it’s Alex. So I finally just ended a 2 year battle with homelessness and a million unhealthy events; I got an apartment in Columbus with other trans ppl that I love dearly, and a car, and a kitty. It’s been very bittersweet and eye opening. Allow me to share my experiences:
My abusive mother forced me to choose between my transition and my loved ones, or her financial security and my dog. I chose the path of resistance. In this decision, there have been some consequences and regrets, but I am becoming a better person. When this journey started (1/-)
TW: sui and tphobic stuff in story; not this part
I was still living in the same city I was left in. A close friend and his family took me in. I stayed in my friend’s room and paid them what I could, working at a job I hated and struggling greatly with the sudden changes (2/-)
I was still living in the same city I was left in. A close friend and his family took me in. I stayed in my friend’s room and paid them what I could, working at a job I hated and struggling greatly with the sudden changes (2/-)
I had lost my best friend due to dangerous actions from my mom and me being self destructive. I thought that I caused everyone pain just trying to get what I needed out of life. And my housemates did not react well to my desperate attempt at dying. All downhill from there (3/-)
I started a long term outpatient program immediately after trying to recover from my attempt, and was met with being told that I was faking, and my gender was the real mental illness, and I wasn’t able to work for a month. This was not taken well, but regardless I started T (4/-)
In therapy and in meeting real people who supported and validated me, I knew that I was ready. Taking the steps to getting HRT was my first real act of self care after the attempt. However no good deed goes unpunished, and my fight was just starting. (5/-)
Right around when I started T, I started working again at a place I liked a lot so I had a lot of ways to cope in the shitty environment, but it still needs to be talked about because I know that I am not the only trans youth who had no choice but to endure abuse for safety (6/-)
I got insulted for being trans and ND, locked out, had my T hidden from me, and my clothes were thrown out of the laundry onto the kitchen floor where their cat would piss on them, and I couldn’t do laundry for weeks at times because there were so many people in that house. (7/-)
Sometimes to appease them I’d go visit my parents for a week or so where I would get invalidated and abused more severely for the same things, but at least I could eat and be clean. Having to go back and forth to these hells for a whole winter got me needing IOP again (i give up)
In this therapy round, being farther along on T and having had some time to process what had happened, I went in with a little bit more of a goal in mind. I learned a lot from that program. Chapter 2: 2017, 6 months post abandoned.
I was pretty set in my job, happier in my body, my mind was a bit clearer, and I had met the most important people in my life to date. We all became incredibly close very quickly, and I found myself in the people who respect me. We’ve been met with more trials after recovery.
I was in a good but rocky relationship with a girl I still have a deep bond with but her and I really took the brunt of everything that followed. I lost my job, and after that I was kicked out by the family that took me in. I had one place left I could run to. It hurt us badly.
I went to the Appalachian region of Ohio (athens) and felt completely lost in life. I slept on a dumpster couch in a Deadhead house with a hippie couple that I’d known a couple years. We were in the heart of the rural college campus epidemics of rape and drug addiction. It harmed
Even though I was with a younger, seemingly open minded group, the scummy people that were tolerated within that group made it a hellscape. I discovered quickly that in the mountains nobody can hear the oppressed scream. I was now trapped with them.
After I ran into my at the time gf’s abuser who was an acceptable guest at the place I stayed, it became evident that this final resort was going to be dangerous. I had to find another place to escape to and it was starting to feel hopeless.
I had been faced with another ultimatum: leave athens (leave the state until someone else in ohio could take me) or live with a dangerous man who I had personal beef with. I went to stay with my parents 5 states away for 3 weeks. I don’t think I need to say how that went.
After white knuckling through more rehashed childhood trauma and fighting, my closest friend at that time offered me a place on his couch in a different ohio town. When my girlfriend and I broke up, my friend, another person I trusted capitalized on my vulnerability and pain.
He coerced my ex into an affair which he said I advocated for to his wife and got me kicked out. Then he had the audacity to tell me she cheated on me for him because I was a man, but “lacking the most important part”. She did everything to assure me that it wasn’t my fault. And;
That’s where my own struggle with toxic masculinity would begin. He had planted the seed of insecurity in my volatile mind and boy did it sprout into self hatred. I was stuck in Ohio now with only my car for shelter, and all the mistrust in the world. All this just to be myself.
After about a month of couch/hotel hopping and traveling in my home, I felt it all at once. Everything hit me very suddenly and I found myself in the ER with mild alcohol poisoning and a deep desire to be dead. My support system and I grew closer, but my situation was desperate.
My former housemates in athens reached out to inform me that the scumbag was gone. They assured me that it would be safe this time. We’d all be a family. All I wanted was that. I was afraid but at this point I felt that it was do or die to stay in my home. I had fought too hard.
I spent the next 5/6 months completely faded, and overworking myself (and my car to its death) to balance maintaining my place with my Columbus friends, my recovery, and taking care of shit in Athens.
In Athens my closest housemate and I would often run from the head of house because his untreated mental illness would sometimes turn him threatening and his drug addiction made it worse. This friend and I stuck out some horrible experiences together. She still hasn’t escaped.
In a seemingly miraculous turn of events, the long term homeless shelter I applied to had finally pulled my name from the wait list. This was how 2018 started. I went back to the city that my friend broke my heart in for 3 months as a completely cis passing guy. You learn a lot—
— about cis men and their deeply rooted issues when you’ve infiltrated their world. I helped a 65 y/o vet clear his porn history. Gay does not even beGIN... And he was so ashamed. So much internalized queerphobia, so many years of these experiences of erasure. I was not alone.
So I left the shelter to return to my hometown one last time. To assist my father in selling the house that we survived my mother in. He had been subleasing it at her request to keep me from staying in it and enough was enough. If we couldn’t live in it, we were gonna profit.
I went through the most difficult phase of this fight about two months ago when I did all of the sale legwork for my father, and we went through a very messy process to fairly allocate me a cut of if. There were many painful losses and sacrifices to get what it would take to win.
I paid for my support system and I to move into an apartment in the city we fought for. We’ve spent the last week moving in. We are broke, overwhelmed, hungry, and still doing our best to make it in this world that has thrown us nothing but curveballs for who we are.
I would like to tell you all that it got better when we moved. It’s been really hard being post trauma. It’s been even harder to convince myself that it isn’t my fault. But at least I know that my friends and I will be safe for at least another month until rent is due again 🙃🙃
I know that sounds pessimistic but the sad reality is that even in victory you will be challenged, and you have to accept and prepare for that as much as you can. This world is NOT. NICE. That’s why YOU have to be.
I’ve started to believe in myself again despite becoming aware of my own flaws and the plights of this dystopian nightmare of a country I live in. It can be shitty, just as long as it’s not as shitty as before. Never reach the bar. Always self improve. You are capable of so much.
TL;DR: KEEP. FUCKING. FIGHTING.
Thank u for letting me share.
-Alex
Thank u for letting me share.
-Alex
