Giving Up Is Sometimes Survival

Some of my friends are vehemently questioning my decisions of late. My decision to plead guilty to a bogus shoplifting charge I'm innocent of to just avoid more jail and move on with my life. And now my decision to give up writing erotica, short stories and my long suffering novel because none of it will ever be published unless I stop writing about women like me.

My friends don't want me to give up. Fight it they say. Even if you might never win Penny, fight it, always fight it. They say I'm letting Transphobia win by giving up. They say I'm stronger than this. They all insist, I've lived through so much horror already and survived that these relatively minor things comparatively shouldn't be able to break me.

I say I am NOT that strong. I've survived til now purely on a stubborn refusal to roll over. That in itself is what my friends mistake for strength. But stubbornness and strength are not the same thing. And I was stubborn, not strong.

And the difference between stubborn and strong is very simple. You can't beat down strength. Strength is innate, it can't be broken.

You can break stubborn eventually. Ask any donkey or horse or trained dog.

And I'm broken. I'm fucking tired. I'm 35 with the body of a goddamned 80 year old. I'm a freak of nature to most people, a pervert, an abomination. I know 95% of the time my gender/body/presentation means I WILL NOT be treated fairly or even humanely.

I have submitted my writing for publishing over 400 times in the past 6 years. I have been universally rejected, even by querr/LGBT publishers, not because my writing wasn't good, but because it was universally NEVER "what they were looking for". Which as all my trans sisters know is cis speak for "Okay I admit you're a good writer but I ain't printing no fucking tranny stoiries unless you write the trannies like circus freaks".

Which essentially means I write too well to have my Trans/IS stories published. I write GOOD stories about women like me that show them as real people, women, vulnerable and human, and not as sexual perversions existing only for bi men to find their inner gay man with.

Let me stress this is not my sour grapes whining, this is what publishers have ACTUALLY TOLD ME. I have been told if I rewrote the Trans characters, minimized them, or outright removed them entirely, my work would be published. I've even been offered very good money to write full non-trans murder mysteries. But no publisher will EVER accept a story where a trans woman is not only a MAJOR character, but is a lesbian, or is written as being a perfectly normal human being with dept and character.

And so I give up writing fiction, period. My heart just isn't in it anymore. All I can write now is angry blog rants about how much this world fucking sucks. And all that is really is venting. I have no joy or passion anymore to write anything else.

And as for pleading guilty, well, if you think I should keep fighting it in some twisted sense of Trans Activism to not let the haters win, well, fuck you. YOU weren't the one being groped in jail while prison gaurds mocked you on Friday Morning. YOU weren't the one just barely fighting back flashbacks to being repeatedly raped in juvey 18 years ago.

There are hundreds of other loud and proud trans women fighting the good fight, ME giving up the fight will NOT destroy the movement for acceptance. I am TIRED people. My entire goddamned life has been fighting, fighting, fighting. I deserve my rest. Hell the only reason I don't just give in and fucking kill myself is because of the people who'd be hurt if I did.

I HATE my life. I'm fat, dying, unhealthy, miserable, and in too much pain to DO anything about it. I am NOT happy. I can't have sex with my own wife because it leaves me in heaving sobs afterward because of the pain flare-ups. I can't work, I can't socialize. All my friends are online, I have NO ONE here locally. I eat food out of restaurant dumpsters because I can't work. Death would be peace, freedom from my broken screaming body. And I keep living and suffering for YOU people. The people that love me, who'd hurt if I killed myself. I keep suffering for YOU.

And you want to chastise me for being willing to stop fighting and plead guilty to something I didn't do because avoiding more jail is better than being able to say "WEll at least I tried fighting it" as I'm getting RAPED AGAIN???

If you call yourself my friend and can still guilt-trip me and condemn me for finally being too tired and broken to fight and for wanting to avoid further trauma, fuck you and your high horse. I've survived worse shit than most people have to endure, I have fucking EARNED my rest.

I DESERVE the right to just lay down and stop busting my ass on a fight I can never win.

So just let me rest.

I fucking earned it.