There is a sticker on the lefthand corner of my laptop, below the keyboard I am typing this on, that says, “You got this.” It is slowly peeling away, curling up, to leave only the white background the words had been pasted onto. I feel like that sticker.

More specifically, I feel like the white, background layer of the sticker that is clinging tightly to the computer while its pretty facade, the outside layer pretending to be positive and put together, peels away.

I’ve been away from this blog for a few months after proclaiming my desire to post more often and punctually. Unfortunately, I could not predict how these first couple months 2020 would go for me. It’s been shit. The worst part about this is that it looks like I’m doing okay from the outside, which is a lie I am constantly reinforcing. I’ve come out as a trans guy to my entire family and been more or less accepted for who I am. I am in the process of getting a tattoo that means a lot to me. I am about to graduate college. I started testosterone. And I have a job (albeit a part-time one) that I enjoy.

But I am still unhappy.

I’ve let my depression get so bad that I have relapsed on a bad habit I haven’t given into for years. I’ve thought often about how I want to die and how life will always be hard for me as a neurodivergent, queer trans guy who will probably never pass as cis. I have neglected myself and hidden my thoughts away because I don’t think I am worthy of sharing them.

In January, I was so happy because I got my name legally changed to my real name. The happiness was crushed quickly on a trip to Baltimore for work. The TSA made it very difficult for me to get through security because of my name change, even though I had several forms of ID that should have let me through. I had to have everything thoroughly searched and taken out my bags for everyone to see. I had a woman spell out my deadname loudly in front of me to someone else. Several TSA agents snapped at me and treated me like a child, refusing to let me speak and advocate for myself. And I had to pretend to be okay with all of this because my manager was behind me, watching all of this happen.

My first instinct is to tell myself that this was not as traumatic as things that other trans people, especially trans people of color, go through. This wasn’t a hate crime; it was merely a failure of society. But it was my first taste of how shitty the world will be to me for years to come. Sure, I’ve had people purposefully misgender me or call me slurs on the street, but I can ignore that as ignorance. These TSA agents knew exactly what they were doing and took no time to think about the way it felt to be on the other side of that interaction. Twice. In a city I used to call home and a big city that I would expect to be more progressive. If I can’t feel safe in either of these types of city, where will I ever feel safe?

Right as I was starting to recover from the trauma—and it was trauma, even if it wasn’t as bad as it could have been—another tragedy struck in the form of the death of a loved one. A loved one who had not only embraced my trans identity but celebrated it. “I didn’t lose a granddaughter,” she said in a message to me, “I gained a rockstar grandson.” And then, a few weeks later, she was gone. Just as I was trying to reverse the process of distancing myself from my family, I lost one of the people I most wanted to get back. And I’m still recovering from that.

Because of these two events and the mental illnesses that have exacerbated them, my brain has shut down for much of 2020. I’ve been in a fog, feeling separated from my body and therefore not taking good care of it. I have closed off any emotional vulnerability with others and have let my friends ask for emotional support without reciprocation because I don’t feel comfortable taking it.

This past week, I have been gravitating toward listening to angry rap and rock music, not the usual angsty pop punk on most of my playlists. Because, even though I didn’t want to admit it, I am angry. I am so fucking angry. I have never been this angry before. I am angry at society. I am angry that I do not have the guts to try to change society. I am angry my friends have failed to be there for me. I am angry I can never catch a break, especially from myself. I am angry I have chemical imbalances in my brain that make me do/think weird things that I can’t control.

I am angry that this world was not built for me. Yet I let this world control so much of my life anyway.

I was not ready to face this anger until today. I’ve even avoided having any silent time to journal or just think because this anger and sadness are so big I felt like my mind would just crumble. But I’ve found a way to avoid this while allowing myself room to be angry and sad: writing.

I am done censoring myself in my writing. I censor my speech and my appearance and my social media. But my writing is where I can be honest. It is a place to express what I need and want to say. Even if I am afraid of it.

So this is me promising to you, and to myself, that my writing will be honest from now on, even if that means exploring parts of my brain I’d rather leave alone or editing my words less or falling behind in my schoolwork. And if I find myself censoring my writing for anyone, no matter who may be looking at it, I will no longer tell myself that it’s okay.

This honesty is not an immediate fix to my problems. I still can’t get out of bed before 10 in the morning. I still can’t bring myself to exercise. I am behind on homework and my job search. I am still participating passively in life. But I can write honestly. So that’s what I’ll do.

I was watching Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix special “Nanette” today and she said something that I think will stick with me for a long, long time: “Stories are the cure.” Not to mental illness or sadness or anger, but the cure to whatever disease has grabbed hold of humanity and made society into the hate-filled cesspool it is.

Stories are the cure. And it’s time I started contributing.

-Ryn Peter Baginski