Survivor's Guilt

I have been called honest and open when it comes to my experience with trans ideology, my previous trans identity, and desisting, but there is something I am reluctant to talk about. I may or may not publish this but I want my thoughts organized and off my chest.

I don’t deserve to be okay. The reason why is because when I think of people who went further than me — those who were irreparably harmed by hormones or surgeries, who have not shaken their delusion and maybe never will, who have taken their lives after the interventions they were told would save them didn’t end up helping — I see we all started in the same situation. Any of their posts or life events could have been mine, had I lived a different life. They’re my peers, people I may have talked to or gone to school with or had been in the same online forums as me. I didn’t think differently from them. In a way, when I look at them, I see myself or how I could have ended. So, why am I okay? I walked away from my delusional trans identity without harm, but my peers aren’t walking with me.

I am not an especially smart or brave person for having desisted. I am just lucky. It was all circumstantial. I didn’t medicalize, not because I didn’t desperately want to, but because my family and state said no. I didn’t withdraw from everyone who pushed me further because I realized the harm. No, I withdrew because I was stressed from other life circumstances. My luck haunts me and, as much as I appreciate it, I wonder if my story could have been the case for others.

I am not jealous of these people at all. I feel really bad for them, because they were not protected. But what did I do to deserve to be? Absolutely nothing is the answer. I’m a worse person than a lot of them. I am selfish. I don’t do enough work to protect others because I am afraid of being too public and I can’t always motivate myself to write. I am someone who, in the face of serious luck, keeps trying to better my own life instead of the lives of people who weren’t so lucky. Luck can be a terrible thing. In a way, I don’t blame myself for people being harmed, but I feel guilty because I didn’t deserve to be protected when they weren’t. It should have been me. Better people deserve to be okay. Nobody deserved it actually but if it had to happen at all it should have been me.

When I say I don’t blame myself it’s only partially true. I didn’t create this ideology, these policies. I never hurt anyone. I was a child. But how many people did I lead astray? How many people did I push further into delusion and to what extent did I? I truly don’t know. I know I made everyone in my life “affirm” me to talk with me. I’m sure it was annoying and offensive to some. I never cared. I called my mom abusive for wanting to protect me. It hurts me a lot that I hated and hurt those who protected me from harm. I never apologized because I am too afraid to talk about it. It embarrasses me still. I know I affirmed my trans identified friends. People can say it’s rare but I knew at least seven trans-identified teenagers. And when I say I “knew” them, it wasn’t me looking at them and assuming they are trans, it is me knowing them by name and knowing for a fact they identify as transgender and having more than one conversation with them. I knew more online too. The first trans identified person I ever met was a very good friend of mine I met at summer camp when I was 10. At that age I think it’s the parents pushing it, not the kid. I see now that my friend was being manipulated and would likely be medically abused in the future if this path continued, if she hadn’t already been when I knew her. I didn’t say anything. I still haven’t said anything. I won’t even name this person to anyone. We haven’t spoken in years. I was very close with someone I met online too. At times he was my only friend. We had a falling out and I ghosted him. When I saw his accounts years later, I learned he had medicalized now. I walk away unharmed without my friends, and I encouraged them to hurt themselves. Why do I deserve to be okay?

I feel indebted to the world for being alive and unharmed. I was way too lucky to let myself move on from this, because I don’t want to walk away alone. But I can’t name anyone I have helped. I can only name people I have hurt.

Paradoxically I feel as though I cannot be upset and I cannot be happy. This is probably the reason I didn’t want to talk about this before. It feels wrong to be upset because my life has gone too well and I should not be the one complaining. I worry it is insensitive to people who were hurt or who are no longer with us. But I also feel it is wrong for me to just enjoy my life and move on, because I do so alone. I do so at the expense of others.

The reason I am reluctant to talk about this is because I feel like it makes me look bad. I wonder if anyone would see this as me just wanting sympathy for myself when nothing happened to me? I honestly understand why someone would think that but I don’t see it that way. I don’t want anyone to feel bad for me because whatever I might go through is not comparable to medical abuse. I just wish my peers were okay, and I think if anyone had to be hurt it should have been me.