A friend tweeted something about trans rights today. They said that people who exist just to take joy from others are the ones who should be excluded from society.

It resonated. Being the wrong kind of trans woman, I encounter these joy assassins a lot. So often, I count on them being present in spaces that I’m invited to.

It’s hard. I never learned how to just ignore them.

One thing I’ve learned is that a lot of the time that’s the hidden tax on those invitations. If you want to be here you have to ignore it, because it’s not our job to fix it and we’re not going to.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s no longer healthy for me to engage in this kind of social warfare. The assassins won, and I feel bad that I wasn’t strong enough to keep fighting them.

In rooms full of light,
I search for a place to belong,
but there they are,
joy assassins,
ready with dirty looks and subtle knives.

I’ve never learned to ignore them
the ones who steal joy,
who make my very existence
seem like a mistake to be overlooked.
I should’ve learned to look away,
to turn my heart off like a switch,
but I never could,
never knew how to pretend
the disapproval didn’t burn.

it’s not our job to fix it,
and I wonder,
was it ever mine to fix?
would I ever have been able to?
How many more times can I stand in their shadow,
feeling like I’m fading from the edges of their world?
What else do I have to do
to earn my place?

The price of belonging,
of being invited in,
was too much
My insides weren’t strong enough
to withstand their weaponry of exclusion

And now, they’ve won.
I don’t have the strength to fight anymore.
I don’t know how to keep going,
how to stand stall
how to not lose my footing
when their looks and words trip me
I was never enough for them,
and they’ve made sure I know it.

So, I let go.
I let them have the victory they’ve earned,
because it’s easier to surrender
than to keep bleeding out in the quiet.
I will never be whole again,
not in their world.
And that truth,
that terrible truth,
hurts more than I can say.