I've been doing not great lately, and one thing that keeps coming up in my head is one of the beliefs I hold on to, to try and stay sane.
It's not really a belief...I don't know if I truly believe it. It is a coping mechanism tho, which at least partially prevents me from going completely crazy...
Does anyone else tell themselves that they'll be born cis in the "next life"?
For me personally, I mean a cis woman. And with that, all of the things I'll get to experience that I can't now (a normal female puberty at the right time, periods, pregnancy, hopefully attracting way more cis men...)
I don't even know if I believe in reincarnation, but I still hold onto this thought, this hope for dear life. I guess it's a justification of some sort? Because to be honest...I'd do anything, and I mean really anything to be cis. But I can't, of course.
This probably doesn't make sense, but it does kinda help sometimes. I don't even know why I'm writing this. I guess...I'd just like other people's opinion on this. Do you have anything similar?
Edit: I'm sorry. Really. Yesterday, for some reason I decided to take oral prog (bad idea), which made me drunk for about 2 hours and then it made me a depressed, dysphoric, crying mess (as it does every time). On top of that, for some reason I decided to watch the trailer for the upcoming anime, Just Like Mona Lisa...
Any cis person would be like "Oh yeah, cool new anime, people are born genderless and then at 12 choose their own puberty?", but...I'm not cis and in the state I was in...it sent me straight into a spiral. The whole concept still makes me dysphoric af, but I really wanna see it...
I haven't watched anime in years. I'm curious how this one turns out...even if I die from dysphoria in the process ๐
Thanks everyone! You're all so sweet. Way too sweet. I don't deserve you ๐ญ Thanks for being so kind to me ๐ฉต๐ฉท๐ค๐ฉท๐ฉต
Edit2: I read the manga, all in one sitting. It gave me some much needed exposure, and for some reason, facing the pain head-on helped relieve the bad feelings. I'm actually surprised how much it helped and how much I enjoyed the piece itself.
Huh. Didn't expect that to work. I fully expected a breakdown and lots of crying. There was some tearing up...but I feel much better now. Now I'm not scared of the anime in the slightest. Looking forward to it.
This probably doesn't make any sense, I get it. Just...treat this as a mad ramble ๐
I love y'all. Thank you ๐
Ok. I'm going to post a link to something here. It's from the old Trans Girl Diaries webcomic. Warning, it's extremely triggering. I post this only as an example of how these thoughts you are having are not unique. Warning, depictions of suicide. This was made back in 2011.
https://imgur.com/a/c8MvnVR
(Sorry for the imgur link. Couldn't figure out how to post an image with a spoiler tag.)
I see. This is kind of triggering, but also, I really wish it worked this way. And I'm sorry I'm not the only one with these thoughts. I wouldn't wish them on anyone...
The same with being trans, unfortunately
cw: responding to your image
uhh ... i understand the image quite well but i'm not sure about it ... i think that i disagree.
there is a ban on suicide for a reason. if you kill yourself, that means that you signal to the universe that you don't want to exist, so you don't get reborn. so this wouldn't actually work the way that the author intended at all.
cw: responding to your response! CW as it's all musings on the ethics of the afterlife and suicide.
spoiler
Eh, it all depends on how you assume reincarnation works. Maybe suicide is morally wrong; maybe it just isn't. Maybe karma exists and affects what your next life is; maybe karma doesn't exist and it's just a random spin of the wheel no matter how you live your previous life. Maybe there's only one soul, and that soul bounces back and forth forward and backwards in time, eventually living every human life from the beginning of time to the end of time. Maybe karma does exist, but the grand cosmic ledger sees suicide as a likely outcome for certain lifetimes and doesn't punish souls for it. If 41% of trans people attempt, well, it seems pretty cruel for the universe to punish people for an outcome the universe itself made extremely likely in the first place.It's like God making people gay and then punishing them for it. I just can't believe in such a deity. At some point the core idea of reincarnation - a grand cosmic balancing of good and evil - just stops making sense when you're punishing people for actions they ultimately had little control over. I personally don't see anything wrong with say, assisted suicide. I refuse to believe in any model of the afterlife that punishes people simply for opting out of a slow and agonizing death. If there's a god, and that god gives you the choice, "suffer painfully for a years-long slow drawn-out death or end your life early and be punished with hell/negative reincarnation," I would consider such a god to be evil. If anyone believes in a god that makes people trans and then punishes them for it? I would say they're worshiping the devil. I cannot believe in an evil god or an evil system of reincarnation. It just violates the entire core premise of their being some final cosmic righting of wrongs and a grand reckoning of good and evil. If I'm going to believe in an afterlife, it has to be one where people who do evil in this life cannot escape the consequences of it, and people who tried to live good live aren't punished for things beyond their control.
I just have a real hard time with any religious model that punishes people for suicide. People either commit suicide to avoid a certain and terrible fate, (like assisted suicide after a terminal diagnosis), or they commit suicide when they're literally not of sound mind. In most cases, it seems to me that the "not guilty by reason of insanity" idea would apply.
I can imagine a few rare scenarios where suicide would be worthy of punishment. For example, maybe when a school shooter kills themselves to keep from being arrested. Or maybe if you committed suicide as a deliberate act of malice? Maybe then it would be worthy of punishment. Like imagine if someone had such strong hate for their ex that it literally was greater than their will to live. They want to hurt someone more than they want to keep on living. Maybe they go to their ex's home, wait til they open the door, pull out a gun and blow their own head off right in front of them, their brain spattering all over them. All done with the sole intention of causing deep lifelong trauma to the other person. Suicide as an act of deliberate malice. Those are the only kinds of odd scenarios where I can see suicide as being worthy of punishment. Suicide not as an act of individual despair, but out of a deliberate intention to hurt others. But someone simply doing it out of hopelessness, loss, and pain? I cannot believe in any religion that would punish people for doing that. At some point the arbiters of cosmic justice would have to ask, "they were already in so much pain that they literally ended their life, with no guarantee that anything would come after. Haven't they suffered enough?"