Trans Island

FOLLOW THE WATER, my ancestors said when they woke me up in the middle of the night in 2022, when the only conceivable option seemed like suicide. Tonight, I’m typing this on a laptop on a beach, barefoot in a parka at the very edge of the Northwestern United States. I biked here in the dark, following my spirit out of my house when it said I want to do something wild, then following my spirit guides still as I parked my bike on mossy ground near the water and they nudged me toward it, saying: Go.

Soon as I dismounted, I noticed a glowing green spot on the ground. Like a tiny shard of beer bottle lit up; like a speck of dropped glowstick.

Bioluminescence.

NO WAY, I said, out loud, bending down to examine it, fifty steps from the sea. I walked over a barrier of crushed logs and wood fragments and across the sand and kicked off my boots and dropped my recycled-plastic blanket while I charged the water, cackling as I stepped in and saw. Hundreds of tiny green glows. Washing up, washing around me.

This beach is right next to my new home. It’s a trans sanctuary being built by a few trans people including myself, on a piece of land funded partially by people who don’t just theoretically believe in but actually practice wealth redistribution. No strings attached. But the trans person they gave the money to, he believes in affordable queer and trans housing, and he’s is using it to establish a small community a short bike ride from where wet sand is creeping through my blanket and clothes.

Trans Island, my best friend calls it. The tide is coming in. The Indian food I left on my stove, mushroom masala and chickpea korma that I made after cleaning my sweet house, my sweet cat asleep in a weird box made of scratching cardboard, is getting cold. There’s no service at Trans Island yet, as there are no other permanent residents yet aside from myself and many trees. At night, there are only stars and silence, occasionally interrupted by frogs at their singing time, whatever time that is. There are trees. There is great, gorgeous intention.

I have a journal, among the nearly 30 journals now since I started my journey with psychedelic therapy almost eight years ago, that proclaims on its front, Leap and the Net Will Appear. On one hand, I want to say to this sentiment, Fuck yourself; the quote is attributed to John Burroughs, an able-bodied straight cis white guy who has no. Fucking. Idea.

On the other, I feel like my net has appeared. It only took eight years, unspeakable sorrow, and more suicidal thoughts than a person could count. Part of me feels like I wouldn’t understand the magnificence of this net if it hadn’t been so long and hard coming, and also, when I stepped into this sparkling water, I screamed for a long time at the sky.

When I sat down, there was bioluminescence on my foot. Several spots of it glowed beneath my toes. I can’t see it anymore; I can’t see, but I can definitely hear, that the tide is coming up too close for me to stay, though I already moved my blanket back once. I’m getting better at listening. To myself, most importantly, and not just hearing but doing, however easier it would have been to stay in my warm, cozy, Indian-spice-scented house tonight, or to drive off the cliffs I’ve had in mind on many afternoons, or to pull out the razor-sharp, animal-gutting hunter’s knife I keep in my closet on the hundreds of nights I’ve considered it. I want to die right now, part of me thought before I left the house on the way to this beach—on the way to doing something wild. Instead of stuffing it down, as I used to do with all my internal voices, as I had to do, protectively, because they told me to kill my father, to tell everyone that I was not a girl in a time when it was even less okay to do that, because they told me that I was gay and a boy and an anarchist and definitely not fucking Catholic and so many other things that were not allowed, I asked this part of me why it wanted to die tonight.

Quit while I’m ahead. The most traumatized parts of me don’t believe it can stay okay, or get better. The more resourced parts of me know, even in this aggressively trans-exterminationist time, that I’ve done enough work to let in this adventure of good trans living. It can be as abundant as the waves coming in (I just moved my blanket back again! and still!); it can be softer and sluttier and more sensuous and safe than I ever could have imagined. Than, frankly, I can imagine now.

But I have more faith than ever in its possibility.