I read an article about how some Oregonians wouldn’t evacuate during the wildfires. They were afraid that “leftist looters” would come and steal their property.
What a tragic illustration of both the power of trauma and narrative. Trauma teaches us to fear what could be and prevents us from responding to what is. We remain distracted in the face of actual destruction. Trauma keeps us stuck in the past or the future, making it impossible to experience the present.
Stories become a fireproof home in a cruel world. The most valuable property we own is our story. Some of us would rather die than lose it. Because when we lose it we have to encounter the vulnerability of being alive.
A story is many things, but it is not a life raft. Nor a mask. What was being asked of those townspeople was not only the evacuation of their houses, but their stories. What is being asked of all of us now is to abandon the flimsy fantasy of certainty. Living is tumultuous. We can’t control it. But we can control our response to it.
When I learned that JK Rowling is publishing a transphobic novel about a man who dresses up as a woman to cause harm, I found myself thinking about wildfires. As patriarchy ravages the world we are looking for someone to blame. We cannot bear to look beside us, so instead we look at our screens. And we take that pain and dole it out haphazardly to trans people / migrants…it almost doesn’t matter who, as long as we don’t have to see it here, among the people who said they loved us. (The most lethal story is a love story.)
I know that JK is hurting. I know that transphobia is unprocessed grief and repressed desire. I also know that injury has always been the justification for supremacy. I know that if we do not transform pain, we transmit it.
As a brown transfeminine person I’m not allowed to name my own pain. I am just a metaphorical device for other’s pain. It feels like drowning in an ocean of text written in a language I will never understand. But I don’t need to. Because I am here. Present in this body and in this burning world. And I can feel it.
Are you willing to suspend your story? Not just so that I can live. But so that you can, too?
Image by Matt Bernstein