Ruby, Suicide

Why do I still write? I resigned from the mag. I’m sick of sharing hot takes with the world. So why can’t I stop? Why do I drag myself to the computer every morning, batter the keys until I’ve written enough to fill three pages of eleven-point single-spaced Georgia?

But that’s bullshit. I know why.

It was maybe, what, a week before Orlando? Maybe a week and a half. I remember that I had just started to get over the whole trying-to-kill-myself thing when the news about Orlando began coming in. Then I was just getting over that when Jo Cox was stabbed. Then after that we had the Referendum result, and we discovered that not only could you get murdered in Britain in 2016 for not agreeing with the Mail and the Express, we found that we were surrounded by people happy to vote alongside her killer.

It's been a fucking cavalcade of shit, is what I’m saying, basically, a real rollercoaster ride of faecal action. I joke that I feel like a character in a novel whose author is trying to draw a heavy-handed parallel between my personal disintegration and that of the nation but I’m not even half-joking. Nothing feels real. Sometimes that’s hilarious. Sometimes it’s terrifiying. It’s always absurd. And absurd if you want to deliberately live your life existentially challenging convention is one thing, but absurd when all you want to do is keep food on the table, transition as soon as you can and maybe write a few things people like is a different thing entirely. It’s tiring.

I was tired when I signed in to our platform a few weeks ago. I hadn’t had time to wash or brush my hair that morning but it didn’t really matter, usually. The benefits of working from home, right? Still, it was feeling pretty matted, so when I got to my desk I ran the brush through my hair a few times to work the kinks out. That’s when Diane Skyped me.

Diane was my editor. She could see I was online. I didn’t want to talk to anybody, but I had to take the call. Her face appeared on my screen, as mine did on hers. If I had only clicked voice call instead of video...

‘Jesus Ruby! What the fuck happened to your eyebrows?’

Working from home meant no-one noticed it when I was ripping clumps of my eyebrow hair out with my own hands. When I ripped out so much I had no brows left, effectively, and had to start drawing them on even though I, personally, find painted-on brows trashy.

This is the first thing I had to explain to Diane. Not that I find it trashy, that every time I paint my brows on I’m reminded of why I have to. It isn’t something I like sharing with her. I get the sense that Diane, who goes on and on about how much she loves the gays, doesn’t extend the same courtesy to trans women, but then fag hags always regard us as a threat. We don’t fit into their weird pseudomasochism, their world of GBFs and going out but never having sex. Fucking weirdos.

I had been planning the jump before this but that pushed me over the edge. I might have let my intentions slip because Diane told me that she was ‘concerned’. Of course she is. She decided to try and do the whole building bridges thing by telling me her son is trans. She misgendered him repeatedly as ‘her’ during the discussion. I pity Diane’s son.

Anyway this all led to me breaking down and explaining my plan. On a walk to Longbenton Metro station the night before I’d noticed that the Metros come in a lot faster than they do at South Gosforth. I couldn’t really tell if they were fast enough to kill me but it seemed that way and I was prepared to risk it. So my plan that day was to finish filing what I had to file, then go to that station and do it. Make the jump. Just a step, really. One step, then impact, then BANG! No more problems, assuming I managed to do it right and didn’t just end up crippling myself.

Diane said she wanted me to go and see my doctor, see the crisis team, anything. I told her that I would. It seemed easier. She let me go. I didn’t talk about Jeanette.

Longbenton Metro is beautiful. A neoclassical station built originally as part of the Loop, the precursor to the modern Metro, even the usual Blairite additions haven’t fucked it up that much. It’s a nice thing to look at while preparing to jump. The first Metro came in too soon for me to make it, but that was fine, another would be along in seven minutes, the digital display informed me. Fair enough.

There was a message from TJ, my flatmate, on my phone:

Could you talk to Valerie please? She seems worried about you.

I’d put a note on Facebook. People were reacting. Additionally I’d texted Valerie asking her not to follow me in taking this action. A friend of ours had died just a fortnight ago (yeah, yet another fucking hammer blow) and at that point we still all thought it was suicide. I love Valerie and I would hate to think my death would send her over that cliff too.

There wasn’t another train for five minutes.

I phoned her.

I don’t really remember what she said. Well, a few things. Don’t do it I guess would have been one of them. I told her there wasn’t any point, that people were going to vote Leave and fuck everything up and then many more people would die, so really I was leaving early to avoid the rush. It’s a Terry Pratchett reference. We both got it. Neither of us laughed.

‘Are you going to give Richard fucking Littlejohn the satisfaction of seeing another trans woman die? Valerie asked.

Let’s say it was that which persuaded me. The actual truth is less cinematic. I missed another Metro because I was talking to Valerie and by this point I guess someone had alerted the station authorities because a dude in a Hi-Viz jacket was inching his way up the platform, probably to restrain me in case I did decide to jump. Two trains late as always. Metro apologises.

So I got on the next train instead of going under it. The woman in the seat opposite me asked why I was crying, if there was anything she could do to help. A Kodak moment, sure, but I shook my head. At that point, I needed to just get it cried out.

I had just tried to kill myself.

Everything after this point, I realised, would be bookended as everything that happened after I tried to kill myself.

That’s a tricky thing to get your head around. I’m still having problems doing that now, to be honest. Even writing this. Like, what the fuck do you do?

Maybe I should talk to Emma about that. She tried it, too. More hardcore than me though, she used a knife. Didn’t outsource the act of attempted self-murder to a public transport worker. I respect that.

The woman who asked if I was alright got off at Shiremoor. There are fields out there, interspersing the housing, as the train loops its way to the coast. They’re not picturesque. They’re not Vaughan Williams. But they’re there. And I swear that I saw a lone fox, bounding through those fields, from the window of the train. A thing you’d roll your eyes at in a movie, but I swear I really saw it.

I followed the loop round to Monument, changed for South Gosforth, walked home and got my weed and a change of underwear, then took an Uber to Valerie’s, where I drank cider, smoked, and helped Val and Brianna pave part of their garden and set up a firepit. Afterwards, we sat around the fire with Jean, made ‘smores and roasted hot dogs. It was a nice night, in the end, I guess. Except for the fact that, hours before, I’d tried to kill myself.

And then, as I say, Orlando and all the rest of it. I don’t know what can go right now, I know that I don’t want to. Something needs to, though. Something needs to. 

Something needs to happen.