Two weeks ago Mikki Nicholson was hit by a train at Great Corby in Cumbria. It was around 7.30pm on Friday and she could have been sitting down to watch Coronation Street, or meeting friends for dinner – but instead she was on a dark, cold track, dying. Her family released a statement saying she had taken her own life.

Mikki was depressed. Mikki was a Scrabble champion. Mikki was transgender. She had tried to take her own life before but had always been saved by her network of supporters. No one knows what happened this time, though. She went to a lonely place and from there on to the loneliest place of all. I hope she finds the peace in death that evaded her in life.

I’ve added Mikki to the list of people I need to remember today, which is the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) – a ghostly crew of long-gone friends and people I almost met but never did, and never will. Like Andrea Waddell. She lived up the road from me back when I was in Brighton. A student and a sex worker – as was I, back then, although she was a bit older – she was murdered by a client. I met her family at my very first TDOR. They had the look of people who had been robbed of the thing that is most precious to them.

Or how about Destiny Laurence, her whole life ahead of her. Or Sonia Burgess, one of the most gifted lawyers of her generation. Or beloved primary school teacher Lucy Meadows, whose coroner said “shame on all of you” to the assembled press over media intrusion during her last months of life. The list goes on.

But before I had heard of any of these lost women, there was Alex Silverfish. The DJ; the bon viveur; the kind, generous and charismatic Italian who invited me to check out of my hotel and stay with her after we met on one of my first trips to London. Alex didn’t “pass”, that is to say, she was often perceived as trans by people in the street. I remember leaving her Bethnal Green apartment and men gathering to shout at us. Fake hair! Fake tits! Fake woman! Bloody abomination!

“Wait until we get into town,” she said to me with a smile, tugging her little dog along. “They love us there”. We had to endure 10 minutes of being chased by boys on bikes calling us trannies and throwing rubbish at us before we reached “town” though. It was summer and Brick Lane was hot and smelly and bursting with activity: Alex haggled in Italian for buffalo mozzarella and beef tomatoes with a handsome young man in Spitalfields market; I watched, impressed. She was so full of life and gave so much life to others. A few years later she killed herself.

I didn’t know Mikki Nicholson and can only guess what was going through her mind the evening she found herself in front of a train, but it is an educated guess. Up and down the country trans people are suffering. Struggling to find work; struggling to find somewhere to live; struggling to find that thing we all require: love. As actress and transgender advocate Laverne Cox puts it, the situation for many trans people is a “state of emergency”. It isn’t hyperbole.

And I’m so angry I have to tell you this, so angry that this is the script, because life can be beautiful. I don’t want trans people to be objects of pity, I want us to have the same chance as everyone else to celebrate in the dance of life.

I spoke at the TDOR ceremony in London last year – one of the biggest in Europe, certainly in Britain, and possibly in the world. It was draining and moving and lacked the glitz and glamour of the well-funded galas and awards ceremonies that gay charities and magazines are able to throw at this time of year. It’s an event of which mainstream society is barely aware. Most of those attending were trans themselves, and there was a rawness and intense empathy with the suffering of those we remembered. I mean no offence to the wonderful people who give so much of their own time and emotion to organise TDOR, but we deserve better. We deserve better coverage in newspapers. We deserve better recognition at the political level. We deserve to feel like it is not just trans people who are moved and outraged by the culture of violence and abuse towards us here and around the world.

This year I will light a candle for Alex and Sonia and Mikki, and all the thousands of others around the world. I will also remember to be kind to myself, and tell myself that I matter. I won’t apologise for loving life. If you want to go to a ceremony tonight, great. And if you want to dance on tables like you just don’t care, go for that – so long as you don’t end up killing yourself. Don’t ever kill yourself. Live. Really, really live.

People from minority groups waste so much time feeling inferior, settling for less, pretending to be “normal”. We owe it to those who have died to blossom and never apologise for wanting, seeking and getting what everyone else has. Up and down the country, people from all backgrounds are feeling pain and losing hope. Even if you don’t know any trans people, today is a great reminder of how lucky we all are to simply be here. Life is a beautiful, fickle, temporary thing. Mourn those who are no longer around to enjoy it – and celebrate yours.

• In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 08457 90 90 90. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here.

• This article was amended on 20 November 2014. It originally said in the third paragraph that Lucy Meadows’ coroner had blamed the media for “hounding her to death”. He did not say this, but had said “shame on all of you” to the assembled press.