Today is November 21st.

That means Transgender Awareness Week is over for another year.

I’m simultaneously relieved and disheartened.

Relieved because I can’t spend too much longer thinking about all the lives we have lost this year.

Disheartened because I know there isn’t much I can do to make the list shorter next year.

I was talking to a friend this week about my speaking engagements for the Transgender Day of Remembrance and as I was describing the order of the service I said “…and then we play the slideshow of all the women who have been murdered this year”.

She gasped a little and I said “What?”.

She replied “How can you say it like that, like… I don’t know. Like it’s normal?”

I paused for a second and replied “Because for us, this is normal.”

And it’s true. Sometimes I forget that. What it was like not to understand.

When I first came out I was terrified, I would read all these stories and hear reports of women going missing or being found dead and I couldn’t handle it, I would think to myself “This isn’t real life? This isn’t America? How can this be happening and no one cares?”

Then I lived with it awhile.

And I just learned to accept the reality that, No, For the most part no one does.

As I sat amongst friends and allies last night watching names scroll by and praying I didn’t see any I knew, I forced myself to read each one, because you can never be sure. And even though I was disappointed in that, I managed to maintain some semblance of detachment until we got to the list of “Unknowns”. People who had been killed and we didn’t even have their names. On this, the day we set aside to remember those who have been taken, I was crushed by the fact that we couldn’t even properly remember these.

Something about the Unknowns bothered me.

And it was this: I have grown used to seeing the names, hearing stories of friends who went out for a walk and never came back, who told the wrong person at the wrong time, or who just couldn’t take the fear anymore and ended their own lives.

But the stark sad reality of the Unknowns made me so frightened that I remembered the small part of myself that understood what it is like not to be afraid. And in so doing they reminded me of why I pledged to never live in hiding.

In the transgender world there is a term we use for those who are blessed with the genetics or money to transition without people knowing they are Trans. We call these people “Stealth”.

And I am not here to disparage them, God knows that was all I wanted when I first came out, to not have to deal with the reality of life as one of the most hated minorities in America.

But something happened and changed all that. About six months after coming out I began mentoring a young trans girl, she was 16 when I started mentoring her, talking her through her issues dealing with her Faith, her Parents, how hard things would be when she came out etc. etc. She was a little bundle of fear and possibilities and I worried over her. She was from Ohio and had just turned seventeen. She seemed to be doing better and things with her parents had started looking less dire so I was content to let her talk when she needed to and check on her intermittently. I hadn’t heard from her in a couple weeks.

Then my feed lit up.

Transgender Teen Dies After Leaping In Front Of Truck In Apparent Suicide

(Ohio) 17 Year Old Walks Into Oncoming Traffic

My heart dropped.

I was frantic, the first reports had no name and I felt like I was going to throw up. Had I not done enough? Could I have done something more? Was it Her???

I was paralyzed with fear.

Thankfully, In the end, it wasn’t her. She messaged me upset about what happened as well, and about the same time a name was released. It was someone who we both knew but it wasn’t her, and I was both relieved and ashamed of my relief.

It was Leelah. It wasn’t her, but we had lost another.

And that was when I decided I couldn’t ever go stealth. Because I realized in those terrible days of mourning that the only reason the girl I was mentoring was making it through, was because I and a myriad of other people like me were living out our lives as us. We were her shield. The people she looked up to. The ones who stand in front of the storm. The ones who had “made it”. But no one would ever benefit from me being stealth, no one but me.

So I sat last night and watched Leelah on the screen, and thought of the other girl who as of the last time I spoke is still in the closet and still trying to figure out this crazy life but in a much more stable place. And when she scrolled by I wiped the tears from my eyes knowing I had at least helped keep one here.

But when the Unknowns came up I remembered that moment of panic, of terror, and steeled myself for another year. Another year of living out, another year of questions and education, another year of friends going missing and nights of worry. Another year, and hopefully a few less Unknowns.