I have been falsely accused of pulling my pistol on someone, when they charged at me screaming, making me fear for my life, after I almost hit them and their wife with my car.
Now I'm facing potential jail time, possibly a year and a half of it, over something I didn't even do.. as a small, noticeably feminine transgender woman on HRT, with hiv, who will be housed with the very worst and most dangerous of men.
I have just a little over a month left.
There truly is no way out.
I was the one who was almost attacked, I was the one who was cussed at and screamed at, I was the one that was ran at, and almost hit, called many different kinds of slurs, and still I did not pull my weapon. It was simply on my person. I am innocent, and yet my life is endangered.
This jail does not replace medications, even for people like me. I know this for a fact, because they have made it abundantly clear to me.
If I go to jail for more than 30 days, I lose my insurance, income, and home.. not to mention my access to the medications tha5 keep me alive.
On top of that,
the conditions are third world. Sleeping on mats with no padding, on top of steel bunks. Left in holding cells for a week at a time. Underfed with non nutritious food.
All of that is nothing in comparison to the brutality I faced in there, over public drunks in the past.. and that was when I was a living as a man. Constant threats of violence.
The people in there know that I'm not like them. I'm too soft, too gentle.. always have been.
Over the 4 days that I was in a few weeks ago, before I could plead innocent to this misdemeanor charge, I was made to live in fear the entire time I was there. For fuck sakes,
a guy threatened to knock me out and rape me, and my only option was to go into quote unquote protective custody, which is really 21-hour lockdown, in a small cell. All I did is look at the guy, scanning the room for my safety, and he started screaming it at me in front of everyone, thus marking me for targeted victimization.
The only option would be to run from that kind of thing, only be left in a cell with nothing to occupy my mind. Just 4 walls, a toilet and a bunk, 21hrs a day, indefinitely. So it's either be a victim or go mad, from the time that I would have to do being even worse.
So, suffice to say.. I truly have no other option.
I am a survivor of gang rape, and trafficking. I am terrified of violent men, because I have been victim to their violent behavior too many times in life. I simply cannot endure it.
There are some fates that are worse than death, and for me, as a survivor of the things that I've survived, and
as a hiv-positive, very feminine figured transgender woman, going to jail is one of them.
I told my fiance of my intentions, and she got quite upset at me. I promised her in the past that suicide would never be an option for me again.. but I never planned for this. I could have weathered anything, but this. Now, just a few moments ago
I lied to her to reassure that I wouldn't... I wanted to mean it, but deep down in my heart I know that I'm going to do this. There's not a doubt in my mind.
Now, I will leave my fiance, parents, and children devastated.
My mother has already lost one child, due to a drug overdose.. she's already fragile, and I know this will possibly kill her.. but what else am I to do?
I have no other choice. My only safe option, the only one I can endure, for lack of better terminology, is using an exit bag.
I have it all figured out. Exactly what supplies I need, where to get them, and when I will do it....
I cant believe my life... all the love and kindness I had in me, left to impart, are to be forfeited like this.
I cant this happened.
This charge shouldn't even have been considered... but I am a trans woman in the deep South... and so it is. This town hates me.
I had such a beautiful life with my fiance... even though my life was made terribly uncomfortable everywhere else we went... home was heaven for me... but its all over with now.
I can't run, bounty hunters will look for me. Even if I did, I've no safe place to hide. There really isn't any other option. I cant believe its going to end, like -this-. I was so happy, even in this shit hole, with her, before this. I survived the most horrible things, lived in isolation for years afterwards, only for her to find me, and love me until I was healed enough to function again in life, and it's going to end like -this.-
The world is too cruel... life is unfair....
But that's just how it is sometimes.
I have a little over 30 days left, to give those that I love the very best possible memories of me, before I go.
I need to focus on making sure that my parents, my kids, and my fiance know how much they're loved. I have to focus on keeping a straight face, and showing as much love for them as I possibly can, and leaving letters that will hopefully help them realize that none of this was their fault, and there was nothing they could do to prevent it, or to help me.
I hate that it's come to this, but I truly have been left no other choice.