Does Anyone Hear Me?

Day 137 – April 9, 2026

Does anyone hear me? Not politely. Not in the abstract. Not in the “we hear you” public-relations way people use when they want credit for sensitivity without actually changing a damn thing.

I mean really.

Does anyone hear me at the level this deserves? Because some days I genuinely do not know. And that is one of the most heartbreaking parts of all of this.

Not just what happened. Not just the violence. Not just the man who is still free while I am the one carrying the cost in my body, my sleep, my fear, my anger, my nervous system, my relationship to the world.

Also the feeling that my pain may still not be landing where it should. That I may be speaking into a culture, a system, a world, that is structurally bad at hearing women in pain unless we make ourselves either saintly enough or broken enough to fit whatever narrative is easiest to process.

I hate that.

And I especially hate how much I suspect being trans sits inside that too, whether anyone wants to say it out loud or not.

Because how could it not?

This is the cultural climate I live in. This is the country I live in. This is the atmosphere. Trans women are discussed, debated, politicized, projected onto, fetishized, erased, defended in theory, discarded in practice, and expected to somehow continue being legible and dignified through all of it.

That is exhausting.

And it would be exhausting even if I had not also been violated. Even if I had not also been trying to survive something that already made being heard feel difficult enough. Add those things together and some days I just want to scream.

Do you hear me or do you hear what is easiest for you to hear? Because there is a difference.

Do you hear “trauma” and think “sad but survivable”? Do you hear “trans woman” and immediately shift me into some other category in your head where my pain is somehow less urgent, less relatable, less deserving of outrage? Do you hear “strong” and decide that means I need less? Do you hear “confident” and assume I’m fine?

I am not fine in all the places that matter.

I am functioning. I am writing. I am fighting. I am becoming. I am beautiful some days and funny on others and terrifyingly observant nearly all the time.

But I am also in pain. Real pain. Pain that should matter louder than it does. Pain that should have been met with more force, more clarity, more justice, more care than it has been.

That truth sits in me like a scream with excellent diction.

And I think what breaks my heart is that I do not want to become hard about this. I do not want to decide no one hears me and let that calcify into my whole worldview. Because I know some people do. I know family and friends do. I know Roger does in the only way he can. I know there are moments and spaces and women and communities where I am heard so clearly it almost undoes me.

But the bigger question still haunts me.

Does the world hear me? Does it give a shit?

Or is it just passively consuming the shape of my pain while still asking me to make it more eloquent, more digestible, more coherent, more socially useful before it qualifies as something worthy of real response?

That is a sick arrangement. And I’m tired. Not hopeless. Just tired of how much labor it takes to make pain audible when it should have been obvious from the first word.

Roger spent part of tonight pressed against me like he could physically absorb some of it through sheer contact. No questions. No theory. No “have you tried reframing this?” bullshit. Just weight. Warmth. Presence.

Sometimes that feels like the only honest response to suffering.

Just stay. Just don’t look away. Maybe that’s all I’m asking, really. Not pity. Not performance. Not false wisdom. Just don’t look away. Don’t soften it. Don’t reframe it into something less urgent. Don’t ask me to be easier to hear than I already am.

I am speaking. I have been speaking.

The question is whether the world is brave enough to listen.

Chaos in one hand. Grace in the other.

And me, still asking the question that hurts most because some part of me still desperately wants the answer to be yes.