I haven’t been writing on the page lately. I have been working a lot in restaurants and it’s very energy consuming. I am actually writing this as my hands' skin is burning me. I can’t feel with my hands skin properly when I touch things. I have tried different creams but it seems that all my hands need is rest and care to regain the sensation. 

That’s not why I am writing today. It’s because I want to write about Thursday. It was a day with a mixture of happiness, sadness and different feelings right after each others. 

A call woke up me up in the morning and I answered with one eye closed and another half opened. It was the surgery Clinic. They finally have a date for me. I was feeling happy but a tasteless happiness. I feel that I have been killed slowly by waiting for so long. I needed it since a long time and I was trying to live so hard enduring it. 10 years. It’s been 10 years. My body is tired. This year I was feeling painful chest pain, back pain and heavy breathing. I think this is an important point for doctors to consider when someone is applying for surgery. I think there isn’t enough focus or activism for trans health. I have been really struggling to get what I need health wise since I got to Canada. In Canada where I thought I will breath after years of fighting to stay alive. But when I sent myself in a journey inside my head to look at this passing year and a half, I found out that I was constantly running. I want to find a way to stop running and just breathe. 

I went back to sleep. Another call woke me up. It was the police. They asked me to come and give a statement about the complaint we made about our neighbours' harassments throughout this one and a half passing year. I excepted myself to be feeling nervous or any other feeling because of the bad things that I experienced in the past with police in other countries. Instead, it’s like I wasn’t feeling. I prepared myself and went to them right away. But this wasn’t the first time this happens. When I go back to other memories, it seems that this is what I have been for many years during hard situations. Automatically all different feelings get blocked. Fear gets blocked. Sadness gets blocked. Nervousness gets blocked. Calm mode is on. Confident mode is on. "Fuck everything that will happen" mode is on. I remember those moments where I got beaten up. I was calm. Either talking back to the ones who are beating me up or just zoning somewhere else in my head until it ends. Not sad. Not angry. Just waiting. Living. They say there’s always a way out. My way out was always going somewhere else in my head. The place I know that is totally mine and no one can reach. The place I can visit as much I want and anytime I want. I always refer to what happened to me as my journey but the truth is there were two journeys at the same time. One that includes what is happening to me in reality and the other was all the places I visited in my head. Beautiful beaches that I run across. High mountains that I danced on. Desert sand that my feet swam in. I reached the police office and I waited. The woman who called me came to me with a smile wearing a suit instead of a police uniform. I think this is a good idea. I felt from the family name and how the woman looked like that she’s Middle Eastern too so I mentioned that I more comfortable speaking Arabic so we did speak in Arabic. I think this is the first police experience that I have that isn’t fucked up even though that didn’t stop my feelings block process from happing just knowing that I am in a police office. 

I went to my driving school afterwards. On my way to it, I remembered that I had a surgery call in the morning and I smiled about it. I told myself things are getting better. I will start living better after it. Things were moving forward for me this year. Many things were checked off my list. I arrived to my school with a kind of good energy. I asked for the completion course paper that I should have from my school to be able to take the drive test. I looked at the paper that I was given. It had my previous legal name. I was shocked just staring at my paper without talking. Like I have a bulletproof mind but they shocked me. I stated that I informed them of the legal change of my name so why I am getting this. The receptionist said that this is an official government paper that can’t be change. I said that this paper isn’t more official government than all of my IDs. She said that I registered as this person in this paper and I can’t change it. I said that this person is me and all of this is me and they are not two separate people. She replied that it can’t be changed. I replied saying that nothing can’t be changed in order to make someone’s life better. I told her if it was her who’s constantly living this she would have known what people did to me. I told her that I wanted to take the exam without having to go throughout people knowing about this situation. I told her how I don’t feel safe or trust that the person who will give me the test might not let me pass it because they may not like what they have discovered from those documents that I will have to present. She only looked at me and made a sign with her hands as " I don’t know/ not my problem". I have known this woman for a year taking my lessons there and this behaviour came up after I finally finished all of my classes. I was wondering was she acting all this time? Who did she expose my situation to in the school or talked my situation to in there? I suddenly felt unsafe and rushed into getting out of the school as fast as I could. 

Dealing with this cis woman made me have flashes of other people who have hurt me in similar or different ways. Like cis people who misgender me. I feel cis people who misgender me get so angry when I don’t forgive them or prefer they don’t speak to me . They don’t care how hard I am trying to protect my mental health. They don’t realize I am not responsible for putting up with it until “they get used to it” as they say or cuz “ They don’t mean to”. But sorry I am not ready to put up with it. I don’t want to speak to you. I don’t want to be your free walking awareness session. I don’t have time. I don’t have energy. I just want to live.

I went to a dinner with a friend afterward. I wasn’t really able to smile. I started trying harder to smile when my friend asked me to because I think maybe people thought I am being rude specially that it was the first time I meet them. I should have gone home but I went because I wanted to talk to him about it afterwards. I know how much people want me to go to places, to socialize and to talk. But sometimes I go to places where I think it’s safe then someone comes out of nowhere and fucks my energy and mood up. Like this last event where I sang at and someone came and decided to come to talk to me using she pronounces in my own language. I had to push myself to keep smiling until the end of the night. To be nice to people by smiling while all I wanted to do is to go back home to my cave where there’s no one who can misgender me or follow my body with their eyes. This was the second time this same person did this to me after I met them in another event previously where I was sitting at a table and they started talking describing in details the private life of another transguy. It amazes me how much hurt I am getting from gays, lesbians, queers and other trans people, because mostly straight cis people just simply don’t know or don’t imagine that I could be something else other who they are seeing. Meanwhile a queer woman who liked me in some dating app (where I stated in my profile that I am transguy) wrote on her wall that she’s looking for female bodied people. If you think we have a safe space among queers I suggest you think again. 

You might wanna become better but I don’t need to be the sheep to sacrifice in the process. 

Also, my close friends. You know who you are. I love you dearly.

This post was taken from the author's facebook page, "Diary of a Queer Refugee", after permission. We recommend his page for interesting and intense reflections from a queer person in asylum.