Club Q Shooting: A response from Nyck
I don’t have words and yet I have so many words. Speechless overwhelm with big feels, and yet I could easily rage on the page and express so damn much. The Club Q Shooting happened on Saturday night-it was the start of Transgender Remembrance Day, when we honor and acknowledge and remember the lives of trans folx who have died or been killed. I was exhausted on Sunday and gave myself permission to rest-all day actually. That night, Karolina was looking at the news on their phone and read about the shooting.
Shock-I couldn’t believe it-didn’t want to believe it-numb, didn’t register. Then my heart started beating faster, energy filling my limbs, brain computing the news-tears, sadness, grief, fear, and anger-all had their moment and cascade. Karolina woke up in the night with nightmares. In the dark, in our bed we started talking. How do we keep ourselves safe? Do we need a plan in case of an intruder? What would we do?
You see, we live in a corner house and fly a progress pride flag 365, 24/7. When we closed on our house and arrived, the first thing I did was hang our flag. It symbolizes pride yes, but also gratitude and acknowledgment for all the queer, trans, and ally activists and ancestors who came before us and fought for our right to exist, to be known, to be visible, to be allowed to live and love who we love. We are visible because we can be. We fly that flag as a beacon of hope and love for all and any queer and trans kids in the neighborhood to know that this is safe space.
Only recently have we been made aware of just how visible we are. I was naïve enough to think that nobody really noticed us. Not so. Strangers know where we live-that our house is the corner house. And we didn’t know when we bought this house that this tiny town is a bubble of conservatism in a very progressive state. To our faces, people have been warm, but all of the what-ifs began flowing. We are known and to be marginalized and known can be a dangerous place to exist within.
I livestreamed the Club Q Vigil in Denver last night. I was comforted at knowing that hundreds upon hundreds of people showed up There were many BIPOC speakers and I really appreciated that. Intersectionality cannot be stated enough. I was glad I watched, listened, and got to cry a bunch more tears that needed to be felt and flowed. But I also sensed, heard, and felt the inadvertent ableism-all this talk about “stand up”, “stand with,” and on repeat: “never give up, never give in.” My sensitive, highly empathic, Autistic body, mind, nervous system, and heart did not respond well to being told to not give up and not give in. It felt like more pressure on an already burdened and vulnerable community.
What I need is softness I need permission-AMPLE permission. “Yes, Nyck, yes. However you feel is ok. It’s ok to not feel safe right now. It’s ok to be exhausted, to not want to talk, to not be feeling hope in the front and center It’s ok to be enraged. It’s ok to feel whatever the fuck you feel (or don’t feel)-and you’re not gonna feel this way forever. Hope will return, safety will be felt again, fear will lessen-but for right now, just be.”
As a queer, trans non-binary Autistic person-and how many of us there are!-the trifecta, or Autism Gender and Autism Sexual Orientation as I’ve heard it called: DO NOT TELL ME HOW TO FEEL OR WHAT TO THINK OR WHAT TO DO (this is not me criticizing the vigil, I’m so so grateful they put it together. I think it was all the politicians speaking that got to me).
I need to be allowed to have my experience, to take my time, to feel my connection to the LGBTQIA+ community, both known and not known to me. Our web is big and broad and our message is so clear-so crystal clear and profoundly simple: LOVE. We just want to love (who and how we love), we just want to exist as authentically and truthfully to who we are-to what we are. LOVE. It’s all about love. And to be scared for my life-for my community of kindred LGBTQIA+ folx-bullshit.
I don’t like clichés or popular phrases that are popular and I don’t understand why, but fuckin-a, LOVE WINS.
In bathing myself with permission to feel and to be and to think-or not-exactly as I am, I am brought back to hope (ironically enough). I may be scared, I may be enraged, I may be deeply sad. And in this moment, pulsing through my veins, arteries, muscles, and entire body, I know one thing to be true.
LOVE WINS
Daniel Davis Aston, Derrick Rump, Kelly Loving, Ashley Paugh, Raymond Green Vance (as the Jews say), may your memory be a blessing. Richard Fierro, there is no way to thank you for all the lives you saved by taking down the shooter.
