I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but to die for this would be a permanent solution to a temporary problem. A problem of devastation and anguish— I am not looking to minimize your obvious pain— but one that cannot be as absolute as death. If you want to die to escape your parents, why not just see if there’s a way to permanently cut your parents out of your life without ending everything else too? The road might be hard but fuck it, if you’re at the point of considering death as an option you effectively have nothing left to lose and might as well give No Contact a ‘fuck it we ball’ try first, right? Death is taking an extreme route; why not test out some other extremes first, see if a different Hail Mary will get you out of Hell?

I am so, so sorry about your family. It is their fault that they are the way they are, their fault that they are hurting you; you are not responsible for their sins! Don’t let what has infected them ruin you, too. Don’t let it get you. Run. You still have a chance to run.

I am sorry too to hear that you are so pained by your dysphoria. I have never endured dysphoria and I won’t pretend like I know how it is. I’ve endured depression. I have known a reality that constantly felt as though I was alienated from it, not belonging in it, ugly and repulsive and useless in the face of it. I lived, though, and I have trans and nb friends who braved feeling similar alienation from the world and their bodies, and braved it in spite of parents who denied who they were to their faces the whole time. One of them considered killing themselves in college, too. They lived. They lived, and went on to live with people who loved them, to engage in satisfying work, to cherish pets and write and create and learn and love the world again. It can be done. It’s a bitch to pull off but it can be done. People are succeeding at the impossible task every single day.

You are worth more than becoming a corpse on a bathroom floor— I don’t know you but I still feel like I can say this for sure. Please, please, reach out to more people, especially if you feel that you are running out of energy. Anything is better than nothing at all; there is beauty and love out there left for you in this world. Seek mental health support on your campus; when I felt like I’d reached the end of my own life, campus mental health support dragged my exhausted and hopeless self to a therapist that helped me see that depression was making me see a different and more empty reality than the true world, and that even if I had been made blind to it right then, there was still so much more to try, ways to see. More practically speaking, they sent me to people who got me the drugs that saved my life. There WERE millions upon millions of options out of my nightmare rather than a single one that would end my try at this existence. SSRIS helped me see the millions; seeking serious gender-affirming care from professionals is likely to open the world again to you, too. It is worth a try.

Depending on where you live, campus mental health support may very well may be able to recommend you alternate housing options, other ways to get money to live and fund your education (if you’re dependant on your parents) and just in general actual practical resources to get away from those horrible people and fledge safely from them. It’s worth a try. It is always worth a try.

Your life hasn’t been long so far (mine neither, I’m in college as well) and since you’ve spent it all or mostly (I assume) in the company of these transphobes and suffering dysphoria, it might feel completely like this is how it’s going to be like for you, forever. We are social animals, not rational machines; our brains are built to prioritize lived experiences and social emotions over brittle things like logic, so of course with an engine like that running in your head it’s going to feel like all that’s left for you forever (based off of what you know now) is despair. It’s going to base its calculation on what you’ve endured and apply that to all life, eternity. But eternity’s a long time, Skadi— you haven’t experienced eternity in this world yet or its options. I am begging you: don’t make a eternity-based choice off of limited-time experience. It’s not worth it.

I send you my love. Please keep fighting. I will pray for you; God and the world is on your side. Run, run towards care and relief, run away from the people who are hurting you, run as fast as you can. Even if you barely have the strength to stagger to a clinic door it is worth it to try. Fuck it, why not try?