screams downstairs, at her who lives with Alzheimer’s disease.

i lose sensation in my arms and legs. my heart jumps. my head becomes blurry. sensation comes back but in fleeting ways. it is here, and then it is not, again, then here and then, not. shoulders, and then hands. thighs and then feet. and then. i seem to have to hold it back, close to something in me, so that it does not leave again. shock, trauma, dissociation. simple. and then what?

despair. dark thoughts. too much violence.

everywhere.

my peers are also exhausted

and overwhelmed.

i keep my structure.

i cook my meals.

sacredly.

to try to reach that fine subtle line of existence.

connection with.

fine but clear.

almost impossible.

i need to go out.

i read an email from a local journalist with whom i have exchanged about the UK ruling on transwomen. this journalist is light years away politically and i do not know how to pull him closer. possibly it has become impossible. i do not know if i will have the courage to sit with him over a coffee somewhere like i suggested back in february.

and then, i remember this: “Meet the new American refugees fleeing across state lines for safety” by Ed Pilkington, Guardian News, April 24, 2025

“Sandra, the mother of a 15-year-old trans girl, has also started to probe the logistics of leaving the US. She spends evenings researching how to migrate to other countries, and the various health systems they would encounter. Several of the families who belong to an online community frequented by Sandra have already gone. One family went to Canada, another to Uruguay, a third to New Zealand. For Sandra, 41, though, dreams of leaving the country are not for now. She has a more pressing task: to get her daughter to safety by ushering her out of Texas and resettling her on the west coast (it is an indication of the extent of her fears that she asked the Guardian not to specify their new state, and Sandra is a pseudonym, also at her request). Sandra has, with the help of a friend, set up a GoFundMe page to cover some of the costs of relocation. It has reached $6,000 – a fraction of the at least $20,000 she estimates will be needed to move the family and the small business they run to a safe haven. It will be worth it, she thinks, if it buys them and their teenager security and peace of mind. She expressed the urgency of this moment for families like hers when we first exchanged emails. “We are refugees and many of us are in hiding,” she wrote to me. “It’s immense and lonely.” Sandra’s “kiddo”, as she calls her child, identified as a girl from as young as four. They had been at a family gathering with cousins, and in the car on the way home the child began sobbing, imploring her parents to stop calling her a boy. In the more than 10 years since then, Marie (also not her real name) has never wavered in her gender identification. Through on-going therapy, medical visits, and parentally- and medically approved hormonal treatment, she has been categoric that she is a girl. She’s done so while insisting on her privacy, eschewing becoming a poster child of the transgender cause. She wants minimum fuss. Sandra and Marie’s father have followed Marie’s lead. In the decade since the meltdown in the car, Sandra has told nobody that her child is trans: to her friends and acquaintances, Sandra presents as a regular mom to a regular teenaged girl. But then the political climate turned against them. The more the Texas legislature has fallen under the grip of Trump’s Maga Republicans, the more trans families have become the subject of their ire. By 2021, Texas had introduced 40 anti-trans bills, vastly more than any other state. Since then, the bombardment has only intensified. In 2022 the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, ordered officials to investigate trans families for child abuse. The move – a direct threat to Sandra and her family – is currently on hold pending appeal. The following year, lawmakers banned puberty blockers and hormone therapy for trans kids, forcing Sandra to go out of state at great expense to find care for her daughter. In this year’s legislative session, no fewer than 125 anti-trans bills have been introduced, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker, covering almost every aspect of a trans person’s life. In March, arguably the most insidious bill so far was tabled, HB 3817. It would effectively criminalize being transgender, by creating a new state felony of “gender identity fraud”. “If that were to pass, someone could arrest my teenager and she would have a felony on her record for the rest of her life,” Sandra said. That the state is bearing down on her family is hard enough. But what has amplified the terror is how the hostility has spread out from the Texas capitol in Austin into the community. Parents in schools near their home have demanded to be notified of any trans students who might be sharing bathrooms with their children – effectively baying for the outing of kids like Marie. Sandra had hoped they might have another three or four years in Texas, long enough for Marie to complete high school. But as Trump’s attacks on trans people have come thick and fast, the family is nowscrambling to get the teenager out by the end of summer. The blitz of federal actions has left Sandra angry, sad and confused. She keeps asking herself: why should the US president, who has the world to worry about, be focused on her family? “We’re just a regular American family doing the laundry, buying groceries, making sure the kid does homework. To have the president obsess on us is bizarre, and very intrusive.” It’s as though the world has steadily closed in on them, Sandra said. Asked how that felt, she replied: “I imagine it’s what it’s like being surrounded by a wildfire.””

this is inhumane.

as are so many other happenings in this world.

i have 2 passports one with an X and one with an M. both cast me as a criminal in the US. i have done nothing. i am a criminal for who i am. this is pretty bad and it is not far from here. my fascia shakes, my heart is constricted. this is not normal.

i am a transgender crip, neurodivergent decolonizer. i know i belong to those oppressed in this system. i try my best to walk on the fine line between a loud fighting for my values and a subtle assimilation to keep a sense of safety. this is unhealthy. soon i might not have enough courage.

and i am woke. is that dangerous?

Et si le wokisme passait à l’offensive ?

and i went to ask if they wanted help but he said no. he prefers to scream.

i am going out.