Talking with my therapist, she broached the subject of the recent horror in Oklahoma and asked if I needed space to process it, as many others in her circle have been unable to cope with it, missing work and school and such. And I had to admit that I didn't, that in the midst of all the other awful things that have happened in this still early year, it has become difficult to feel each act of brutal violence individually.

But in particular, prompted to reflect, I realized that with the violence and hatred directed at transgender people, I presently feel a strange deja vu, and I admitted to her that I am feeling the distance of being over 10 years a transgender woman among people who have been trans for only a few years, or even less, for whom the violence is fresh and agonizing. The sensation has averaged out from instances of sudden, blinding pain to a continuous, bone-deep ache. The sensation compels me to grasp for a way out of the endless cycle of reacting and reacting, where we are always isolated objects to be acted upon by a collective of normative subjects, to see the cause and effect and where, by our own collectivity, it could be interrupted.

I don't know what it says about me, whether it's a strength or a weakness, but I no longer want to be comforted in the face of atrocity. I only want it to end.