Going to the doctor is taught to be thought of as a helpful and universally positive experience. In the world of modern medicine, where we have machines that can read the signals inside our brains, the doctor is widely thought of as one of the few people we can be honest with. They're universally helpful, supportive, and the first step on a path to better health. This is true, to some extent, especially for physical health. However, though, doctors are also people. And people, especially those with power, require extra containment.

In the modern world, suicide is often framed as a product of ‘mental illness'. It's true for some percentage of people with these thoughts. However, in these conversations, it is too easy to access a comfort in this 'mental illness' label, which carves a lot of meat out of these required conversations around suicide. Namely, how, sometimes, it can appear the only remaining move to make.

I have gone the full gamut of genders, woman, man, and now something else. You notice that I didn't say 'non-binary', and that's because, as I have continued to explore myself and this new gender, I have become less and less comfortable with 'non-binary'. For a time, it felt right and accurate, I had been both binaries and now am not in that binary. Ergo; non-binary. Right? Well...