The suicide of Leelah Alcorn

Finally we are going to have to put aside the good news and it is that doing it today would be tantamount to betraying the last will of Leelah Alcorn, a girl from 17 years ago who just a week ago took her own life by not being able to endure living in a body that did not belong to her.

Leelah discovered at a very young age that something was not right in his life, but it was in the 14 years when, after hearing about transgender people, he decided to tell his parents looking for support to become who he really felt he was. But her parents, practicing Catholics, not only refused her help but isolated her by closing her social networks, led her to Christian therapists who tried to get her out of "her error" and even distanced her friends by changing her from school. Leelah fell into a deep depression of which he testified in a shocking letter in which accuses his parents and religion of his tragic end.

The minor was hit by a tractor trailer on I-71 in Warren County, a few miles from her home and police are investigating the circumstances of the accident, but everything indicates that it was a suicide. Leelah's mother, Carla Alcorn, in a Facebook post wrote “my son went home to heaven this morning. He went to walk early in the morning and was hit by a truck”. Later, in an interview with CNN, he stated that “We did not support that because of religion but we told him that we loved him unconditionally. We love it no matter what. I love my son. People need to know that I love him. He was a good boy, a good boy. At all times in his statements, he has referred to Leelah with masculine pronouns and naming him after his son. In the same interview, he added that, even if they wanted to, they did not have the resources to finance a sex change and that they had decided to close Leelah's profiles on social media, considering that they contained inappropriate material.

Given that in her long letter of suicide the girl commented that her intention was that her death would contribute to raising awareness about the situation of transgender people,  on petitions website Change.org a campaign of collection of signatures for that purpose.

Despite the extension of the text and out of respect for Leelah's will, we have decided to reproduce here in full and without modifications, the text that you left written.

THE LETTER OF LEELAH

If you are reading this it means that i have committed suicide and obviously I have not been able to delete this post from the queue.

Please do not be sad; it's for my own good. The life I would have lived was not worth living ... because I am transgender. I could explain in detail why I feel this way, but this note is probably going to be long enough in itself. In simple words: I feel like a girl trapped in a boy's body, and I have felt like this since I was four years old. I never knew there was a word for this feeling, or that it was possible for a boy to become a girl, so I never told anyone and I just kept doing the typical things that a guy does to try to fit in.

When I was 14 years old I learned what transgender meant and I cried with happiness. After ten years of confusion, I finally understood what I was. Immediately, I told my mother, and she reacted in a deeply negative way, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never really want to become a girl, that God does not make mistakes and that I was wrong. If you are reading this and are parents, please do not tell that to your children. Even if they are Christians or against transgender people, they never tell anyone, and even less so to their children, because they will only get them to hate themselves. That is exactly what happened to me.

My mother inhe asked to take me to a therapist, but it would only take me to a Christian (which have a big bias), so I never really had access to the therapy I really needed to overcome my depression. I only got more Christians telling me that was a selfish yeI was wrong, I had to go to God to get help.

When I was 16 years I assumed that my parents would never understand me, and that I had to wait at least until the 18 to start any type of gender transition treatment, which broke my soul completely. The longer you wait, the more difficult the transition is. I felt hopeless, that I would continue to see myself physically as a man in disguise for the rest of my life. On my birthday numberor 16, when I did not get the consent of my parents to begin the transition, I cried myself to sleep.

I developed an eskind of attitude * that was ... * towards my parents and I declared myself publicly homosexual at school, thinking that maybe if I decided to declare myself as trans I would have a lesser impact. Although my friends reacted positively, my parents got angry. They they thought it was attacking his image and what I wanted was to embarrass them. They wanted it to be the perfect normal Christian child, and that obviously was not what I wanted.

So they got me out of public school, they took My computer y my phone and I was banned from using any kind of social network, isolating me completely from my friends. This was probably the time of my life in which I was most depressed, and I am surprised that I did not commit suicide. I was completely single for five months. Without friends, without support or understanding, without love. Only with the disagreement of my parents and the cruelty of loneliness.

At the end of the academic year, my parents finally returned my phone and allowed me to go back to social networks. I was excited, I finally had my friends back. They were extremely excited to see me and talk to me, but only at the beginning. Over time I realized that they did not care the slightest for me, and I felt even more alone than I had felt at first. The only friends I thought I had, they only liked because they saw me five times a week.

After a summerpractically without friends, plus the weight of having to think about college, save money to move, keep my grades, go to church every week and feel like shit because everyone there was against everything so I lived, I decided that he had had enough. I will never be able to make a successful transition, even when I move. I will never be happy with the way I look or dream. I will never have enough friends. I will never have enough love. I will never find a a man that loves me I will never be happy. Live the rest of my life as a lonely man who would like to be a woman, or live the rest of my life as a lonely woman who hates herself. There is no way to win. No exit. I'm already depressed enoughI do not need my life to become worse. People say it will improve, but that in my case is not true. It's going to get worse. Every day I'm worse.

This is the quid (essential point), that's why I feel like committing suicide. Sorry if that is not a good enough reason for you, but for me it is. AnsI want the 100% of everything legally owned to be sold, and the money (along with my money in the bank) is donated to civil rights movements for transsexuals and support groups, I do not care a cocoon to which. The only way to rest in peace is that one day transgender people not be treated in the same way as I have been, but be treated as human beings, with valid feelings, with rights. Gender should be taught in schools, the earlier the better. My death must mean something. My death must add to the number of transgender people who committed suicide this year. I want someone to bother looking at that number and say this is screwed up and fix it. That fix society. Please.

(Leelah) Josh Alcorn

May peace rest Leelah.

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