#kimora lee simmons

inthis post i said i have had a couple of really bad experiences with mental health practitioners. i would like to talk about some of them. this first one is not très tragique or anything, but i do think it impacted the course of my life in some significant way.

less than a year after i came out as trans, the apartment where i was living burned down. i was on technically-illegal hormones at the time, with no medical supervision. (where i was living at the time, it was very difficult and super $$$$$ to go the legal route.) i figured out my name change stuff by filling out legal forms i found on the internet. because my house had burned down, i was like, well, shit. i don’t want to have to buy all boy clothes that i will just have to throw/give away after a while, so i might as well just go ahead and “go full time” (ugh, the early 2000s.) i was, at the time, enrolled at an enormous public state college, studying social work. 

i was stressed out, to say the least. i had a lot of normal problems that 22 year-old college girls have: body image issues, self-esteem problems, boys, blah. i went to the college mental health clinic to make an appointment with a therapist. 

i told her basically ^^^ (minus illegal hormones part) and this is what she said to me:

i don’t feel competent to treat you because i have never met a transgender person before. it would be like if someone came in requesting a letter of psychiatric recommendation for gastric bypass surgery, and i had never met a fat person before. i’m sorry, but i can’t help you. 

i tried to explain to her that i was not looking for her to sign off on any letters – there was no way (i thought at the time) i would be able to afford any surgery at any time in the then-near future. i just wanted to talk about being depressed and anxious. 

still, she refused to treat me. 

eventually, the anxiety and stuff got so bad that i stopped going to classes and dropped out of school and got a job (which paid $7/hour.) to this day, i have never finished college. 

i am not blaming this counseling lady for my dropping out. but it’s like, when trans people reach out for help – help that they really need – and are smacked down, there can be serious consequences, that range from mild set-backs to the heart-breakingly tragic. i mean i guess in a way it’s good that she admitted her incompetence? but in a way i wish she had not just dismissed me, especially after i had admitted all the deeply personal things that i had admitted to her during a psych intake (anyone who has ever been through one of these will know what I mean.)

BUT BECAUSE PARTYBOTTOM IS ALL ABOUT POSITIVITY, i will end on a nice note. unexpectedly, it wasn’t until i was diagnosed a few years later that i found a really good therapist who i was able to see through an ASO (AIDS service organization – like a nonprofit that provides services to HIV+ people.) here’s the weird thing: i was 25 at the time, and she was 23. she had just graduated from the very same program that i had dropped out of. 

can i repeat, she was twenty-three years old? i remember, on our first visit, she leaned over to throw something away in the trash and she had, like, a full on tramp stamp on her lower back! i was was like, oh lord jesus. 

but you know, even though she didn’t have that many trans clients and didn’t know a whole lot about trans stuff, she was just open-minded enough to be caring and warm. it was a very fruitful therapeutic relationship that lasted for three years. she helped give me the courage to publish my writing for the first time, and eventually to move to new york. 

(i know i have complained about bright-eyed baby social workers before, but i will make a distinction here: her job was not to be my case manager, ie, someone who helps you navigate all the conflicting systems that control your life when you are living in poverty with a chronic illness, it was to be my therapist: to listen to my problems and feelings, to offer empathy and insight, and to help with the acquisition of the right set of emotional coping skills, whatever that looks like.)

in fact, us both being so young and so close in age really worked out well in some ways. i could be all like, okay, this will sound ridiculous, but kimora lee simmons said this thing on the style network the other day that really resonated with me, and she would be like actually, i saw that episode of LIFE IN THE FAB LANE and i know exactly what you mean by that.

and she really did, is the thing. sometimes i think that’s all it takes.