Lorena Escalera: A Life That Mattered by Laverne Cox

Several years into my transtion about a decade ago, I thought seriously about killing myself. Life was really hard. I wasn't passing as my true female self very well. I often was called a man as I walked down the street. I didn't think I would ever be accepted as the woman I always knew I was, and I wanted to end it. In the note I was going to write to accompany my death, I was going to have explicit instructions about the pronouns that should be used to refer to me in death. I was going to write that I shouldn't be referred to by the name on my birth certificate but by the name that reflects my female identity -- that is, my legal name, the name I took after I dropped my old first name. ("Laverne" was my middle name, and "Cox" was my last name at birth.) I basically didn't want to be disrespected and misgendered in my death, as all too often happens to transgender folks in news reports on our deaths.