What is Harm Cox For?

So, it’s time for me to tell you where I have been, and where I still currently am. First off, to satisfy the curious: I am still in Chicago. I am still happily with both partners. I have not relapsed on any substance I am trying to avoid, and I have not started any new ones. There is no new significant disrupture or salacious intrigue to share with you. Unfortunately, it is the same old shit, and that shit is C-PTSD. 

I have written about these things in vague ways previously. Careful readers will have already noted that I have referenced family estrangement among other formative traumas and I am utterly acclimated to Therapy Language. I flatter myself that my readers are smart, and I’ve left it to you all to connect the dots up to a certain point. 

It is still up to you to connect those dots, if you are so inclined. There’s stuff I’m dealing with right now that is going to be mine to share, if and when I feel like it, only when I am ready. 

But there is something I’m currently learning that is relevant to what we’re discussing today:

One of the most painful lessons of family estrangement is that boundary-less relationships are doomed to failure, even with someone who is supposed to love you unconditionally. Eventually you will reach a point where boundaries are necessary, and that will be the time for reparative work (if it is possible) or severance (if it is not). Some people will surprise you. Others will remind you why you had to go to therapy to learn about boundaries in the first place.

It doesn’t matter what they do. It matters what you do. You have to choose yourself. Healthy, sustainable love does not come from guilelessly grinding yourself to a paste for the consumption of others. People who require that from you should not be in your life anymore. A person should not be expected to destroy themselves in order to be seen and loved. 

It is easy for me to say that to other people. It is my ongoing Sisyphean task to learn how to say that to myself.

So here’s the truth, stated plainly: I’m back in badly-needed intensive mental health treatment, the kind where you spend all day playing with markers and learning a seemingly endless stream of acronyms. I am rebuilding my backbone, in both the physical and mental sense. 

I am on a strict schedule of group and individual appointments. I spend several hours of every day talking to mental health professionals over Zoom. I have an app where I keep track of daily wins like “eating” and “taking a shower” in order to make a little imaginary bird proud of me. Yesterday I cashed in all of the imaginary money I have earned with these tasks and bought the little imaginary bird a little imaginary hat. 

That was a day of great accomplishment for me in my current state. 

Writing complex essays about trans genocide is currently outside of the scope of my capabilities. I have tried, oh my god how I’ve tried, but the words are turning to mush and dust in my hands every time. I can’t do this kind of work right now without hurting myself. I have to get my brain back online before I can write anything serious again. Which puts me in a difficult position regarding this blog, because writing serious essays like that is what Harm Cox is for.

I know that this may be a shock, but if we’re being really paint-peelingly terrifyingly honest (deep breath now): I am not Harm Cox all the time. Or even most of the time. Harm Cox is a persona, not a person. Harm Cox is a vigilante scholar and a gleeful sadist whose curiosity and lack of shame allow him to explore transgressive topics as they deserve to be discussed. I use myself and my own experiences as a lens to bring these topics into focus and hopefully make them relatable for my audience, but to assume you know me because you know him is incorrect. 

Confusing? I’m sure. It’s weird for me too sometimes. Being Harm Cox is committing to theatrically peeling the top layer of my skin back, acting as an Incredible Visible Transman for a world dedicated to misunderstanding my anatomy. These essays are a simultaneous unveiling and further occlusion. The trick for me as a writer is discovering precisely what is hidden and revealed with every new piece of work. It’s frequently fun. It’s occasionally unbearable. Sometimes being Harm Cox is easy for me, but it often is not.

Speaking of boundaries: Harm Cox is not a name I answer to anymore. He does not exist outside of the internet. I made that change for many reasons. One reason is that it is increasingly important to me to have a safe buffer of distance between myself and the public persona people associate with my work. My vulnerability has helped folks, but it has also gotten me burned many times. When you are open about being in pain, people bring their pain to you. 

This often splashes over into unregulated emotional outbursts and over-personal comments that I currently lack the bandwidth to entertain. I have grown weary of trawling for validation via selfies and trauma dumps. I question the utility of building supportive social bonds via the same kind of tactics that failed me in a high school cafeteria. And so I need boundaries between my fragile healing self and the work I do to maintain the autofictional curmudgeon I use as a megaphone.

So what does this mean for the blog? On a practical level, I am still figuring it out. To continue the radical honesty, I have been unable to find other employment since I was laid off at the end of last year. Our household is getting by, but not by much. If you can afford to maintain your subscription and genuinely want to help me out while I’m piecing things back together, I appreciate that and I will use your money to pay for things that keep me alive. I can’t promise much in the way of content for y’all, and if you need to unsubscribe, I don’t take it personally. It’s hard out here for everybody.

If you can stick around as a paid or free subscriber, I do plan to start sharing work with you again soon. I am nearing a treatment plateau. It is my hope I will soon be able to redirect some of the mental effort I’ve been putting into body scans and whatnot for my own purposes. I have been watching a lot of movies and reading a lot of books, and have much to share! It’s just going to look different and feel different, and will happen at a different pace than I’d hoped for. So it goes.

So why am I telling you all of this? It’s not because I want pity or attention. (Who has ever actually wanted this kind of attention, anyways?) I am telling you this for the same reason I say everything else I do on this website: I know there are lots of people out there like me, and I do not want them to feel alone. I’ve been too ashamed to admit what has been going on with me, and shame allows no kindness or connection. I am admitting it now because I have been in the program long enough to realize that I have nothing to be ashamed of. I did not traumatize myself. I need this help, and I am taking it, and I am grateful for it. 

Maybe you need this kind of help too. Maybe it’s hard for you to ask for. Maybe you never even realized you could get better someday. Let me hold your hand and whisper gently in your ear: you’re right. You do. You can. You will.

So. If you have trauma, it’s not your fault. Maybe you know that, but I needed someone to say it to me, so now I’m saying it to you. If you have resultant brain stuff, and if you are traumatized you almost certainly do; please take care of it. If you need to go on an unscheduled grippy-sock sabbatical, do yourself a favor and embrace it. Please go to your appointments and be honest with your doctors and take your meds and practice self-care and ask the people you love for help and keep taking your meds, for the love of GOD keep taking your meds. You are worth it. We are worth it.

I cannot promise things are going to get better for us. But I can promise you that I am not going anywhere, because if nothing else I am the vessel of something too stubborn and shit-headed to die. I hope that you are also a vessel for such a thing, because that is how we survive. And I hope you keep reading the stuff I post here to keep the ring rust at bay until I’m ready to be Harm Cox again, whatever that might look like.

Anyways. Did anybody see CASTRATION MOVIE? Whew, I gotta tell y’all about that one. Hang tight. I’m working on it.