I am Aaron Bushnell.

I am also the first responder with the fire extinguisher... and the officer with the gun. 

I am a product of oppression, an act of liberation against oppression, and an oppressor. I directly correlate this realization to the experiences I have faced with my intersectional identities of being transgender, autistic, and my recent diagnosis with multiple sclerosis.

Self-immolation is the act of setting oneself on fire, usually as a form of political or civil protest. Although I've never considered this form of activism, I realized after witnessing Aaron Bushnell's self-described “extreme act of protest” by self-immolation that I have been slowly smoldering for forty-two years until I’ve reached the point of being engulfed by flames and whether I’m wielding a match, a fire extinguisher, or a gun I’ve played every symbolic role from that quintessentially American image grab from Aaron’s self-directed video of the people responding to his refusal to be complicit in genocide. 

There aren't different levels of oppression just like there aren't different levels of autism. Discriminatory acts range from organizing the eradication of transgender people to Israel committing genocide in Palestine. We are all dying in one way or another, whether it be slowly or quickly because of the intentional design of the patriarchy and capitalism, or more clearly stated – white supremacy and white power. The government is coordinating to erase my existence as a trans person. Society is deeming me unfit because my brain works in a way that is not typical to society because of words in a textbook another human wrote. Health providers are trying to decipher if what I am experiencing is mental or physical health before they herd me into the "mind" or "body" field like livestock. I don't want to be part of the HERD. I just want to be HEARD. 

I am Aaron Bushnell when he poured fuel on his head. 

“This is what our ruling class has decided will be the norm.” – Aaron Bushnell

I'm trying to decipher which one of these intersectional identities that I love so much about myself is being used against me in the form of microaggressions, discriminatory acts of exclusion, and abuse from systems that are built to serve and heal people. 

This trauma inducing dystopian model cuts us all into pieces like we are selling separate parts on street corners even though I only have this one body that has been failing me since birth. This body that was born into confusion with no safe language or safe spaces and a genetic coding that is the perfect combination for obtaining my dissociates degree and for avoiding anything close to self. This trans body of scientific exploration that links my transness to being up to six times more likely to have autism. This autistic body of genetic variation linked to multiple sclerosis as maladies of myelination simultaneously and symbolically destroying this shell that is ironically protecting all of us. My gender diversity rounds out the triangle of medical abnormality opportunities with the link of hormone levels directly effecting my risk of increasing multiple sclerosis symptoms as a trans person, who must routinely stop the one medicine that keeps my body without flame and my mind well, while zero time is being invested to research these complications for a population that is more susceptible but society deems better off extinct.

This genetic trifecta of traits that I call "self”, but political ideology will call "disordered" and clinical monsters will pathologize my personality with their diagnonsense and their inability to drop their ego to ask the expert, or drop their fear to embrace life outside of their cages, or drop their anger while they sit locked in their cages watching me fly around them outside freely and 

unabashedly. It’s almost as if they can directly relate to wanting to be heard and not wanting to be part of the herd.

I am Aaron Bushnell when he lit the match. 

“…My body does not belong anywhere in this world.” - Aaron Bushnell

I am my own oppressor holding the gun at myself. I have hidden the best parts of me to fit into social norms and I have abandoned myself out of fear and the need for comfort. I exchanged years of my life to self-harm and thoughts of suicide and lost a million minutes of feeling present from an internalized fear of my own body and my gender diverse identity even though it was something to celebrate. I am a trans elder and a baby trans at the same time. Autistic me looks and acts unidentifiably young yet my body has aged progressively fast due to symptoms of gender dysphoria and chronic illness. My mind is stuck in my body and my body is stuck in my mind. I can no longer separate the two. Time is standing still yet everything is going so fast. I let the relentless messages of my existence being problematic and requiring explanation overcome the joy within myself that can only be absent if I let it go willingly.

I spent an abundance of my spoon budget managing chronic pain and chasing an invisible diagnosis without the same safe and accessible care as most humans and walked away from my basic needs that I deserved for decades as if I’m not on a slow road to death because of this indirect method of self-harm. I let discrimination, social stigma, and the constructs of internalized homophobia, transphobia, and ableism dictate my internal and external freedoms even when I do not subscribe to constructs. I am beyond frightened by how close to apathy I have become recently, and I have no idea if I am truly in recovery anymore. I am so filled with anger from being attacked from every angle whether it's the government, my very own cells attacking my body, or my mind attacking my reality or my safety and from all the screaming. The screaming pain, the screaming for my basic rights and humanity, the screaming to be heard from the people who claim to love me the most, the screaming at systems to take me out of government policies and the DSM and add oppression, the screaming to create treatment interventions for the oppressor and to stop trying to cure my existence.... and the screaming for help. 

I am Aaron Bushnell when his flesh was falling off his bones and he was screaming, “Free Palestine". 

“…The machine demands blood. None of this is fair.” – Aaron Bushnell

Aaron Bushnell did not die by suicide. He died from the desire to be heard for the collective progress of humanity and as a messenger of the collective pain as a result. Humans react from a place of either love or fear. Suicide is an extreme act of fear and desperation when the desire to be heard stops and the individual pain becomes too much to hold. Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation was an extreme act of love and urgency to bring to light what has been kept in the dark and a fearless sacrifice made from holding the pain of others and not his own.

“... Compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it is not extreme at all.” – Aaron Bushnell

I am also Aaron Bushnell when he refused to fall no matter how much of his flesh melted off from being burned by the fire and when he refused stop screaming his convictions over and over until losing consciousness. 

I am a liberator pointing a fire extinguisher at people on fire. I fully identify with the concept of recovery and have a strong belief that progress is never linear. The existence of peer support is an act of rebellion born out of the outrage to advocate as a change agent so nobody else ever feels the pain of your oppression. It is an act of liberation born out of love and the proof to others that recovery is possible in a world where clinical and societal pathologizing and oppression are telling us otherwise. As creative innovators in an environment where we are the experts trying to educate professionals with an unavoidably challenging power differential, peer support workers are artists and activists just by being present. Peer support is activism and art, and I am all three.

I have been on the metaphorical road to self-immolation my entire life while pointing a gun at myself instead of the fire extinguisher I so desperately needed and was selflessly giving out to others. We are rarely afforded the privilege of hindsight because that’s where the learning and growth occurs, but we can take those opportunities to turn the outrage from the pain of oppression into seeing a glimpse of foresight that might avoid us striking the match over the fuel we’ve poured under ourselves and lead us back to the purest form of activism and self-liberation; Joy… and when we can’t avoid those times when the pain seems to be too much to bear we can take those opportunities as a friendly reminder that pain and joy can and will coexist simultaneously if we put the weapons down and allow ourselves to recognize that the freedom of personal joy is inherently ours with no obligation of gifting that to our oppressors.

Markie Hines Ridgway

“I Am Aaron Bushnell”

2024