Editor’s note: this conversation has been edited for format and spelling but, grammatically and stylistically, remains as the author intends it; the original can be found here .
Trigger warning: this interview contains frank discussion of situations of abuse, transphobia, and suicide.
Please stay safe. Please contact
The GLBT National Help Center
if you recognize yourself in Chloe’s story. You’re not alone.
INTERVIEWER: MICHELLE “BIG BABY YEEZUS” PEREZ
INTERVIEWEE: CHLOE SAGAL
Preface: After a whole lot of wrangling of schedules and problems resulting from Personal Shit, I was able to secure time enough to speak with the subject of a previous article I had published at Medium Difficulty. That subject is Chloe Sagal, who had a lot of trying times as a result of a crowdfunding venture gone horribly awry as I’ve collected here .
She had a lot to say, which may surprise you. She candidly shared her thoughts with me, and we spoke on what has happened thus far, what is to come, and how she feels about what has happened thus far. In a series I hope to extend beyond this dialogue, I act upon my Id and my desire to speak with those who have captured my attention. Without further ado, here’s what Chloe had to say, and how our back and forth engagement evolved as did my alcohol consumption, as this discussion explicitly involved suicide as a point of discussion. America:
Michelle Perez: Thanks for being here and giving me your time Chloe. I’d like to begin by asking you about your career up to the present.
Chloe Sagal: It’s fine by me, I’m fairly easy going so I won’t be too hard on you
Career as in my indie game development career?
MP: Yes. Anything aside from that, if you’re comfortable, such as schooling or the like is fine as well!
CS: Well, I’m a fairly multifaceted person (if that’s the right phrase) so I’ve been dabbling in a lot of things, though the game development has been the only thing that has taken off at least a little bit, and has gone back and forth between being my focus.
I started off early, as a kid, when games used to have a part of the CD dedicated to demos, I would always look in there, it was like a little present. In one particular game, I forgot which, it had a copy of 3D Movie Maker (kind of a strange cult following with that one) and Klik and Play. I loved playing around with klik and play, it was my first experience in game development. I had very limited internet access those days, so I eventually forgot about it, and I never got to keep any of my work so it wasn’t that much in my mind.
I think when I was in 8th grade, I found out that the company that made klik and play had a whole bunch of updated tools, at that point they were just transitioning from click and create to the games factory and the more serious multimedia fusion, and that’s when I really started getting into thinking out my designs and all that junk, but still, it was never really anything more than a hobby.
Me and my best friend, S[—], used to come up with all kinds of outrageous designs — this is actually where I first came up with the concept for Homesick, though it was much more like the design for its predecessor, Halloween Candy. I plan on adding more of those features into either the remake of Homesick or the next version.
Anyways, I never really considered going anywhere with it at this point, it wasn’t until after my parents threw me out of my house and I was homeless.
MP: Let’s talk about that for a moment.
CS:: ha alright. Sorry, a lot of information XD
MP: Shoot, no such thing. Unless you were listing like, a fuckin licensing agreement or something.
First, the concept of Homesick. It seems like a no win scenario that ends brutally. What would you say informed its creation?
CS: Well, the version that everyone has played was basically in a “my life sucks, I want to die” sort of state. But it’s not necessarily a no win scenario, if you know how to play the game, and you know its quirks, it’s very simple. I can make it through the game easily nowadays. I still get scared because of it, but I still always make it through without dying.
But then again, I know the quirks better than anyone
I’m hoping the next version will remove some of those quirks, but add some type of skill basis to it. I have my ideas on how to accomplish that, I just hope I don’t break the game too much. If it sucks, I can always go back to what works.
The most important element is the fear, so as long as I can achieve that, I think I’ve done okay.
MP: Is that a philosophical decision, or rather reflective of some limitations the game may have? (My understanding is that it was put together very quickly for a game jam.)
CS: Well, yeah, it was put together in less than a week. I knew what I wanted to have for at least the basis, and I got that in there. There was a lot more to put in there that I didn’t get to, but the most important part for me was just making sure the player felt uneasy when things went wrong.
Unfortunately I didn’t get much more than that and the jump scare elements to it, which I feel a bit upset about, but people seem to like it regardless. I’m not the kind of person to want to rely to heavily on jump scares.
But yeah, the suicide element was a big part. The last two games I released commercially were huge disasters and big wastes of time, and I felt like the people I was working with were not listening to what I was saying, so I felt hopeless, I was ready to quit.
Especially since the last two games I was hoping to have something to put towards my surgeries.
MP: Which, well brings us to my next question. Your parents, and the conditions in which you left that home. I understand it’s probably an extremely sensitive issue at your end, and stop me if this is too prodding: what were the conditions that led to leaving that household?
CS: Well, I’ve always had problems with my parents.
It started basically before I was born, my sister, alexandria rolled over in her crib and suffocated, I think it’s called crib death. My parents were very upset about it, but my father took it extremely hard, they both became extremely religious and my father started drinking heavily.
When I was really young, I let my father know that I didn’t feel right as a boy (though not in so many words), and I made the mistake of telling him while he was drunk, and upon hearing this, he savagely beat me within an inch of my life. From then on we never acted well together.
When I was in about first or second grade, my mother and father began fighting a lot, since money was tight and my mother wanted to get a job. She got a job at Jewel, and became friends with a male coworker. After her male friend gave her a gift, my father got very defensive and started behaving violently, throwing things on the ground. (I remember one instance where my mother was doing dishes after a fight and my father was standing outside, she dropped and broke a dish, my father walked back in the house, took a glass and threw it on the ground and yelled “break another one!”)
When my mother told my father she wanted a divorce, he got drunk, locked himself in his room and threatened to shoot himself with a gun. He passed out, dropped the gun and it fired through the wall, and almost hit my eldest brother while he was asleep. After the divorce we moved to a small apartment, me and my two brothers, and my mother was very absent.
My brothers figured out quick that being older meant they were more trustworthy to my mother, so they would constantly ignore their chores and beat up on me, just to stick together and tell my mother that I did it. At one point my middle brother came at me with an aluminum bat, and almost killed me, but was stopped by my one of my friends. My mother came out and grounded me, almost as if it was second nature.
After we moved from that apartment (right after highschool), situations between my mother and I would arise, where she would call me lazy, undisciplined, and a troublemaker. We would get into screaming matches.
Nothing particularly out of the ordinary there, but eventually a friend of mine started living with us. Him, a good friend of mine, and myself were going to get an apartment together, and since he moved in from Iowa, he didn’t have a place to stay. He was an idiot, he would constantly torture our cat, say rude things to my mother when she was being nice, blow his nose in my clothing, and just cause a ruckus around the neighborhood. He even bashed in one of the intercoms to another apartment building.
MP: Man, that guy sounds like a real fuckface.
CS: On one night, he had been getting sick, his temperature was really high, and I didn’t have any experience with any of that, so I went to the pharmacy to get some cold medicine and ask the pharmacist for advice. The fire alarms in our building were malfunctioning, and were bothering the hell out of him, so he took it upon himself to go out of the house and break every single one of them. When the police inevitably arrived, despite them letting me into the building, he told them that I was the one that did it, and since he was clean cut and I looked like a trouble maker, and he was sick, they sent him the hospital and took me to jail.
The officer who processed me was having a difficult time with (what’s the word) processing me? This was when the town was switching from an analogue method of input to a digital method, and he was absolutely frustrated. Eventually waiting for things to work, he asked me what happened, and I told him I didn’t know, and he looked puzzled. He looked in my wallet and found a few dollars and asked me “Is this all you have?” and I said yes. He put the money back and said “I’m just going to tell them you posted bail, go home.”
My mother would not come get me from the police station, so I walked all the way home. When I got back, she was furious, she said that the landlord wanted both me and my roommate out of there, and instead of asking me what happened, she just said I was not welcome in the house anymore.
And that was basically it, for the next 3 years up until moving in with some other friends, I was homeless, occasionally couch hopping, but mostly sleeping at the public library, or at a 24 hour restaurant that a friend was working at.
And yeah, that guy was a fuckface. He pulled a lot more bullshit than just that, though that’s a whole ‘nother story.
MP: That sounds pretty fucking terrible. Elucidating on a previous thought and into a worse segue, I’d like to change topics and touch on another likely touchy subject for you (given the horrid responses you’ve received up to this point): can you elaborate on when you had the “aha” moment regarding gender identity? It’s been speculated that realization may have been tied to having been kicked out of the house (which may have been a compounding factor) but the preceding story sheds new light on that.
CS: Well, I don’t know if my mother knew at that point. She apparently did not know about my father beating me before (and when I told her she denied it ever happened, because she doesn’t remember me having any bruises as a kid [?])
When I told my father, I repressed that part of me as much as I could.
My parents instilled their fundamentalist Christianity into me, and they led me to believe that suffering was good. I thought that what my brothers were doing to me was okay, and that God would take care of me.
But I was hyper macho, and I was always picking on kids for seeming homosexual. And of course, at that point, I thought that what I was thinking were homosexual thoughts.
Ironically, I came to grips with it through gaming and through my game development.
MP: What sect of Christianity did your parents subscribe to? As a Catholic, and being of hispanic descent there were constantly thoughts of machismo and punishment tied to the identity of a man for me. What flavor were they into?
CS: They were German Lutheran. To sum up their views, I remember a conversation between my father and a friend. The friend said, “There are people of other faiths that are good people, they just do not share my faith.” To which my father replied “No, they are all bad people.”
Anyways, that software I told you I used, the Clickteam software, they had a fan site that I frequented (still do) called “the daily click,” it’s where my development blog is.
At this point, I was using their current software, Multimedia Fusion 2. I was also shaken of my fundamentalist faith, from getting kicked out of the USMC and from watching George Carlin videos, and just being on the internet in general. I was still in hyper masculine mode, and I was giving the people on that site a really hard time.
MP: Hold the fuck on, like the Marine Corps?
CS: Yeah, I was attempting to go to the Marines, but I was kicked out, but that’s a whole other story, it actually has a lot to do with my deteriorating health, but I never made it through bootcamp because of it.
Anyways, there was one particular user, a female, who had been making this kind of cutesy game that people were giving a lot of praise to, and I got jealous, so I said some pretty misogynistic things to her, and eventually the site banned me.
So I came up with the idea that I would go back to the site as a female user, to prove to myself that it was the girls getting all the attention. I was dead wrong, there was nothing special about males vs. females, however
I felt like talking to people was more natural, it felt good, and it felt really good the way people were talking to me, it felt right. Eventually I started playing some of my other online games as a female persona, and it was just great. Hard to describe, but it really made me feel good.
Eventually I came to grips with what I had been avoiding for my entire life.
And I screwed things up again. I thought if people in my house started knowing this, they wouldn’t like me anymore, so I had to hide it.
MP: How long would you say that went on?
CS: A few months
Oh, I almost forgot. Back in highschool I had a few days where I had attempted to be more feminine. More like 2 days. I felt pretty good, but as soon as I got to school, I got bullied, so after a little bit, I just told everyone I was joking, and went back to my old self, even worse.
MP: Now, in high school days I felt awfully confused about a lot of things. When I came to my realization about repressing identity I felt I was acting in character to stay within the established norms. To this day I have to within my factory job as to survive. In terms of when this happened during highschool, when you did suppress, what happened? How long did it continue?
CS: It was mostly just kids calling me faggot, and pushing me around, it wasn’t anything serious, but it scared me enough to think that I what I was doing was wrong.
And like I said, since I told everyone I was joking, they left me alone, it just became a simple anecdote with people, kind of like “dude, you remember when you dressed up in those really gay clothes?”
MP: I’d like to imagine for kids in schooling presently, that maybe that would be more accepted but as a Midwest transplant I observe that “faggot” usage mentality still existing everywhere. Do you still encounter it outside of internet dealings?
CS: Yeah, in fact when I went to go get my name changed, it was particularly stressful. I’ve only gone full time recently after meeting my friend Lexi (whom I am staying with now). When I went to get my name changed, (and this was the actual court date, not petitioning it), I didn’t get it because I got the one judge that needs a birth certificate, which I had forgotten to grab and bring with. On the way home a bunch of jerks were following me around laughing, passing money back and forth. One of them came up to me and said “Are you a dude?” and him and his friends had a good laugh as I started crying
Then on the way home I got on the wrong train home. I went to a nearby library to call my roommate. I called her for an hour and she didn’t pick up, so I went outside and started crying again. A few people stopped and asked what was wrong, and when I looked up or spoke they went “ugh” and walked away.
Eventually someone called the police, they were nice, and they called my roommate. They got a hold of her with one try. I stayed in the police station for 2 hours waiting for my roommate to drive a half an hour.
When she got there, she started yelling at me, and all this nonsense. She made me drive her home. I accidentally stopped on the train tracks for a few moments, and she accused me of trying to kill her. I took her to the store so she could get me some money to get on the train the next day, and she threw it in my face. When I got home I went right to sleep. The next morning I was too afraid to go back to the city, so she screamed at me again and said she’d never do anything to help me again.
I should point out that roommate was particularly abusive towards me, she was an ex girlfriend that I dated for 5 years. I came out to her when I started hormones and she said she was okay with it and wanted to help me as much as she could. A week before this incident, she had told me that she wasn’t comfortable with my transition.
My friend Lexi overheard her yelling at me one day, and she started pulling some strings to move me out here to Boston, which I had finally gotten the money together to move on Tuesday, drove straight here for 15 hours. After saying up for 24 hours as well.
Ah, sorry, prattling on again.
MP: Hey it ain’t prattling, this is real shit.
CS: I should also point out she was a huge contributor to my two recent suicide attempts.
MP: In the continuing theme of real shit, and still very open wounds, I’d like to touch on a subject that really blew up in previous weeks. That being, well, uh, the very public suicide attempt.
CS: Ah, yes
MP: Well.
CS: Well, that was actually my second attempt. The other one was somewhat public, but no one talked about it.
MP: Well, yeah.
CS: Well, I should probably start from the beginning.
MP: Here’s the thing, can you recount what led to that point?
CS: Yep.
I have several problems with stress. It runs in my family, my family has a history of nervous disorders. I’m not sure which ones specifically as we don’t talk, but basically my mother’s side tends to shake a lot uncontrollably. I remember my mother in particular would not take a position as a cashier at (oh sorry, it wasn’t Jewel, it was Dominiks) because it made her too stressed.
I kind of get hit by several different angles. Aside from having problems with[. . .] I think it’s called “Cushing’s Syndrome,” I also have that repressed transsexualism. This has taken a lot out of me stress wise, and has led to some particular behavior disorders, one of which is why I was kicked out of the USMC.
When I get too stressed, I have these episodes where I blank out and start doing some strange things. I have not been able to get an accurate diagnosis of this, which has been a huge problem when trying to get help, but it has been hypothesized to be anything from short term fugue states, to complex partial seizures, to non epileptic seizures to dissociative identity disorder. One therapist suggested that it was a defense mechanism that kicked in whenever I had thoughts of suicide. I should also point out that once I started hormones, I stopped having that problem, which may also be why I have been attempting suicide.
Another issue I have is some problem with taking medications, they don’t seem to have any real effect on me. This also has not been diagnosed, no one seems to be paying attention to it.
MP: In terms of actual medical treatment, presently are you still on medication and in therapy?
CS: And I’m not talking like I would try medication for like 3 days and not like it, I’ve been attempting certain medication regimens for months at a time, and very few seem to work. The one’s for combating Cushing’s Syndrome are medications in particular that aren’t doing what they are supposed to.
Since I moved to Boston I have not been able to get a therapist, that’s one of the things we’re working towards, and getting me on Mass Health.
But anyways.
When a person gets stressed, it releases a bunch of chemicals, one of which is called cortisol. The problem with Cushing’s Syndrome is that it’s difficult for my body to remove cortisol. When you get too much cortisol in your system, it causes things like weight gain, and most importantly, it puts you at higher risk of heart failure.
So essentially my problem is that if I do not remove my main source of stress, I’m going to die of heart failure.
When I first started getting money for my surgeries, this was not the case.
The last two commercial games I did (“That Really Hot Chick” and “Aliens On My Mind”) were going towards my surgery. TRHC sold 30 copies at $1 a piece (after 6 months of work) and since it was on the Xbox 360, they gave me nothing (you need to make at least $150 to get anything). AOMM sold even worse, and that one took a year to produce. Since they failed so badly, and everyone on the team let me know it was my fault for it sucking so bad, I just made Homesick on a whim. It was a concept I liked that no one wanted to work on, everyone I told about it thought it was stupid, and I was dumb for suggesting it. It lost miserably in the competition I put it in (I didn’t even get an honorable mention), so I figured no one cared. So, I just put it up on the internet and told people if they liked it, just send me a donation.
Eventually, Pewdiepie decided to play the game, but due to some confusion with tracking me down (I’m not sure if that was his problem, but Markiplier told me that was his issue) he posted links to the game that did not contain any of the donation information.
MP: Now, Pewdiepie, and Markiplier, who are those folk?
CS: Pewdiepie and Markiplier are internet Let’s Players. Pewdiepie in particular has about 8 million subscribers, the video that features my game, in particular has well over one million views.
I was shocked that people were playing the game, and overnight drop box decided to shut down my account for increased activity, so I put up another link, which again was spread, and since I was not paying attention (I was still just amazed that so many people were playing the game) I didn’t bother to correct the issue with the donation information. Anyways, with the updated links (which were too late) I let people know I was looking for money for surgery.
At this point, I started getting some nasty e-mails, calling me an e-beggar, and saying I should be ashamed for asking people to donate for a free game. I didn’t pay them much attention. The people that were particularly frightening were the people asking me constantly what my surgery was and why I needed it.One person in particular (which has asked me to not talk about him anymore, so I won’t disclose his name) was particularly pushy in asking me what it was about.
Eventually after a while, I just gave him the bullshit about the car accident to shut him up.
However, after I got the news about my cortisol levels, I panicked, and I told him specifically that, though attributing it to the car accident.
He had already been trying to collect donations and spreading the story about the car accident, so at this point he just decided to start up an Indiegogo page. He had also talked to some other big names around the internet to try to spread the story around, a few moderately famous YouTubers were interested in helping out, but the story spread around on Tumblr quite a bit. However, one person posted the link to the donation page on Reddit.
And Redditors started complaining about the lack of details, saying that since there weren’t many details it was an obvious scam, and started harassing my friend.
Some people threatened to kill him, some people threatened to sic the FBI on him (which was dumb, because he lived in Sweden) but he bought into it, and he shut down the page, and for whatever reason told everyone that I wasn’t a real person or some nonsense. We had raised $2,000 in 3 days, and I saw it as a way out, a way I could get the surgeries I needed to survive and not have to tell everyone on the internet what I was so afraid to tell them in the first place.
I had lost many relationships, my family (after telling my mother over the phone, she officially disowned me), many jobs, countless friends, I have been harassed and hurt physically, I was not about to tell what little fanbase I had, and be out to the entire world. I was so afraid it was going to kill me, but I had to do something, because the stress was also going to kill me.
So I put up another page after a week, perpetuating that same bullshit about a car accident. It was fucking stupid, and I hate myself for doing it. I should have been stronger, I shouldn’t have been afraid, but I knew what was going to happen if I was going to be honest. The comments I read on my YouTube page and in my e-mails are similar to many of the comments I read on other out transwomen’s page. My friend Lexi almost every day gets something that upsets her. She was almost crying the other day because of some asshole who was spamming her page and videos.
So, eventually, the page froze, I gave IndieGoGo some of the necessary details, I told them at this point I was trans, and eventually put the page back up.
MP: Hold on a moment.
CS: sure
MP: Look right here, this is unsolicited but I’ve been drinking too much to really care. It wasn’t stupid, you stood as resilient as someone in your position could. Honesty, dishonesty or not, you have the deck exponentially stacked against you. You didn’t do a damn thing wrong Chloe. Were I in your position, I can’t say I would have acted all that differently.
CS: That’s what many transwomen have told me.
MP: I don’t want to rob you of your feelings, but shit it’s hard enough just living.
CS: Though I’ve had a few cisgendered people say “I have trans friends and they think you’re [insert negative comment here].”
I know.
But anyways.
After being solicited by the random Redditors (as they got wind of it again, since the Project Zomboid staff post their things on Reddit), Indiegogo asked me to provide more information. I decided to tell them what really happened.
I talked to Chris from The Indiestone first (the company that makes Project Zomboid) and he was furious. I was distressed, so I didn’t exactly explain what happened accurately.
So, I talked to IndieGoGo, I told them that there was no car accident, that I was still dying, and that money was going towards my trans surgeries.
I told them that I was also extremely suicidal, and they said that they would try to decide the option that was best for everyone involved.
I told them I would gladly explain everything to everyone who donated, and anyone who wanted a refund could have one.
They told me that “everyone donates for a story, they donate for something they believe in,” which I had thought everyone had been donating because they didn’t want to see someone die, which was still the same story regardless. And I also thought some people were donating because they liked my game (which many still do).
On that point, there were many people (including Chris from TIS) who said they didn’t care if I was scamming people or not, because I gave everyone a fantastic game for free, and if anyone wanted justification to donate that would be it. To see those people do a complete 180 after hearing what happened, it just made me sick, especially since I wasn’t scamming anyone.
Anyways, I also decided to confide in Allistair, who had been adamant on getting to the bottom of the story.
MP: Yes.
CS: At that point he was somewhat supportive.
MP: Now, when did you start communicating with Allistair Pinsof?
CS: Right around that time. I contacted him before the IGG campaign went south, but once I told them the truth I figured I owed him an explanation as well.
MP: Why is that?
CS: Though, like Chris and IGG, I was under duress and not explaining things correctly. I don’t know why. I just felt I did. I felt like what I was doing was wrong, and people needed to know. Well, it was wrong. And I still feel bad, no matter what anyone says.
Anyways, IGG told me to get all the documentation I could on my situation, and I said I would get them some things when I got home. By the time I got home, they had already refunded everything.
MP: At the risk of some well, quasi-Geraldo Rivera toned questioning…uh, how did you feel upon that news?
CS: I was devastated, I had already booked my first surgery and everything, I was ready to go.
And it was taken away from me, just like that.
At this point, my roommate picked a fine time to break up with me, which I didn’t care about, but she also started yelling at me, saying “I told you so” for everything (which she didn’t tell me so, she’s just an idiot), and just generally telling me I was a terrible person. She left and I grabbed a knife.
MP: Christ.
CS: I started telling various people around the internet that I was going to kill myself. I started writing up a suicide note, but left my Skype open, and some people were trying to talk me down.
Allistair, before IGG decided to refund everything, we were talking about this story, writing it up from my perspective, because he said I should still get the surgery, he was being supportive.
When I was writing the note, I was talking to him, my friend Mike and my other friend Ohmwrecker (I don’t remember his real name, forgive me). Allistair was very taken back by my attempt, he started insulting me, saying that I just love money and attention, and saying that I was lying about everything. He also said he didn’t believe that my professor didn’t exist, so I gave him the name of her and told him to call if it meant anything to him.
MP: Professor?
CSl: Yeah, my professor, [REDACTED], she has been a huge support to me, and she’s the one person I will miss back in Illinois. She has witnessed many of my problems, but so many people have been contacting her, the school said she’s no longer allowed to talk about the situation, as it’s apparently bad for the school or something.
Mike was essentially treating me like it was no big deal, like I was just doing it for the attention, again.
Ohmwrecker was scared, though I didn’t notice at the time, because he had stopped talking to me, however, since I mentioned Allistair to him, he apparently had contacted him. He coaxed the name of my professor out of him and called the school, told them to call [REDACTED], who in turn called the police. He even left his place in Chicago to come out and try and track me down to make sure I was okay.
For some reason, Allistair’s rude comments snapped me out of it, and I put the knife away, my roommate came home and I went to sleep. The police woke me up and took me to the hospital, from there they had put me in the psych ward, where I stayed for about a week.
But the way I felt during the suicide attempt.
It was intense.
I keep describing it like there were chemicals floating around in my brain. And it was like I was watching myself from afar.
It was surreal.
It’s not fun, feeling that way, and I’m glad I didn’t hurt myself.
So that’s the first attempt XD.
MP: Yeesh, christ almighty! Now, the second attempt and insanely more pressing one: the decision to do it publicly. What state were you in, upon that happening?
CS: just a sec
MP: No problem.
CS: Ah I’m back, sorry. My roommate, Lexi, is a bit stressed out, and I was trying to calm her down.
MP: Word up I smell you there.
I, err (this means I understand).
CSl: Haha, I figured. Anyways, so the second attempt.
Well, during my stay at the psych ward, I decided I was going to come out, I was just going to let everyone know what happened, and I was going to be strong, and be an advocate. I actually wrote up a design for a game that dealt with trans issues in a creative, though very dark way. It was a very powerful design, and I think a lot of people would have fun with it.
However, once I got out, I had a backlog of emails, very nasty e-mails, IGG was threatening me with some nonsense, they not only refunded the money, but they froze my paypal accounts, and got them to refund EVERYTHING I had ever received through my paypal, which included any money I had earned through my game development career, any donations from homesick, and they took some extra money from my student loans, claiming that all of it was fraudulent.
MP: Good God, that shit sounds insanely rough. What was your living situation at that time?
CSl: Sorry, other roomate is stressed now, just a sec
MP: Hey, no problem!
CS: Aww, she was crying, she doesn’t have her medication because once she got a job, she didn’t qualify for assistance to get it, and it’s like $240 just for a little thing, so she’s been really depressed.
Anyways. At this time I was living with my roommate still, I had paid most of the money I was supposed to be saving for my surgery into rent (this was from student loan money) because my roommate was spending her money to visit her boyfriend in Indiana. She also used some of my surgery money to spend on paying her backlogged bills to boost her credit. Then turned around and told me I was lazy for not having a job, and that I wasn’t contributing anything.
She got more and more abusive, granted, she wasn’t hitting me anymore, it still hurt a lot.
She would do things like not let me drive my car because she was afraid I would leave her, to not letting me talk to my friends, and belittling me in front of her friends. She would constantly push my buttons, and I do not yell, I am very laid back and relaxed, but she made me force everything inside.
Allistair stopped returning my e-mails after the attempt, I tried to tell him I was going to put out the story, he was supposed to help me with, I turned down many interviews because I was going to let him have the story.
MP: Holy guacamole.
CS: But eventually I confided in Eurogamer writer Robert Purchese. Robert is a good person, he’s been very supportive from day one, but it’s been very slow with writing up the article. He’s had to do a complete re-write since things have gotten more dicey, and I’m not even sure it’s going to happen.
But at that point the waiting was killing me, I wanted to tell people, and I was getting berated by people who were convinced I was a scammer and that I was trans, all from the posts on Reddit. It got to the point where I had to disable the comments on my video, which was even more stressful. I think there’s a picture floating around of some of the things that were said to me during this point in time, and I just wanted to let people know what happened, but everyone was telling me to wait, to do it right.
It was eating at me and eating at me, I was feeling so guilty, I wanted to talk to someone, but I couldn’t, and my roommate was no help. My friends online were getting fed up with how I was acting, they knew what happened, and many of them expressed their distrust of me, but they said to be patient.
Eventually I just re-enabled the comments on my video, and started antagonizing some of the people being jerks. Many of them just brushed it off, didn’t really care at all.
One user in particular kept egging me on, telling me to just go ahead and kill myself, because I wasn’t going to.
I wanted to do it, but I thought it best to just sleep on it.
I woke up and he was egging me on again.
So, I set up an account on Twitch, because I wanted him to see it happen, I wanted everyone who was treating me bad to get up on there and watch me do it.
I wrote up my suicide note ahead of time, and posted it around the internet, and put up a link to the Twitch channel.
I sat there for almost a half an hour, contemplating what I was about to do. I remember thinking where I was going to put the knife.
During a brief moment of lucidity I picked up my cell phone and texted my address to a friend.
Eventually the Twitch channel was shut down, so I moved over to my couch, and laid there.
Part of me was trying to force the knife into myself, the other part was trying to pull it away, but I had that same surreal intense feeling as before.
I sat there basically paralyzed until the police came, I couldn’t move.
One of them pointed a gun at me, I relaxed my grip a bit and the officer behind the couch pulled the knife out of my hand. They were very nice to me, and they helped me back the hospital
MP: It was speculated you took pills, that wasn’t the case?
CS: I don’t know how that rumor got started. I did have a bottle of rum, but I didn’t drink any of it, I was contemplating drinking it or not. But, no pills.
MP: I empathize to a point. I was down on my luck in Michigan. My father had a lot of guns, I had a staredown or two with them that kinda informed the decision to finally start tackling severe depression.
Yeesh, Now.
CS: Ouch
MP: After this point the hub-bub as it were began.
CS: Did you have any funny feelings during those ‘staredowns?’ Just interested if there are any parallels.
MP: Well, Chloe. It was Michigan. At the time I came back from Washington, from cultivating a life there to being a failure and just living with my folks. Not showering, not caring what my life became. I would work in a factory as my father did. I would die there, and not follow through on anything. I thought it was predestined.
I looked at the guns and the indecision that can happen when your brain short circuits as it does during severe depression. A clear cut decision versus indecision.
The worst part is how easy it becomes. Problem, and then solution. You have a fixed perspective on the problem, and the immediacy and finality of the weapon as an agent of solution becomes palatable. A gun doesn’t have the qualms I do with ending life. You take yourself out of the equation. You rationalize. You can’t care about the future if you take it off the table entirely.
CS: I feel the same way, and I have made the same argument, just not in such beautiful language. I usually just say that suicide stems from a lack of options, whether real or perceived, where the victim feels that suicide is the only viable option.
MP: The language was the problem.
CS: Indeed. It is very scary
MP: If I fell in love with the idea, even the part of me that thought that life was the best game in town would be overtaken because it’s a solution to a problem that you can’t immediately look beyond. Your feelings compound that need to end pain, after having experienced so much.
CS: Well Michelle. I’d like to talk to you about Jesus. Ha! Just kidding
MP: Sure. Ha!
CS: Had you going there for a minute
But yes, I agree with what you’ve said, it is such an odd experience. Though, when I asked the question, I meant specifically in that moment, did you have a similar out of body experience, or did you feel your head spinning?
MP: When I feel depressed, it’s a very real warmth, a comfortable burning in the back of my head. When I felt like killing myself, it felt like that bit of warmth I’d have before getting into a fist fight. Fight or flight. Basically, I’ve fought most of my life aside from these last three years. The Id takes over, and I’d black out the beginnings of the fights. The desire to die would be like what I felt upon engaging in either sex or a fight, in that order. There’d be the fantasy of what’d come upon that, the pain ending. It’d be what I felt in high school, of infatuation that wasn’t followed upon. I’d romanticize it, like it was this act that I’d own, that I could reclaim from a world that constantly stole from me.
What I learned about anger and violence, was that it was at the behest of the person initiating it. I don’t sit around looking for ways to get pissed off. I react to it differently than other people. When I crossdressed in earnest, I took back a little bit of my life from those who stole it from me. People I loved, people I loathed and the indifferent.
When I lived as a woman, I did it for me and me alone.
And it conflated into who I am now, someone who still faces problems, and someone who still feels pain and very real danger. But I understand why I felt the way I did, and that if there was still a grave struggle I would be the one setting the terms for it beginning, and would wage it on my terms.
CS: Wow, that’s powerful
MP: The thing is, it would be if it weren’t what a lot of people weren’t already doing. I feel like if this were a stronger, well uh, more loving world it would be a non-issue. But, wish in one hand and shit in another.
That said, after what has happened with Allistair, and his termination from Destructoid, what’s next for Chloe Segal?
CS: I have no idea
This is one of the things that bothers me most, when I talk to people, they usually say something like “just be patient, it will all blow over and everyone will forget,” forgetting the fact that this is not over for me.
I’m still dying and I still need to get surgery.
I was waiting for Robert to put out his article again, and was hopefully going to put up another donation page. But he’s taking so long with it, and he’s let me know that he’s rewriting the article to be more general than having to do with what happened with me, which confuses me.
I desperately want to release another game, hoping that it might do well, but I’ve been too weak to do that, I’ve been trying to get help, specifically in the art department, but help has been limited. No one wants to be on a project that they may not get paid for. Sam Killerman has mentioned that he’d like to help get donations for me, but he hasn’t mentioned much about that for at least a month.
And I’m not entirely sure if the place I’m staying will be very stable. I need to be independent, and I need to get well, and I just have no idea what I’m going to do.
What I do know is that I want to at least set the record straight. I still get people e-mailing me telling me all kinds of things that simply aren’t true, I wish I could attribute most of it to Allistair (though some of it can be, like telling people I was threatening him personally with suicide so that he wouldn’t publish information about me, which was completely false, and telling people that I wasn’t sorry for what I did), but a lot of it stems from just plain ignorance.
I mean, there are many people I’ve argued with over the past few months saying just the most boneheaded things about transsexuals, like “Many transsexuals commit suicide after srs, so therefore the surgery is cosmetic” and their sources are “I have a trans friend.” And then they get mad at me for telling providing them with facts and telling them to research it more.
MP: The reasoning behind my investment in the story, well aside from it being a transgender issue, is the issue of people believing the transgender narrative is one of deception. Personally, I’ve done a lot of crowdfunding and will continue to do so just because of how hard it is to live in America right now.
Were a lot of people were pissed with Allistair specifically was his outing of you as transgender as to confirm suspicions others had in regard to the validity of the crowdfunding you did, despite the numerous risks to your person such an outing would entail?
CS: The problem I have with it is that my health concerns are irrelevant, none of us should have to have asked for money in the first place.
I don’t know what your perception of transsexualim (specifically) is, but I’m personally an advocate of the birth defect stance. You don’t have to agree with me, but I feel that the brain scans are definitely significant, and that it is something that is caused at birth, and I feel that if anyone has any sort of birth defect that can be corrected via surgical means, it’s abhorrent to make that person pay the full cost, especially if that person cannot function well in society.
If there was a surgery to correct things like hemophilia or mental retardation or cerebral palsy, I feel the same way. With transsexualism, there is a way. And I’m speaking specifically about transsexualism. When it comes to people who feel they can function without the necessary surgeries, I personally would be inclined to say they should be granted access to said surgeries, to at least have the option.
But of course, that’s not going to happen since so many people still adhere to the fallacy that trans issues are just mental issues, and just people that want to be a different sex on a whim, and that all surgeries are cosmetic.
I should also point out, that I’m willing to change my stance, provided someone can give me adequate evidence to change it. Many of us are somewhat new to all of this, and I, of course, am no authority on the subject. This is just my personal feelings from my own personal research and reflection.
Provided the evidence isn’t “OMGSERS I know a guy.”
MP: I can’t speak to the nature of the stance in specific and clinical terms aside from that stance it’s my firm belief that it is a person’s decision to live how they have to to survive correctly. I don’t think we do anything necessarily wrong, we just act on empirical data.
This is what is right for me, it helps me stay alive.
CS: Perfectly reasonable stance, it’s something that many people seem to forget. Especially when it comes to marriage. It shouldn’t matter if someone wants to marry whoever and however many people they want, so long as said people are capable of holding a legal contract, why should it be defined? Too many people adhering to the “I don’t like it, therefore you shouldn’t like it” nonsense.
MP: I feel it extends beyond marriage, and even into simple day to day protections. In the workplace I have to be super cautious, and in housing more so.
CS: Of course, I just used it as an example, since it’s such a hot button these days. Yeah, the last place I was living, with my roommate, they were trying to kick me out because I was trans and because I had attempted suicide twice.
I’m pretty sure that’s illegal.
MP: I’m no lawyer but people play it fast and loose in that regard.
To change tone a bit, what are things you enjoy? What motivates you to do the work you’ve done to this point, and what stimulates you?
CS: Ah yeah, that would be a good idea lol
Well, I’m unfortunately in a weird state, my last roommate basically killed my spirit, a lot of the things that I liked to do (like gaming and hanging out with my friends) I wasn’t allowed to do when she was around.
It got to the point where I was too scared to start working or play a game because I was afraid she would show up and yell at me. But the things I have kept to is my music. I play the guitar and bass guitar, I am familiar with other instruments like the drums and the keyboards, but I don’t have the means to practice them anymore. I’ve actually switched my major from Chemistry to Music, mostly due to a particularly horrid chemistry teacher, but also because music is very natural for me, and I enjoy it, so I feel it will be less stressful.
I still want to get a doctorate in Chemistry, but I’m going to wait until I am stable and can handle it.
I used to play a lot of minesweeper since it was quick and easy to play, but recently it’s been reminding me of some very stressful times, and every time I play it I can still hear my roommate screaming at me, since I used to play it and ignore her.
Since I moved in here, I’ve been gaming a lot with Lexi and her boyfriend, it’s been really nice to sit around and play some good games with good friends, I haven’t been able to do that since back in high school so it’s been really good for relieving stress.
I was getting into some online games as of late with the same people as well as a really amazing transwoman who lives in Germany (very very nice girl) but it’s been a week or so since we’ve gotten together.
MP: Well dang. Alright. With that said. Where I came into being punitive with Allistair, and desire your thoughts specifically, is the point in which he wanted you to “come to terms” with being transgender and that you were hurting people. What are your thoughts on his termination from Destructoid as a writer?
CS: I don’t know how I feel about it. Many people have been telling me how to feel, and I think it’s very offensive, it makes me feel like I’m not capable of thinking on my own.
He has done some terrible things to me, and I’ve been learning more and more as the days go on. But, I have forgiven him, and I do not wish any ill will towards him.
Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone is subject to change. I personally feel that his apologies were sincere, I don’t think he was trying to save his career. And I don’t exactly feel as bad about him being fired, since he told me he was looking to get out anyway.
The one thing I was upset with how Destructoid handled the situation, is they claimed that what happened was “confirmed” and “researched.” I find it hard to believe that it was anything of the sort since the only person from Destructoid I’ve ever talked to was Allistair, and he didn’t have any reliable information, he didn’t have any documentation, all he had was hearsay.
MP: What informs that forgiveness? It seems like a difficult stance to have, given how closely it affects your life.
CS: I have forgiven him because he was just ignorant. I find the fault with the people who chose to be angry and vitriolic about it, like I said before, you won’t find much difference between the nonsense people are preaching on my page to the nonsense that (usually gets deleted) on any out transwomen’s page, or any page that contains any information about trans issues in general.
On top of that, I was already prepared to out myself, granted, it wasn’t in the way I wanted to, but I was already ready for it. He just pulled the trigger because he thought I was trying to bring down IndieGoGo.
I wish IndieGoGo would apologize for how terribly they handled the situation (they basically caused me to commit suicide by doing so, when they could have just as easily let me bury myself) but that’s most likely not going to happen.
But yeah, I really could care less about Allistair. There are more important things for me to be concerning myself with than someone who just acted without adequate information.
But in any case, I have been trying to take a different stance to how I am dealing with people who dislike me. The issue with many of these people is that they just don’t understand. And by greeting their force with more force, you are just going to invite more anger as you push against each other. If you give them compassion you are stepping out of the fight, and allowing them to fall on their face. From there you can begin to invite intelligent conversation.
There have been many people so far that have been kind to me, who wanted my head on a chopping block. One particular person kept hounding me by calling me a ‘faggot’ and a ‘greesy tranny slob’ or whatever, and basically saying I am playing the victim, which I am not.
I asked him if he felt better. He said he didn’t, and wasn’t going to rest until I kill myself. I told him that I hope whatever was bothering him, he could work it out, and if he needed someone to talk to, I would be willing to talk to him. From there he let me know what the real problem was, and he left feeling very good, and he apologized for how he acted, and I let him know I felt bad for what I did.
Another user had a similar kind of issue with me, and after leaving in a fit of rage, he came back several days later and told me that he researched trans issues, and he was sorry for how he treated me, and that once I put up another donation page, he’s going to donate.
The last few days have been stressful, so I haven’t been following that particular strategy, and it doesn’t always work, but trying to bash someone else’s skull in has been worse over all.
I am a strong person, and a nice person, I don’t like to hate anyone, it’s not like me to be confrontational. I don’t yell in real life, I don’t push people around, so I have no idea why I would act that way online.
So yeah. Sorry, I’m rambling again XD
MP: Not rambling, it’s how you feel. How you been living.
In closing, as far as what you’ve experienced and what you want to happen for yourself, what do you want, what do you desire?
CS: I just want to get my surgery, and want to not be stressed anymore. I know the second isn’t going to happen, but once my surgeries are over that’s a huge chunk of stress that I won’t have to worry about, and the rest of my stress will be manageable.
MP: Are you any closer to this?
CS: I’m further away actually, with the money taken from IGG and from my roommate spending the money I had saved. But hopefully being in MA, things will be easier. And being away from that toxic environment with my roommate.
MP: I hope so as well, Chloe Sagal. It’s too hard out here, in this America.
I want to thank Chloe again for taking time out of her day to speak with me, and want to share a link she had asked I share given its ties to her life and that on some level, I’m a big ol’e softy. http://www.gofundme.com/completeLexi
Further Reading: EQUIP WOLF SHIRT; USE: WHISKEY// ON SURVIVAL (Medium Difficulty)
Cut Off: A Dead Space Memoir (Medium Difficulty)
