I’m Still Here

The battle with himself was elusive. In high school it became apparent that everyone he knew saw him differently than he saw himself. They called him things he did not recognize, like “girl” or “young lady”. Every time he heard himself addressed this way, as “too pretty to play such tough sports” or “really attractive in a dress”, he gagged a little.

He tried to control it. The urge to be himself. At 16 he developed a neurotic compulsion to control the way he looked. He made sure to eat way too little, he made sure to train on the soccer field much too hard. Running drills late into the night, so that maybe his curves would never show, maybe his chest would not balloon forward like ripe apples exposed in the sun. Still he answered to “Hey girl, how was class?!” Wrapped in pleasantry and greeting, as sweet as it seemed these greetings felt like steak knives, pressed against his skin.

He ended up at 19 with a habit of party-going and house-hopping. With no courage to dream. The only feeling that steered him, like a reckless drunk driver, was fear. The fear of being found out, of being shamed or blamed, of being discovered. Being discovered as a freak, as a 5 foot 5 lie, as an imposter in the crowd, as different.

He got drunk 1055 too many times. He got high 1055 too many times. He left home after home, being in enclosed spaces that were open to love but never felt more alone. He couldn’t shake the agony of 19 years, in a body that felt wrong, twisted, unsure. He couldn’t starve it away, he couldn’t pump himself into strength, he couldn’t cry quietly enough, and no matter how many times he bled, his body parts didn’t match, the person in his heart.

At 24, he crawled into a crisis facility. The rooves of the building scraped the sky. The white and yellow glow of the detailed paint and the pristine lettering nearly blinded him. He felt defeated. He had lied all of his life. In his fist he clenched; scarred, shaking with visceral proof that being a slave to this rouse, to this secret was slowly killing him, from the outside to the inside.

He sat in an interview room heavy with weight of his own voice, weak with denial, shredded with agony; the intake facilitator walked in. “What brings you here today?!”. Silence fell over the room, eerily. Ironically it was the silence, the 24 years of silence that lead him to this exact place at this exact time. “I’ve never said this out loud, and I don’t really know how, but I’m not meant to be this way,” he says. “What do you mean sweetheart?!” The intake facilitator exclaims with that same sweetness, that same gentle cheeriness and sympathy in her eyes that he’d witnessed all his life. What she saw, was a young lady, with high cheekbones and a tiny frame. A young lady with a rich dark tone, and long dreadlocks. A young lady that would turn heads with her apples fully ripened and her bohemian style. A young lady with an hour glass shape and deep amber eyes.

He had said what he meant. He had meant it exactly that way. The personification of feminine power and textbook beauty standards. The high pitched raspy voice both sultry and alluring. The organs inside of him that shed every month, and flooded his self image and self esteem was not right. He opened his mouth to the middle aged woman in burgundy scrubs, and pleasant and patient disposition, “I’m a boy, I think I’m supposed to be a boy”.