#tgew

(What I picture after transition)

It's quiet when I wake up. It's eerie because it's a light kind of quiet. The kind that breathes in the corners of the room, leaving space for me to exist. For me to think---not violently, not abruptly, but fluidly.

My thoughts aren't foggy but clear, well-defined, with a shape I can easily identify as... uniquely my own. I can grasp them and toy with them because they aren't elusive. They dont try to escape me.

I laugh. Not because of something funny. But because I can. Because I am happy. The silence is broken, of course---the laughter bleeds through my lips and clings to the walls of my tiny room. But it's ok because only I exist there, and this silence doesn't mind being broken. It thrives off it.

It's not the heavy kind of quiet, interrupted by the ragged breathing of my brother, and the absolute stillness of a still pitch-black sky. Not the kind I feel when waking up at 05:30 am to go to university. Not like the violent commotion of my family stampeding through the house in the other days. The ones where I stay up late until I pass out from exhaustion because staying awake in bed is too terrifying.

I dont wake up with an alarm. Or perhaps I do. But either way, I wake up with divine golden rays streaming through a clear window, tingling my sleep-warm skin. I feel its heat seeping through my skin, warming my body out of its numbness.

My eyes lay closed for a while. I can see that red and orange, the color of molten lava, as light fights its way through my shut-down eyelids. Unlike today, where I dont ever get to keep my blinders up and must wake up greeted by the overwhelming darkness.

When I do open my eyes, I see the weathered walls of my room. They aren't new. They are experienced. Warm from the rising sun and... mine. The room is large enough not to be claustrophobic (unlike mine). But small enough to be cozy. Small enough so that I can cover every inch of it with my latest artwork and writing. Some are framed because I must have liked them. Others stick perilously to the walls with duct tape. They are frayed at the edges, and the charcoal has escaped them and begun staining the walls in shades of dark. Some are finished. Others aren't. I like all of them. But they need not be permanent. Soon I will make more. I always make more.

I dont get up and just... lie there. When I get up, muscles aching as blood forces its way through my veins, I dont have urgency. I have no rush. I have no deadlines or commitments hanging over me like an executioner's ax--- I get to just be. And for once, that is enough.

I go to the bathroom. Because here, that doesn't scare me. Because here the reflection is right. It rings true. My features are sharper, but more delicate, my waist is slightly curved, and I can't see the line of a thin, unshaved beard. I can feel the weight on my chest. The right kind of weight, and my peripheral vision doesn't catch thick hairs on my arms or giant hands. It catches slender, thinner hairs and the silhouette of delicate palms. So I don't tuck my arms behind my back in fear.

My hands are smudged with ink from one too many drawings, fingers slender---with longer nails, the shade of obsidian. My hair clings to my neck uncomfortably, and so I tie it back in a ponytail. And I just... exist.