#translivedexperience

I have this little creature that lives in my chest, right below my collarbone.

She's always peeking through my eyes, always smiling.

Her name is a tree. Aspen. My inner child or something like that.

She has this thick mane that she wears in pigtails- so often that her hair has semi-permanent dents where the ties grip. 

She doesn't like wearing it down.

She's a little girl who only understands "she" and "girl" to be a conglomeration of sounds used to address her. She makes people laugh and she laughs a lot herself. 

She's curious about the world, the first baby of a family whose children have just turned into adults. She's loved really really well at this age. 

She'll switch to perma-ponytails next. She doesn’t like having hair in her face.

She sees a brown pageboy cap in a store and tries sticking the ponytail up in it. She likes how it looks. Like Newsies.

Aspen cuts the hair short for the first time. Like, committed to the shortness for a hot second short.

Aspen stops using pronouns for Aspen when thinking. Do other girls feel like this? Boys too? They must right? I don't think it's supposed to hurt.

 I'll just keep quiet. I can fix this.

Something in the kid is having trouble seeing the positives of growing up. But puberty is a lifetime away. Aspen has been a kid for forever so far, so that worry- 

-that weird thing called "womanhood" 

  wasn't anything to worry about anytime soon.

Not to worry. Not to worry. Aspen doesn't need to feel worry. 

Aspen is a very mature kid. All the teachers say so. Aspen is a paradox. 

The polite class clown. The charming and desirable tomboy. Everyone likes Aspen. And Aspen likes God so much and so Bravely n' Publicly that everyone in Churchome likes Aspen too.

The wonderkid is thoughtful, wonderfully spontaneous and compassionate. Pretty. Wonderkid is too talented and too well-loved by the family to not have all artistic dreams supported.

Aspen takes a Logic class.

IF  (grateful to have opportunities) AND (want the family to love you/go to heaven)

THEN (- cannot betray the familygod by becoming like that. Like becoming one of those people who are either the butt of a joke or a sexual adventure onscreen.)

Not when they have invested so much.

I was supposed to be better than that.

I-

I-

It would be sinful.

Aspen really wanted to go to heaven.

In heaven- it would all make sense, in heaven, the kid wouldn't feel this way about his body. He wouldn't- she-

I didn't want to be a she. I didn't want to be a she. It was wrong. 

What was wrong with me?

I read on a Christian blog that sometimes the mind needs visual symbolism to help get a point across.

“Try writing whatever negative thoughts you have about yourself on a piece of paper. Burn it, and watch as His light covers over the page and destroys your sin. Give your burden to the Lord.”

I write the word FREAK over and over again on a piece of paper and then I burn it on our porch.

I can fix this.

I. Can. Fix. This. 

I'm so desperate for anything at this point, anything to make the sin of my disgusting ungratefulness go away. I don't understand why God made me a girl. I don’t understand.

Why would He do this to me? I pray for God to show me a reason. God just says "Hold on." Over and over, every time I pray that's all I hear, "Hold on."

I suck up my tears. I genuinely don't know how I will stay alive. I don’t know how many years I’m going to need to “hold on” for until reality itself somehow shifts.

Until the mountains move. 

I am happiest when I am asleep.

But I don't want my parents to know that- I don't want to seem ungrateful or like I'm mentally ill when they have only ever treated me like the perfect faultless angels that they are.

I am a bad daughter.

I hate being a daughter.

I hate being in this body.

I can't fucking escape it.

I can't runaway from my own skin.

I tried I tried I tried-

I’m fifteen, running barefoot on concrete until I leave bloody tracks.

I read and I read and I read. 

I relate to Frankenstein's monster.

I want to stop existing like this more than anything.

"Hold on."

I'm angry at God for sticking me in this gender- from making me live in a world where being trans is a sin. For making it so that obeying Him means living a Freaky Friday nightmare every day of my life for years and years and years until I die.

I’m so scared of being buried in a dress. 

There's this one acting teacher in Aspen's school who doesn't look at Aspen in the same slightly-too-smiley way most men do. 

This guy calls Aspen "kid" exclusively and nonchalantly gives the kid one of his old pirate costumes after a Peter Pan performance. The boy one. 

The one I had been staring at.

The guy teaches me stage combat and makes me captain.

I later learn that he has a husband. I feel seen by him in a way I haven't felt before.

But it's a sin.

But…

I can't imagine him not going to heaven.

Not when his eyes look at me and say “hold on.”

Sometimes the things we talk about in Bible study make me feel…

I shouldn't feel that way.

"Trust in God" is the blanket answer Churchhome gives me when I ask them questions.

"Hold on," says God. The two words are enough to make me keep trying to fix/not hate myself. To survive for that person I'm going to save. To survive for the next version of me. For my phoenix.

"Hold on." The encouragement is somehow enough but just barely.

I hang on to a thread for the next six years.

The kid watches the people with the kind of body Aspen would grow into go about their lives.

The kid watches as all kinds of adults trade their name cards in for adjectives. People keep misspelling “Aspen” as “Pretty”.

Pretty loves to dance. Pretty loves to play piano. Aspen loves being able to express emotions without talking. Aspen didn't like the way Pretty's voice sounds.

There is a noticeable difference between Aspen's voice and the voice of real boys now. The kid tries not to think about it.

There are helpful YouTube videos explaining why God doesn't make mistakes. Why obedience is so rewarding, even it if doesn't feel like that in the moment- even if you can't comprehend ever being a woman and being truly happy. 

Trust me

Trust me

Trust me

Some people act wary around the kid now. The word gay is tossed around briefly. Briefly-

But the kid quickly works to quell those rumors.

I pray to God every day, trusting God to fix me, begging him to change me. To make me a boy- to pluck me out of this reality and let me be born again. Let me start over the right way for I am defective and want a recall.

Aspen needs a change in the brain.

I can only ever be happy as a girl if I have a lobotomy.

Aspen prays for a lobotomy.

Aspen prays for breast cancer.

Take away that part of myself that isn’t allowed to live. 

Dementor-kiss me and let me be pretty without caring. 

Amen Amen A man a man

The kid is lying sideways in bed. Wearing a black push-up bra. Trying to make it feel not alien.

The kid doesn't understand why the body is sobbing uncontrollably.

What's wrong with me? 

Why do I feel like this? 

What's wrong with me? 

What's wrong with me?

The kid tries standing a little wider, tries hunching the shoulders in, and wearing two sports bras two sizes too tight. The frayed straps often leave red rashes. Worth it.

Wonderkid tries it, and starts feeling better.

He cuts up bedsheets in his room and ties it around his chest so tight that his lungs sound raspy for hours afterward. 

But in the mirror, with that snake-sheet constricting his chest, the kid looks so happy in his pirate costume.

He feels slightly more alive when he tries on a binder for the first time.

He feels so much better that it's scary.

Because that isn't an option.

That isn't an option.

Not for Wonderkid.

Wonderkid moves to New York.

Public school is different than The C.C (Conservative Christian) Homeschool Co-op he was born into.

Aspen tries being Wondergirl for a while, wants to be with be a guy.

Lonely.

Body hurts.

Brain hurts.

Don't really feel anything.

But that's okay, all I need is God. The Lord is my strength and my shield. 

If I'm feeling pain then I must be doing something wrong, I must deserve the consequences. I am sinning by wanting to be a boy and being ungrateful for my gender. I am sixteen years old.

Some part of me trusts that I need to hold on a little longer.

I am always a boy when I dream. I am happiest when I am asleep. I think I have a purpose. I think I need to stay alive a little longer for him. I like the name Thomas.

I'm seventeen. Somewhere in my mind, I say "I can't be a girl forever. This hurts too much."

Another voice says 

"You can't die yet."

Life is supposed to be good, you're just not seeing it right… you need to trust in the Lord.  You have control over your life right? Everything you do has consequences. 

Everything is your fault. 

Dear God- help me lose weight, become more boxy, dear God help me to find a guy that I will actually desire to be with, make my chest smaller, make me stop, dear God Dear God Oh my God-

I cry and cry and cry until I never cry.

I'm still Wonderkid at school. Talented- I've evolved from Pretty to Beautiful now.I'm told to be thankful for my body by my Mother whenever I mention anything. I know I should be thankful. But I'm so ungrateful to God.

I know I’m swine compared to him. To His majesty and grace.

Who am I to question Him and His perfect plan? "For I know the plans I have for you-" I choke out on my bathroom floor, "Plans not to harm you, but to give you a hope and a future." I peel my shaking hands away from my face.

I was never good at memorizing Bible verses, but I always remembered the gist of them pretty well. We were graded on them at Churchome.

I discover that alcohol makes me not care about my body anymore. I drink and I stop caring about the way I have to be when I'm around people. I drink and I stop caring about the future or being trapped in this body or what happens next. I don’t even get hungover.

It's such a relief. A godsend. For a few hours every weekend, I genuinely don't care about being a girl. I can just dance and there are lights and music and everyone’s happy and young-

I really love dancing.

Soy milk increases estrogen so I start avoiding that like the plague- not because I'm… you know, like that or anything. I just don't like the way the female chest looks aesthetically/feels/is/exists/sits/lays/

I can't escape my body I can't escape my body scratches on my skin blame it on eczema-

A quiet stage.

Spotlight.

I’m eighteen. Red curtains lift around me and several cellos start singing.

I am stunning, I am so goddamn beautiful and I and everyone else in the auditorium knows it. 

My technique is clean because I give 120% in every class. At my ballet academy, I'm most teachers' favorite. I love that we aren't allowed to talk in class. I love the way ballet makes my body hurt.

I'm flexible but not as strong as the other dancers- a little heavier too* (*see Not Anorexic) and I haven't had as many years of training under my belt.

But God can I act- I dance with emotion, I dance and the world is superimposed with places I've only been to in movies. 

I'm told that I dance like I've been alive for a really long time. Too long.

I’ve been alive too long like this.

I'm doing semi-clean pirouettes onstage- but in reality, I'm a smoke signal on top of The Great Wall of China- alerting of Hun attacks by burning tall and bright. My superimposed movie. I dance in the dark night wind and horse hooves of the calvary clop on top of smooth stone.

I do a grand jeté and the smoke signal sparks out orange fireflies.

I know the audience is seeing Pretty and the way her blood-red “Arabian” costume sparkles in the light- but they don't know just how beautiful my imagination is making the scenery right now.

It's okay. I know.

I get offstage and sweat is in my eyes, I'm panting, and for some reason the physical exhaustion from the sport makes me feel like a boy. Life is good and there is air in my lungs for once and the first thing that my extended family says when I greet them at the stage door is,

"You're growing into such a beautiful young woman."

I am so scared of being buried in someone else’s grave.