Her
Her and I
Have you ever just… not been able to close your eyes?
I feel like that a lot. Most of the time it’s at night, at home after everything is quiet and it’s dark, things become… weird, but sometimes it can happen in the middle of the day. I usually try to keep my eyes open because it keeps me from seeing her. She’s not a real person, I don’t think. I can’t remember ever seeing her, but I feel like I know her like I know myself. We’ve never spoken, and in these dreams we never meet, I’m just out of body entirely. Usually it feels like there’s a pane of glass between the two of us. I watch her life from a distance, wishing I could be where she is. It’s this weird feeling, a want for something you feel you need, but don’t quite feel it’s possible.
It’s not possible to be her.
Sometimes she changes slightly. She has the same features, and looks like she usually does, but sometimes she has a different sense of style. Once, she wore bright summer colors: light blues, whites, yellows, but more recently she’s picked up a gothic style: blacks, reds, dark purples She even carries herself differently. She used to be pretty, cheery , and positive. Now, she’s quieter. She doesn’t want much; she’s just usually at odds with her parents about how she represents herself. Her parents, overprotective of their image and their own pride, refuse to let her buy the kinds of clothes she wants to wear, or to wear her hair the way she’d like. In response, she doesn’t cause an uproar and fight them. Instead, she just quietly does what she wants, behind their backs and independently. When her parents refused to let her cut her hair a certain way, she just did it herself. Sure, she she would in trouble, but she ended up representing herself like she wants to, and that’s all she really cares about.
Sometimes, in these dreams I do have a body, but only when I’ve had a bad day. Days where you’re so spent that if you stub your toe, you’ll breakdown. I always see it towards the end and this dream is never long, but it’s always hideously deformed or decomposing. I can’t pick one thing I fear more than decomposition. It’s just a corpse, a lifeless body, a nest of maggots. Their eyeless black holes in their skulls show a level of emotion that I’m not even sure I can feel otherwise.
In one of these dreams I was behind the glass. I don’t really feel anything, but I know what I can see and what I see is her. She’s lying on her bed, wearing this really long, really light looking bright red coat. She’s just sitting there, reading a book. She’s uncharacteristically carefree, just existing and relaxed on top of her bed. Then, after awhile, I move out and around. A decomposed body has a way of conveying every negative emotion I can feel while simultaneously looking like it feels none of them. It shouldn’t convey emotion, most of the time you don’t know whose corpse it is.
Then I see it. I see what I look like, kinda like this… corpse just sitting there like Norma Bates except lacking all her sinister power. My body is just in a chair, sprawled over it and lifeless. The skin is a sickly yellowing, tight thing, the eyes are black pits… big, vacant, black pits that make your stomach churn. The mouth… my god the mouth was horrible, toothless, tongue stuck into the cheek. The body… my body was horrifying, but her? She was beautiful. She is beautiful, she just has this quiet beauty about her, she’s self assured and ready and all the things I can never be. A decomposed body has a way of conveying every negative emotion I can feel while simultaneously looking like it feels none of them. It shouldn’t convey emotion, most of the time you don’t know whose corpse it is.
I don’t want to close my eyes. I’m worried I’ll see that again.
Her and Herself
On the bus, she sat in quiet anxiety. It had been three months since she first came out to herself in December and spent that time just kinda dissociated from her own existence. She felt like she was underwater, just kinda existing through everything. It’s a cruel feeling living in the closet. You feel isolated, alone. The old cliche about being alone in a crowded room really does apply there and nothing breaks through the glass tank that isn’t an insult.
She’d spend her time insulting herself online. She’d put pictures of herself on forums asking if she would “pass” if she ever tried making the big change. These places were hardly where anyone so fragile would want to be, but she wanted to be there. She had friends around her willing to help, yes, but she had a perpetually fear of being hugboxed. Any compliment on how she looked, anything positive said about her HAD to be a lie just to make her feel better.
¨God, look at this hun! I hope you’re happy always looking like a man in drag!” “Look at the neanderthal brow on this one! Lol”
“Nice linebacker shoulders, hun!”
She knew it was completely true. She could do anything and everything. She could grow her hair as long as she wanted. She could lose all the weight she had until she was just a collection of bones and tight skin. She could wear any outfit she wanted. She’d never look like a woman. Not with her linebacker shoulders and big ears.
She sat there, hearing the music, but not listening. She was far too busy looking at all the ways she would never look good. She didn’t even have a name for christ's sake. she had no avenue to get clothes, no job, no money. She wasn’t even out of high school.
She is sick and tired of of dealing with these people. She’s sick of the pretty girls in the senior lounge, of the cool kids in the weight room joking about tucking. Most importantly, she’s sick of having to sit there in stunned silence. She hates standing down.
Her, Alone
He sits just a few tables away at lunch. The cafeteria was a big white room that was always packed after fourth period, and Marcus always sits in the same seat, one table from the middle, second from the end closest to the exit.
Does he know I’m staring at him? Does he care?
I always get antsy about looking at people, like, I wonder if they look back at me, if they think I’m a weirdo. Like, I’m involved in all sorts of clubs, I’ve got friends and all, but like… people are weird. Y’know? I’m always anxious around people, no matter who and no matter what the conversation is about.
Do these people hate me? Of course they do, how could anyone care about me?
Is this life now? Grinding my forehead against a brick wall? Honestly, what prospects do I have? What can I do? I’ve got no prospects for the future, my grades are hellish and I’ve only now started to get involved in clubs. Honestly, I’m just going to go nowhere, why even bother? I’m gonna be stuck in my parent’s house for all my life and there is nothing I can do about it.
There’s nothing I can do about my body, there’s nothing I can do about how I feel. There is no one I can turn to without people calling me a “freak” or weird. You meet others you can online, but there’s always only a tiny amount of people you can talk to about it with, if they even exist at all. Hardly anyone understands and it usually comes off as the words of a pervert rather than something you can share. There’s this unspoken rule in general society that this isn’t the kind of thing you talk about; men don’t talk about how they want to be women, that it’s not ever a thing so when you feel that you hide it. We take it, repress it. Act like it isn’t there at all and reject anything that makes us feel differently because the dam is so fragile that throwing a pebble breaks the paper wall. Then, like water, every emotion you’ve been rejecting since you were young comes flooding in.
Sometimes you go to sleep wishing you were someone else, but you always wake up in the same place, wondering why you even try.
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I sat with Marcus in class today.
He was quiet until I spoke to him. I asked him how he was doing.
“I’ve been better, my boss is on my ass about calling in for a shift, but I don’t think I’ll get fired.” He said calmly.
Why did he say it like that? Does he want to talk to me or would it be better if I just shut up and did the work?
“Oof, where do you work?” I asked, trying to strike up conversation.
“The pizzeria in town. I run deliveries.” He said, seemingly more concerned by what was on his computer than the conversation.
Think: what’s Marcus interested in? He is supposedly your friend. What interests do you share?
“H-how do you feel about the Syrian Conflict?” I manage to force out and I immediately regret it.
You do not want a political conversation with Marcus you absolute idiot.
“I don’t care really, all I know is that whatever side we support is good.” He says suddenly, as if reading off some jingoistic script. “What about you?”
“I kinda stopped supporting everyone after the DFNS federalized. I feel like that was a major step back for their organization.” Suddenly, we’re in my domain. I know what I’m doing, what I’m talking about and what I’m going to say next regardless of Marcus’s next couple statements.
“The DFNS?”
“The Democratic Federation of Northern Syria. They evolved from this socialist Kurdish movement that was massively active in Turkey. The way they operate is generally really neat because of how similar it seems to the way the Republicans operated in Spain.”
Don’t go any further, don’t you dare bring up the TQILA. You do not want to out yourself to Marcus.
“They’ve got this really cool brigade called The Queer Insurrection and Liberation Army which is comprised mainly of LGBT people.”
You idiot! Your life is over now, you may as well just run away, change your name and never look back. You’ve just ruined your life, how do you feel about that one?
“That’s dumb.” He says, laughing a bit.
“What’d you mean ‘that’s dumb?’” I say, panicking a bit.
You’ve gone and done it now, everyone in the school will know by tomorrow afternoon. You’re dead.
“I mean it just is, why do gays need their own military group?” He slings off with a comfortability I wish I could have in this situation.
“Well, like, technically it’s a partisan group because they’re organized IRPGF, so like, they’re an anarcho-queer military group.” I say, at this point I’ve pretty much turned off on my delivery and gone to a default spewing of facts until the conversation ends.
“Anarcho-queer? Can an ideology get any more stupid than that?” He says jokingly, expecting me to agree with him.
With the whole… situation, I kinda back down and let Marcus get to whatever he was doing before I bothered him. I hate talking to people. It’s too unpredictable. I just want to be who I am, I want to be able to talk about these things with others, but like… no one wants to hear it. I read about all these things and I have all these ideas, but nobody really wants to listen. If Marcus had started that conversation I know it would’ve ended the same exact way and that’s what hurts the most.
I’m gonna fail this class. I fail everything. Social interaction, school, organization, clubs. All of it, what is even really the point in attempting?
I’ll never pass, I’ll never look like her, I’ll never sound like her, I will always be this.
Why do I even bother? Any form of feminine expression would just look like acting. No matter what I do, I’ll forever be a man in drag. I’d always look like a man in drag.
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We sat out there on a park bench complaining about the cold.
We chose to be out here
“You chose to come out here!” Someone said to Marcus, who was very vocal about the cold.
“I didn’t think it’d be this cold out here, it’s early October.” Said Marcus, quick to reply to anything viewed as an attack on something he said. He’s self conscious like that. He constantly thinks about his social image. I don’t know why though, He’s never done anything unpopular in his life. He could come outright and say something completely abhorrent and unforgivable and he’d simply get a slap on the wrist by most of the people here.
“You do realize that September is when fall starts and it’s October, Marcus, right?” Pipes up one of the girls that’s sitting nearby.
He realizes, he just forgot what month it was.
“Yeah, I know, but the weather was supposed to be warm today.” He yells back.
Sometimes, you wonder why it’s like this, y’know? Like, why are we sitting here and why is this happening to us. Why here, why now? Why do I continually hang out with Marcus despite the fact that it’s pretty apparent that he doesn’t want me around?
Because you really don’t have any other friends to talk to?
Yeah, but why is he still friends with me? He doesn’t listen to what I say and he’d never accept me for me, that much I know.
Because he feels sorry for you. You’re just a charity case to him.
I don’t want that though. I want someone who I can talk to about it all with. I want to know
Well, I guess you should’ve made better friends then.
Scared, Alone, and Upset
I’ve gotta do it. I’m going to have to do it because no one else is going to do it for me and I want this on my terms. Opening messages on my phone, I go to Marcus’s messages and sit in silence for a couple minutes until I can finally force myself to type the words.
“Marcus, I have something I’ve wanted to say for awhile.
I’m transgender. I’ve been
transgender all my life,
it’s not something that’s
going away, it’s not
something that’s ever
going to change. I
value our friendship and
you as a person. I hope you
value me too, but I think being
Dave is going to kill me.
I can’t keep hamfistedly
attempting masculinity if
it’s going to continuously
hurt me in this way. I cannot
keep up the lie of David
or David is going to kill
me. The way I’m going now
can only end in me dying.
I hope you can understand
this and we can continue
to be friends.”
“no, you aren’t”
“What do you mean, I’m
not? If this is the way
I felt at six and at
twelve and at sixteen
then how can you say
that’s incorrect? How
can you say that how I
feel there is wrong?”
“because it is ur
david not anyone
else”
“But I’m not David.I
never was, David was
just a mask. He was
never a real person.”
“no”
Suddenly, everything gets very quiet. My stomach drops.
You idiot, you’ve really done it now, you better start drafting that suicide note because David won.
Is there any reason to still be alive? Deep down, I know Marcus is right. I will never be her. I’ll never look good, I’ll never be seen as her. I’ll always just be a linebacker in a dress. No matter the surgeries I have, the hormones I take, the makeup I wear, the weight I lose, the work I put into the way I look... I’ll always just be David in drag.
Is life even worth living anymore?
Her And Her “Friend”
Why is Marcus even my friend.
He just is.
But he’s such an asshole.
I guess that’s just your cross to bear.
How did I even make friends with him though?
Because you were young and stupid? You didn’t understand how he sounded in middle
school would be the same way he sounded in high school. You let yourself get attached
and this is the price you pay for trying to be a friend to someone very clearly uninterested
in associating with you.
But why is he so uninterested? Why doesn’t he return my calls, why won’t he follow up
on plans we make? Why does he just switch off when I speak?
Because in reality you take your interests too far. Once someone gets close to you, you’re
too vocal about the stupid garbage you’re into.
But he used to like talking about this, why did that change?
You grew a spine and started having your own opinions.
But why would that make him disinterested?
Because he’s not interested in friendship. He doesn’t want to be equals, he wants to
be the smartest person in the room on every topic and any hint his opinion could be
challenged is an affront.
But I’m like that too.
Only when you are fully confident you’re right and only to Marcus.
Maybe that’s why nobody else is my friend though, maybe I’m too opinionated, I’m too
ready for an argument and I’m too willing to engage like that.
Or maybe other people don’t have their priorities straight.
Or maybe they have friends.
Having friends is even less of an excuse for ignorance than being lonely.
But other people aren’t going to spend all their time researching the Syrian Conflict if
they have friends.
Other people aren’t trying to go into politics, other people aren’t trying to teach history. Oher people were able to associate as their preferred gender at birth. Other people didn’t have to spend eighteen years just trying to figure out how they can be comfortable, let alone keep waiting for a day when they can start to spend years trying to look like something vaguely presentable to themselves.
So?
ME
After this bus ride, David Thomas Reynolds will have died. No one is going to miss him. I had to kill him, before he killed me. I don’t have much at this point. I don’t know who my friends are, I don’t know how to make new ones, but I do know that I don’t want to die and the only route I can see for David is a long, drawn out death.
I am Emma Julianne Reynolds. I want to live, not just be alive.
No one is going to miss David.