“Already Dead” Ch.8-9

She didn't always look the way she did now.

She didn't know for a long time that she wasn't like the way she wanted to be. It was something buried deep inside, something intimate lying hidden beneath the surface. But when she finally saw what she needed to see, all the pieces fell into place. The denials rang false and the truth had swept over her like a tidal wave, and what was left was known as a she.

She had struggled telling her family, but her dad had been good to her through all of it and had helped get her the medications and small surgeries she needed.

But it took time for her to reach a point where she could see the truth.

When she thought she was a young boy, the kids would make fun of her for being small. She had reflexively fought against that as hard as could be possible. When he emerged, the possibility of she was gone forever.

And forever was a very long time.

Thirty years of long times.

Thirty years of hints.

The first time she wrote, really wrote in a way that was safe for her, she had written as a female, but that didn't give it away back then.

Thinking about it now, it simply made sense.

Everything suddenly made sense.

The day before her reemergence, she had thought she was a boy as a boy should be, if with a little flavor.

But by one forty two the next morning she was reborn after a huge episode. An intimate episode that people would likely understand if she explained it.

But she didn't want to.

She just wanted to feel happy, and she came to realize that the whole time, the whole damn time that was her childhood, she had always wanted to not be a he, and had in fact not grown up to be a he.

She loved to act, and in the end that was all it was. She had pretended to be a male, in virtually every way possible. She had loved “male” things, and still loved those things, but she loved them because she loved them, not because a boy was supposed to. And it was that truth that swung at her face like a dish breaking. She wasn't a boy.

She was never a boy.

She was a girl pretending to be a boy.

She had always been a girl, buried six feet down, and going strong.

She woke up, and it was an experience that she would not long have leave her thoughts.

And she was scared for a very long time, because the people she knew only knew her the one way, and were struggling as it was to understand her.

What would happen if she told them that he was a she and could be nothing else.

Would they hate her?

Would they force her to hide again?

The first hiding had been a reflex, and here she was again, fighting against the reflex to transform. Only now she really was a she. She was no longer lying.

She was beautiful...for the first time in her life-

She thought she was beautiful.

And though a time would come where she would meet her first detractors, at least in the word she could still be confident. She could be she, being a she.

That little treasure, as she had always been, had been unearthed, and at last, she could see that the x had been at her feet the entire time.

All she had to do, was dig a little.

And when she did, it felt like a sandcastle falling into the surf.

It felt like she was falling in love with herself for the first time, and she was happier for it.

Today though, the x was not at her feet.

The x was sprayed on a door.

She buried something else that day, and she didn't much feel like digging.