everything changes (but we all stay the same)

chapter five: aching for something

i haven't taken my antidepressants in a week
because i was sick of feeling nothing,
feeling numb

but now im feeling this aching
this pain im my chest
and burning in my lungs,
this longing,
aching for something

i started testosterone around the same time
that i started dating my boyfriend
who, before dating me,
was a straight man

and so now that i am beginning to
look
sound
and feel
like a man, like someone who is not a woman,
i feel unlovable
and disgusting
in his eyes

no matter how many times
he says he loves me unconditionally
for who i am, not what i am,
i still get this pain in my core
that feels like rejection

we had sex tonight,
but it felt different,
because i feel unattractive in his eyes,
so much that i keep thinking i notice
that he is withdrawing from me
(even if it isn't true)

i ache to be loved by him as a man,
or at the very least not as a woman,
but this front i've put up
by pretending to be girly and feminine
even when feeling dysphoric
all for his sake

i ache
and ache
and ache
and ache to be loved by this man as another man
but my heart keeps telling me
that he will leave me if i show that side of myself
so i stuff it back down
deep into the ache in my throat,
and pretend once again
that i am not aching for something that i cannot have