Nat has her own story to create, but unfortunately for her, writing's never been her strong suit.
X has always clung to what's mainstream, and to what helps her fit in...but life's hard out there for a feminine sort-of-stud with a 1 year old baby.
N...
"Come on, my baby. It's time to get dressed so you can go and see Grandma and Grandpa," I whisper.
It still feels surreal to be saying those words. To be looking at my own kid that I created. Me, just some barely thick 18 year old, with a baby on my hip.
Worst of all, I'm a stud.
I blink back tears as I scoop Zabelle out of her little crib. I shouldn't think that way. Plenty of studs have kids, stems too. And nobody ever gets on fems about having them. I just hate the looks I get from my own community and even beyond that. I hate the way I'm treated...I hate the way that I'm not considered.
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I hate the way that I'm judged.
But as everyone likes to remind me...this was my decision, and because of that, I have to live with it.
I cradle Zabelle against my chest, letting her steady heartbeat soothe me through my thin, old Astros t-shirt. Funny story with my baby girl's name: I was slightly delirious after delivery and when the nurse asked me what my daughter's name would be, instead of hearing Isabelle, she heard Zabelle.
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I move my hand over her calm swirls of hair. Zabelle wasn't even a bad name anyways, and it's not like anyone had been in the delivery room with me to hear me more clearly. I had been alone, the tears in my eyes that night for both at-the-time Isabelle and our future. The father wanted nothing to do with me after finding out I was a stud and not the completely drunk fem I looked to be the night him and I created our daughter. It had taken everything in me to find him, and then he left me at his front door steps to tell me that he didn't care for me nor our child.
Then, my family was gravely disappointed in me. I mean, my mother, father, and aunt. Everyone else only gossiped and added this to my long list of so-called failures. Ever since my father stepped out of his marriage to sleep with my aunt and created me, I had been destined to be ridiculed from birth.
I grew up thinking that "Mom" was Mom, but instead she was actually my aunt. "Aunt Nicole" had actually been my mother, and after my father stopped giving a damn about hiding that he slept with two sisters and had been faking that one his babies belonged to the one that she didn't, all shit hit the fan.
