Who We Become

PROLOGUE

My name is Shiloh and I hate it. Don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful name, it just doesn't feel right when people call me. It doesn't feel like me.

I'm a girl but I don't feel like I am. Mother says that God has a plan for everyone and if anything happens it's his will. But I don't feel like I was supposed to be born a girl.

God must have made a mistake with me, but how can someone that is all-powerful make a mistake such as this?

Maybe God did have a plan for me, but honestly, I didn't like where mine was going. So I took things into my own hands.

My name is Oscar Wilson and this is my story.

OSCAR

I've always known that I was different. It feels like I've been acting as a different person most of my life. The only one that I didn't need to act around was my twin brother Sam. No matter what I could always be myself around him, just as he could be around me. We always had each other.

When I was 7 years old, I didn't want to be in the grass with the other girls playing with dolls. I wanted to be out on the field playing soccer with the boys. I ignored the feeling and played on the swings with Sam.

When I was 8 I talked to my mother about the feelings I had. She told me that I was just in a tomboy phase and I would grow out of it. I talked to sam who said that it was okay and that he would play in the dirt with me.

At 9, I discovered the amazing world of drawing and reading. I spent every minute I could in my room away from everyone, except for Sam of course. I made friends and they loved me, weird feelings and all. I made almost all of them up, but they still loved me.

11 was the age that I made real friends. My family had just gotten the internet, one of the last families in our town to do so. I found a community online where I was able to share my art. They didn't call me a girl or a lady or anything that made my heart hurt. They were my friends and they cared about me.

When I was 14, Sam and I told our dad that we wanted to try out for the football team at school. Dad was proud of Sam but laughed at me and said that I couldn't because I was a girl. I wasn't allowed to watch football with him after that. Sam told me that if I couldn't be on the team then he wasn't either.

I was 15 when I felt normal for the first time in my life. All the other girls had boyfriends or wanted one and I felt the same. I wanted a guy to hold me, a guy to love me. For the first time in my life, I didn't feel like a freak. I excitedly told Sam about a boy I had a crush on, and that was when he told me he was gay.

16 was the age I realized what was wrong with me. I wanted to be a boy. I wanted people to know me as a boy. To buy me legos for Christmas and birthdays as they did for Sam and Bryan. I wanted to be known as a son, not a daughter. 16 was when Sam and I started saving all the money we could.

At 19, Sam and I moved out of our parent's house. Our first apartment was rough, the landlord was horrible and refused to fix anything that was broken. But it wasn't all bad, Sam had a good boyfriend and I was on testosterone, recovering from top surgery, and had my name legally changed to Oscar.

20 was a pretty busy time for us. We came out to our parents together, we moved to a new town, I started a support group, and I started to get paid for my artwork. When we came out, I wasn't expecting them to understand right away and neither was Sam. We were only hoping that they didn't disown us. We were hoping that their love for us would overpower how they would feel about us being queer. They didn't disown us but what they did felt much worse. They refused to use my name and pronouns no matter how many times I corrected them. They constantly asked Sam when he was going to bring home a girl. One day, I decided to cut them off instead, I wasn't going to live through the constant pain of not being accepted by my family. Before we moved, our landlord tried to sue us for "damaging the property", thankfully we had kept track of everything that happened and when he told him about them. Our new place was amazing. It was a three-bedroom, the living room connected with the kitchen and have huge windows everywhere for great lighting. The landlord was nice too.

At age 21, Bryan got into contact with us. He even used my name! The three of us hadn't seen each other since his wedding, it had been four years. Sam and I learned that we were Uncles to a little girl named Lizzy and a baby boy named after our mom, Theodore. We started hanging out with Bryan and his family after that.

At age 23 was when I finally felt like my life was perfect. My art was starting to gain a lot of attention, the support group I ran was really starting to help kids, and I felt comfortable in my own skin. 23 was when I met a cute dork who wormed his way into my heart. 23 was really when my life became perfect. Age 23 was when my life got turned upside down. That is where we will begin this story.