Feeling Of Missing Out

Inseparable

On our way to the cinema, I don't know whether to face away from the window or out proudly towards the other passing cars. I'm happy with how I look, but is the world? And should that matter? Heck, if this worked like any of the previous simulations, situations or scenarios, my confidence and swagger would be brimming to MCU super-heroine levels. I'd be able to take on the world each and every day if I always felt as I did at 5 years old, and before any serious idea that I am transgender was acknowledged in this manufactured, make-believe madness. 

That's it! Dysphor said that these experiences will now feel different. This is what he meant! It must be that I can't continue to blissfully ignore the fact that I'm transgender. It has to be Dysphor strengthening the links and bonds and chains between he and I. Keeping my male genitalia discreetly on my body wasn't having the desired effects so he had to switch it up! He needs me to experience the acknowledgment from others that Skye is different. That I am unique. Rather than have me forget that I ever felt the cold sting of dysphoria...he's ensuring I feel every single high and low as if I'm the bow for the violin he's playing. Every note he sounds will resonate through me and shake every fibre of my younger, more fragile being.

And just as I come to that realisation, pink smoke starts to drift in through the semi-open window on Dad's side of the car. I watch it carefully, expecting it to cover my entire vision any moment now, but it stops in the air as if frozen on the spot. My wrist begins to glow that shade of pink, but the hue darkens to a more purple-y shade. Then, I hear that voice again.

"I was wondering when you were going to step in."

"Why do you sound so upset, petal?" He has the cheek to call me that even now that he has broke my heart. 

"I'm not sure why you would even ask that. There I was, 5 years old, living my wildest dreams and the life I wished to lead. After just a few simulations, you take that away from me again out of choice?"

"Skye, I came to explain. It wasn't out of choice. If I stop existing within you, you stop existing within the program. I checked your emotional feedback on the computers in front of me and your joy was perilously high. If you forget that you are transgender, you will be forgotten to the world that knows you. This is a very delicate program, Skye. I need to keep you alive and safe while exploring and altering your past. That's why I have had to make you physically male to the naked eye again. Without me, you perish. Please, trust me."

"What's the end game here? I don't want to sound so ungrateful - you have shown me things I could only dream of yesterday - but is the whole point of this just to show someone something ideal and then slowly rip it away? You don't understand this, Dysphor - I wanted to stay in that world. I didn't want to come back. In those simulations, everything was as it should be. I was Katie's little sister, my parents' youngest daughter and a confident, clever, capable little girl. Now, I know I'm a gross boy. I'm incomplete by default. I'm -"

"Everything that I made you. Without gender dysphoria, there can be no gender euphoria. If you had no obstacle to overcome, you wouldn't be fixing anything by being here. You would be wasting your time. It's your dysphoria that brought you here. I brought you to the point that you brought yourself right back to me."

"We are now inseparable? Is that it?"

"Oh, Petal..." His eyes glow red, then a horrific, plastic white. Fire forms in his hands like he's from some anime. "We have always been inseparable."

And then he vanishes, and the smoke drifts across as previously foreseen. When it clears, we're at the McDonalds Drive Thru.

"A quick healthy meal before the film, eh kids?" Dad knows the way to make us happy, anyway. I'd rather be hearing from Dad than Dysphor. I'm still shell-shocked sat in the back of the car, but food has to be the key to feeling a little better.

At the drive-thru, and in the car park, I'm scouting for onlookers and passers-by who can make out who is in the back of this particular sedan. Katie has the most comforting words for my young heart and brain.

"Don't worry, Skye. Everyone just sees two sisters and their dad. You look better than I did at that age, but I didn't have a big sister who was awesome at makeup!"

"I just don't want to be laughed at. I like how I look."

"That's honestly all that matters, sis. At school, the other kids are always at each other for the smallest things. Haircuts, school bags, shoes, makeup, glasses or none, even the way we speak - I've had to learn the hard way that I need to be my own judge. If I'm happy, I'm happy. If you're happy, that's really all you need to be. If you're not happy, something needs to change." Her words cause tremors within me like tectonic plates crashing together towards the Earth's molten core. This is how it feels to know that you are transgender, and having absolutely no idea how to communicate it properly or begin to cope with the emotional overhaul.

"And I'm in the same camp, son. I just want you to be happy. If you like to dress like Katie, I'm completely alright with that, even if others are not. But I don't know if Katie is going too far by calling you her sister all the time. Mum thinks it might be confusing you, but I know you'd tell her if you didn't like it."

I can finally say my truth, to the basic level of which my young mind can grasp. 

"I like being Katie's sister. I like being a girl." And just like that, the elephant has burst into the room and found a space to rest for a long time. Whenever anyone needs to talk to me, about me or on my behalf, that same little elephant will be there, trumpeting away. When you appear to everyone as an eight-year-old boy, admitting you find joy in femininity is a paradigm shift and then some. The effects can be cataclysmic. But they aren't today. Dad just smiles and Katie hands me my food from the paper bag, for which we have been waiting. I think Dad's order has always been an awkward one, so we often had to wait for them to prepare it separately. We eat in the car for the sake of my self-esteem. As a family, it is decided that leaving the car unnecessarily could be asking for trouble.