My Journey to Adulthood

Chapter 1

Today was the scariest day of my life so far. It was the day I had my appointment with the human development clinic about 10 minutes from my home. It doesn't sound that scary, but for me, it was something that would decide my future. I'm currently 14, from what I've learned about history, I should have started puberty and developing to be a man. To be fair, I could have been developing into a woman too but that didn't make a difference to me right now. Over 2 centuries ago, a weird virus spread through the population, infecting a lot of people around the world. From what was recorded at the time, less than 0.05% of symptomatic people died, still over 400000 people though. However, most people were fine, or so they thought. Over the next couple of generations, children were being born without obvious primary sex characteristics, you couldn't tell boys from girls. Most of the time, this righted itself when they were teenagers, but sometimes it needed some medical intervention. They found that for those kids, a good physiological evaluation and analysis of their genes, brain, and body chemistry, gave the best outcome for those people. Over time, the number of people who were affected by this need for medical intervention increased to the vast majority.

So, this is where I find myself today. Unsure about what my future holds, but excited to find out. Like everyone else, we were raised more like boys were in days gone by, however, kids could play with dolls or makeup and jewellery if they wanted. As for me, I didn't know what I wanted. I know some kids who were very happy playing in the dirt, roughhousing and tended to play with cars and trucks, like my best friend. Others enjoyed playing with makeup and dolls, looking pretty, and sitting in groups and chatting, sometimes watching the other kids who would run around in the dirt and play rough games. I was different, I would play video games, play with my soft toys, and do athletic games but not that much physical contact. I would enjoy sitting and chatting with the kids who liked to do that at times, but at others, I would play sports and run around with the other kids. There are some kids like me, but I wasn't close to them.

"Good morning, Joey, come in." A tall, thin, well-dressed woman said to me, showing me to her office. My mum had come with me but knew I had to go in alone, she had to at my age.

"Thank you for coming today," she said with a smile.

"You're welcome, I kind of want to know what's going to happen going forward."

"I'm sure you do. Now, as we've discussed before, we have done a lot of tests to help you make the best decision for your future life. I want to make it clear that as much as I can help guide you in one direction or another, the choice is yours. You have 3 options, the third is the most difficult and one that we rarely recommend but some people suit it completely and we help them stay healthy and happy."

"I'm aware doctor. To be honest I'm not sure what you are going to say but I'm thinking I'll go with it."

"That's good to hear." She turned her monitor around to show me the screen. "Let's have a look at the results together."

On the screen we looked through each of the areas of testing I did, most of them had a colour-coded distribution curve showing my results in the shaded area under the curve. Each one of them I was somewhere in the pink areas, some more so than others.

"As we can see, you tend to be more feminine than masculine, though I think you know that. This doesn't mean you can't choose to be male or non-binary, but it's my recommendation that you should start female puberty. Physically and hormonally you're more naturally feminine. Psychologically, you're still more on the feminine side of the spectrum, but you are not really girly, unlike some of the kids I've met who look like they live in pink and full makeup at 14. The decision is yours; this is what we recommend."

I sat there thinking. I kind of expected this result. I kind of knew I wouldn't want to end up like Dad, and I wasn't like Arthur, but I'm not sure if I'm like Mum and some of the girls in my class.

"Um, okay, thank you. How long do I have to decide?"

"You can go sit in the waiting room for a couple of hours at most, talk to your parents, then you can come back and let me know. I know it's a big decision for you, I want to help as much as I can, but we can't leave it too much longer. You're at the stage where if we wait too much longer you will have some longer-term health issues."

"Ok, thank you, doctor."

"No problem, do you have a new name chosen for yourself?"

"Um, I kind of like Josie, or Joseph if I was a guy. I think Josie is nice."

"Yes, it is Josie, it's pretty and suits you. OK, I'll call you back at 12:00. You can go to the cafe across the street and chat with your parents if you want. I'll see you at 12:00."

She led me back to the waiting room and I spoke to Mum, suggesting that we get a coffee, well hot chocolate for me.