better days

Chapter 3

I've always been different, dye-my-hair different, punch-the-wall and hurt-myself different, doom-and-gloom and nothing-matters different, something-is-behind-me and wet-hands-will-kill-me and shake-in-my-bones different. I've known since I was little. I didn't really process it- nine-year-old me thought it was cool that when I took a summer class about poetry, I wrote poems about venomous snakes and jellyfish and dehydration and hypothermia.  I thought I was being edgy and awesome and different.

When I was a little kid, my parents made sure I knew that being different was okay. They could tell I was different too. They taught me to embrace my love for dinosaurs and Barbies and monster trucks and glitter. The kids at school didn't let me embrace it. They thought I was just a freak, with all the things that I did different from them.

I started getting really, really different in middle school. Everyone could tell. I started chafing more and more at my body's femaleness. That felt wrong. That made me different. Oh, but baby, you're becoming a woman, my mom cooed at me when I started bleeding from places nobody should ever bleed from. It was wrong. It was all wrong.

Around the time I "became a woman," I started feeling pain in my leg joints when I walked or moved in weird ways. It got worse and worse. I tried to use a cane for a while, but it felt wrong. I couldn't wash my hands without wanting to wash the cane too. Limping around sucks, though, so the cane is necessary sometimes. But it still feels wrong.

Wrong wrong wrong wrong. The words started to feel meaningless because everything I did felt wrong. Even brushing my teeth felt wrong. I had to clean my toothbrush with cold, cold water every time I used it because otherwise the toothpaste scum would build up on it. And even if it was getting my teeth clean, it was getting my toothbrush dirty. And if I brushed my teeth with a dirty toothbrush, I would walk around for the rest of the day feeling wrong. I repeated words. I pretended I was typing on an imaginary keyboard and chose a word and moved my fingers across the keyboard, typing it over and over again. I couldn't remember where the Z was because I never used it. The words I chose were nice words, beautiful long words that I could spell easily and slow down and think about. Illustrious. Illuminate. Coruscating. Luminescent. They were all shining words, light words. I rolled the definitions around in my mind like shiny pebbles, noticing the beautiful words in each phrase. The words became less nice as I got older. Obsession. Compulsion. Depression. Anxiety. Psychosis. Paranoia. I felt hands brushing my back, only to turn around and see nobody there. I thought people were following me home, I thought bugs would crawl into my ears. One night I got full-body hives from my allergies and became convinced that I was going to swell up like a balloon and never be normal again. But I could never be normal. I was different. I began to believe that I was wrong.

I figured out I was trans. I felt even more wrong. Some small things felt right, of course. Collared shirts. The name Finn. Men's skinny jeans. But when I'd found out the source of the wrongness every little thing started to niggle more. The high pitch of my voice. My small hands. My full lips, short stature, round hairline, soft jawline. I bought a binder. I could hardly stand to wear it because it felt like I was going to die. My breaths came shorter, my chest was tighter, my stomach hurt, my ribs hurt. But I wore it because none of those things were visible and the shape of my body was.

I became scream-at-the-sky different. Drag-razors-across-my-skin different. Can't-walk-home-alone different. I was in high school by then, too different and wrong for public school. All the kids knew me from middle school and called me by my dead name. That was wrong that was wrong wrong wrong. I spent two weeks in a psych ward after I told my counselor I wanted to die. What I meant was that I wanted to not exist, but she thought I meant that I wanted to kill myself. Which was also true, but I would never have told her that. The psych ward was all wrong but I met some people who were different like me. Like Annabel.

I wasn't allowed to stay in contact with them when I left. The ward killed me. When I went back to school, I didn't care about hiding my scarred arms anymore. I pretended I was getting better, that not as many things felt wrong. People stopped caring about me.

Sophomore year I transferred to an arts school, Conners Academy, where I took a modeling course. That feels right, mostly. I met a boy with blue eyes. He feels right, mostly. But I'm still different. Too different.

I set down my pen and take off my glasses, rubbing my eyes with the back of my arm. My therapist told me to keep a diary so I can understand my thoughts and feelings, and I read online somewhere that you should introduce yourself when you start a new diary. This is much less fun than I hoped it would be.

"Keep a diary, Finn, it'll be good for you," I mutter in a mocking voice that sounds nothing like hers. At least I tried. The scathing sentiment is there.

Tears prickle in my eyes, no matter how hard I try to force them down. Putting everything on paper makes me realize just how fucked my life is. I smooth down the front of my shirt, feeling the round contour of my chest and a sudden urge to dig my nails into the soft flesh and rip off the offending fatty lumps that make me so dysphoric.

I look up from the paper, looking around my dorm room from my spot on the floor.