Misalignment | ✔

she

Gender hasn't always
been an issue
for me,
believe it or not.
Sometimes, I really
miss those days,
because they were simpler,
if not entirely true
to who I really am.

It was only about
three years ago
that I found myself -
found who I was,
I guess,
rather than who I'd been told
I had to be.
I'd never felt comfortable
in my own skin before,
sure -
but that was when
I discovered
that male and female
weren't the only labels
to be had.
There was also
both
and other
and neither - me.

When I discovered
the answer
to the lifelong dilemma
of my identity -
that I wasn't quite
the person
I'd been born as -
it frightened me,
and I ran straight to
my mother
for answers.
She, in all of her
infinite wisdom,
told me that she
didn't understand
what I was telling her,
and ran straight to
the internet
for her answers.

When she returned,
she smiled at me
through tears
and told me that
she was proud that I was
growing up
and finding myself,
in spite of who
other people tried
to convince me
I really was.
She also told me that
she loved me
and that that fact
would never change,
and that she was
thankful
that I had come to her
first.
I had trusted her,
despite the fact that
her opinion
could hurt me the most -
and she thanked me.

I couldn't stop
my tears
then
because I hadn't known
what I would have done
if she had treated me
like everyone does now -
like I'm inferior
for my gender,
less than human.
I still don't know
what I would have done
if she had somehow
stopped loving me
for it,
as some parents do.

I don't say it enough,
but my mother is
truly
a wonderful woman,
and I would never
trade her for anything.

The first time we moved
after that,
I was still transitioning
my appearance
from female
to neither
(with the help of some
very informative
Tumblr blogs).
Everyone called me
by my  birth name,
which I quickly learned
to hate,
and all I heard was
she, she, she
everywhere I went.
It was expected,
but it still stung
now that I wished
to be labelled correctly.
Maybe, somehow,
I had expected the change to
magically happen.
Maybe, naïvely,
I had thought that
gender was an obvious thing
and because I knew,
everyone else would, too.

Ha.
Yeah, right.

My first
(and only)
friend at that school
was named Devin.
He was nice,
I guess,
and insisted on following me
everywhere
like a little puppy dog,
which was weird -
but I'd wanted friends then
just as much as I do now,
so I'd gone along with it.
Back then, he was
all I'd had.

He, too,
called me by my
birth name,
and used
the dreaded
she -
and it was almost like
a slap to my face
every time.
If he was supposed to be
my friend,
then why did I feel
so hurt
every time he spoke to me?

Finally, I
worked up the courage
to tell him the truth
about me -
about who I was
in my heart,
as my mother
would say.
He had stared at me
for a whole
two minutes
before saying,
"But wait,
no,
you're a girl,
aren't you?"

I didn't talk to him much
after that.
After a while,
he stopped talking to me
too,
and found new friends,
and moved on
from me.

This is why
I can never tell Matty
or anyone else
anything -
because even if we
aren't exactly
friends
yet,
I don't want to risk
anything
by telling her
what has destroyed
so many of my
friendships
before now.

It's just less painful
to do it like this,
I guess,
even if the
he and she
I hear so much
will hurt me much more
in the end.

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