About a Boy

About a Boy - Chapter 1

About a Boy

Written by Charlie Sam

Chapter 1: The Beginning 

They often say that people who are transgender, experience the desire to want to be the opposite sex from a reasonably early age. Many transgender teens and children diagnosed with something called 'gender identity disorder' say that at one point or another they often found themselves lying in bed praying that the next day they would somehow wake up as the opposite sex. As far as I know this has never successfully happened. Instead, children, teenagers and even many adults go through what is called a 'transition' where they are assisted by doctors through surgery and hormone treatment to become how they truly wanted to be.

However, although I have just told you that as far as I know no person has magically woken up the opposite sex - it happened to me. Two years ago I woke up a boy. Just it wasn't by magic.

My name is Harry and this is the story of how I woke up as a boy. Let's start at the beginning.  

May 2009 was my last memories before I woke up a boy. I was a freshman and my name was Harriet. Nobody called me that though. It was always 'Harry' because Harriet was much too long and my best friend Miya thought it was much too girly for a 'tomboy' like me.

Back then I knew I was different. For one thing I was at an all girls school realising that I was very much attracted to girls, particularily my best friend Miya.

Miya is an actress. Even then, when we were 14 years old she was an actress. She was in all the school plays and the two of us would play pretend games. She would always let me play the boy and I liked that because she'd play the girl. She'd flirt with me and i'd flirt back. Pretty soon the pretending got more frequent and it wasn't just sometimes when we were board but it was when we texted eachother, or talked to eachother online. After that it wasn't just flirting but it was long hugs, and secretly smiling to eachother in the company of our friends. It bacame kissing and hugs from behind and touching in the back seat of a car. Miya taught me what straddling someone was and sleepovers became frequent as she would lean on my bandage bound chest.  

These are some of my fondest memories of my friendship with Miya. She let me play the boy and we would laugh and be happy together. So I was 14 years old and I went to school everyday. I wore a skirt, tie and a blazer everyday and my favorite subject was social studies. I was rubbish at french but that was the class I had with Miya and that meant that it was the most fun. I played soccer and Miya came to my games. That's all I remember before the accident.