The Difference Between Us

The broken girls

Everything in here is dark. It's like leaving him hurt me more than it hurt him. I truly loved him, I swear. If I could come back to him and say sorry, I would. Sadly, I made my choice, and it is my fault I cannot see him. All I see is the dark of these walls, the blue light shining from the cracked ceiling above me, reflecting off of the chains I was put in. All I had to do was give him up and I would be alive. Curse love and curse the witch who put me here. Nobody deserves such cruel punishment for forbidden love. I swore I would travel the world with him when he was a girl. Considering, he and I are both transgender female to male. 

I considered myself a broken girl before I transitioned to male. When I met Maurice, he identified as a pansexual female, and I identified as a very androgynous and confused genderfluid. I remember Maurice coming back to our dorm room the night to work on our choreography for our contemporary dance routine we had been working on for film class.  Sadly, at this time we had not figured out the sub-theme of the choreography to mold with the theme of finding yourself, which was the theme given to us by Mr. Macnemera. 

The assignment was given to us at the beginning of the second quarter on January second and the deadline was on June tenth. The student body would then choose their three favorite films and show them at graduation. We didn't have to do dance, but Maurice and I couldn't sing to save our lives, and drama was definitely not our strong suit. And we decided our humor was far too dark for anyone's liking. The one talent we had in common was dance. Choosing the form of dance we would use was not difficult since we both had already talked for hours once before about our passion for contemporary and how badly we would love to have an audience watch us perform a contemporary dance instead of just random dancing in our houses in high school or at random alone in the dorm. 

By this time, I had been getting to know Maurice for two years and had been hiding my emotions toward them for approximately six months. I was and still am demi-sexual. My emotions only came to be when we were having a conversation about what we were like as kids. However, the conversation began to escalate when we began talking about our gender identity and confusion. I wasn't nearly as confused as Maurice though. I knew I was definitely a lot more masculine than I would ever let out, and my family and friends were very supportive. However, Maurice's family and "friends" weren't nearly as supportive. As a kid, Maurice told one of his peers that he felt like he wasn't feminine at all. That ballet was the only place where he expressed that because he could use movement and not have to speak. The peer he told acted okay with it and then went to the ballet instructor and cried about it. The ladies at the studio were taught to be "at each other's throats" and fight for everything they wanted. 

When the instructor was informed of Maurice's gender identity, she went to his parents to explain to them how "impure" and "ungodly" their child was. During this conversation, Maurice was in the other room slitting his wrists deep enough to leave very obvious scars. By the time his instructor left, he was cleaned and wearing a baggy hoodie hiding how badly his wrists stung. When his parents walked in, he started counting how many times they damned him to hell and threatened to torture him. All he did was stand there stone-faced until his parents left. Once they did, he carved out the final number in Roman numerals on his wall behind his bed. The final number was 6, so he jumped out the window from his room on the first floor and walked to an alleyway that he knew always had drug addicts and alcoholics. He sat in a corner and waited, passing the time by drawing on his legs. He wrote out every insult put on him by those around him.

 After around an hour of waiting, he saw me stumbling around and rushed over and asked me if I was okay. At the time, I had gotten drunk so I was a bit tipsy. He asked me if I needed any water and I nodded. He handed me his water bottle and sat me down where he was. I said thank you and he just shyly nodded and walked back to his house. I woke up that next morning and realized that all of my LSD was gone but my weed was left completely alone. I groaned and decided to wait until Maurice came back. I assumed he would and at the time assumed he was female as well. 

Maurice came back to the alleyway later that night and I did not hesitate to reach for my pocket knife. I stopped when I noticed he was crying. I kept quiet and hid behind a trash can quickly and watched him. He pulled up his sleeve to reveal his arm nearly covered in blood. I couldn't quite make out what was carved in his arm, but I knew he didn't want it there. I always kept two ace bandages, three rolls of medical wrap, two tubes of Neosporin and Vaseline, along with cotton balls and washcloths. I also had a notepad and pen. I had my vape with me, so I walked past Maurice while using it and dropped the note I wrote prior next to him. The note read:

I glanced slightly back to see that he was reading the note. I leaned against the wall and waited a few moments. I heard him stand and walk around the corner. He was shyly looking up at me with his head tilted downward. I didn't speak and neither did he, I just offered my jacket. He waved his hand and shook his head in polite agreement.  I motioned for him to tap my shoulder if he needed it, which was difficult to express, but it made him smirk and made me chuckle. I walked him to my house and jumped through the window, onto my creaky bed and he followed suit. He was shaking, so I put a blanket around him. I motioned that I would need a moment and he nodded. I walked out of my room and put the washcloth in some hot water. I wrung out the washcloth so it wasn't dripping excessively. I calmly walked back to my room and lightly smiled at Maurice once we made eye contact. 

I sat in front of him and motioned for him to pull up his sleeve. By this point, there was a ton of dry blood on his wrist. I patted the wet washcloth on his arm where the wounds were and lightly rubbed off the dry blood on the rest of his arm until there were just dark red marks that spelled out "MINE" on his arm. When I noticed this I looked up at him and he avoided eye contact. I noticed a few tears stream down his face and he sniffled. I grabbed a tissue box and set it in front of him and he blew his nose and wiped his tears. I put a decent amount of Neosporin in my hand - decent for the depth and length and amount of the cuts - and began gently spreading it across his arm. I then grabbed my bottle of witch hazel and drenched the medical wrap in it and wrapped it around his arm, quickly heavily taping it to his skin and then wrapping the ace bandage around the medical wrap to secure everything together after clipping the ace bandage secure. 

Now, though this story has now included me, I will continue fully explaining what happened to Maurice. 

His ballet instructor yelled at him before class about how if he truly loved dance, he would dance the most feminine way he knew. He held back all of his tears and nodded. After class, the instructor asked him how much he loved to dance.  He said that he would give up anything to stay there. Sadly, that was simply what he knew she wanted him to say. She hit him and screamed.

 "Don't lie to me!" She hit him again and he fell to the ground. He got on his knees and pleaded in French to stay. The French impressed the instructor enough for her to raise her wicked eyebrow and crack a disgusting smile. Maurice winced at the sight of this; he was mortified at what he had said. 

"I expect you here tomorrow with makeup on, make it look nice. Prove to me that you are good enough to stay." She said and walked away, leaving him on the floor, sobbing.