Mirror mirror.

The bones and the flesh I am made of are aching.

Aching to walk the streets without fear.

Aching to feel safe and to be seen.

Aching to be loved and supported.

It’s early November and the days are already dreadful, dark, oppressing. The absence of light has been ever so consuming–my soul is choking at every breath.

I shiver, and I don’t know if it’s from the frigid dampness or this sudden urge to scream, but the cold sweats I get when the echoes of shouts from home sweet home come rushing into my core make me want to blame it on the latter. I go and put on a sweater.

Years have passed, yet these thoughts have never been shared out loud. The words have stayed confined to the chambers of my conscience. And now the black noise has taken its toll on me, as it usually does.

How long can I speak these lies?

I catch myself wondering if the mishandling of my pretense would land me a lifetime sentence of begging to be let back inside this polarized box. Should I go back to business as usual, lock up my feelings and pretend this scripted narrative is nothing but the way I must live?

What about my parents? What will they say when they find out I am not what they raised me to be?

I grew up throwing tantrums whenever I was presented with anything that had to do with pink, purple or princesses. “Throwing tantrums”–how about a child merely trying to articulate their discomfort toward the already-made choices they were facing, without any attempt from the adults at understanding the root cause of their kid’s distress? This would also happen when it was time to change from pajamas to daytime clothes. I would not go anywhere near a dress, a skirt or spaghetti strap tank tops. But my mother had other plans for me–until I could pay for my own clothes, I was to dress as per her desires, in the girls’ section. Oh how ambitious. I had to fight a bit for this one. Luckily for me I inherited her stubbornness and I would be back raiding the boys’ aisles in no time.

Then puberty hit. The body I lived in was going through normal changes, though nothing about the experience felt normal to me. I trusted my wardrobe of baggy clothes to hide the bulging of my chest (welcome, era of contraption-wearing), the thick curves that were taking shape, the plump and soft angles that were settling in. The swelling of a pelvis, the monthly stripping of a womb… This was not what I signed up for.

Why can’t I be normal like everybody else?

Who decided blue was for boys and pink was for girls?

Color-coding human children… should we stack them up in alphabetical order too? Place them in neat little boxes and stamp “future housewife, child-bearing woman” or “future breadwinner, hard-working man” in front?

You have breasts in the making and play with trucks and plastic tools… Oh my poor child, what did your parents do to you?

The tip of my hand lands on her initials, two tiny letters etched on the thin skin of my arm, near its bend. My fingers–usually untamable–lay still, soft and rigid. Death is such a hollow yet heavy concept. Expected yet unconsidered. Permanent.

I have no way of knowing when my rope will be cut, but I will not let them twist it around my neck…

I was never a girl.

I am not a lady, nor a woman.

The bones and the flesh I am made of are still aching.

Aching to be recognized as who I am, which is a human being–just like the 8,061,754,475 others.