When I Was a Boy

Because some choices are made to last. Some of them are made to be discarded. To be rethought and placed in the ‘behind’. A behind that forms the core of what we are or, in my case, of what I was not.

When I came out to my parents my mom cried. My father said that it was fine. Then he didn’t spoke to me for two weeks. In the end, he thought about it once again and then he said it wasn’t right.

I don’t remember how it went. How I started that dreadful conversation and how I managed to muster up the courage to look them in the eye.

I remember sitting on the wooden floor.

It was white. A grey white floor and the white table in the corner with white wooden chairs. On my right side, close by. A table we used just for Christmas’ and Easter’s feasts. Otherwise it stood there, with an empty crystal bowl on the top, ready for a family that would sit together. That would talk. That would not cover their thoughts with someone else’s voice coming from a black box.

My father was sitting on the couch, his favourite spot. But he wasn’t laying down as his usual. His black socks were glued to the white floor. I do not remember if he was going to work or if he just came back.

He was looking at me but I was looking at the floor. At my mum. At the black, but not so black, box.

I don’t remember what I said.

I remember her asking where she made a mistake.

Why I couldn’t be normal.

And I said that I didn’t know.

I wanted to be special.

To myself. For myself. For a tiny little reason I didn’t know.

But not black box special. Not seen special. Not weird special or different special.

My mum came to my room that night and asked me to reconsider. Her eyes were wet and red and I felt guilty. But I didn’t.

And my room was a mess and I was hiding my drawings under the clothes that she moved away when she sat on the bed. Unidentified circles and eyes and faces on faces of who I didn’t know. Characters that populated my mind, all of them alive, none of them the me I wanted to be.

All of them a little broken and all of them a little sad.

For once she didn’t comment my mess. And for once she found me in between that mess, and she spoke to me, and she acknowledged my part. My part in her life that she didn’t want me to play.

She asked me to stand behind the curtain a little bit longer.

So I waited.

My therapist mistook my name twice.

When I sat down in her office she kept asking me questions. Weird, scripted, questions. How do my body feels like. Who I feel like. What would I like to change.

She kept some paper napkins on the side of her desk and she pushed them towards me. I was afraid to take them but I did. And I managed to tell her the truth, but it was a truth that wasn’t mine.

I wanted to feel special.

I wanted to run away and I wanted to stay, but I wanted to run away from myself. And I hoped that one day someone would understand me because I thought, and I thought, and I considered, and I wasn’t able to understand myself.

And I stopped hiding my drawings and I started hiding my cure. In the closet, behind a pile of clothes, in an old bag I used more often than my new ones. And it smelled like an outlet and cheap Lidl’s wine. It was stained, remembering the nights I couldn’t lay down, and tried to find a reflection in the smaller black box. Looking for someone like me who I couldn’t find. Looking without looking and without writing a single word.

I felt special when I left.

I felt free and terrified and inebriated by the freedom. But it still wasn’t there.

I wasn’t there.

Now, I am older. I do not feel older.

I sit on the couch with my back to the window and in front of me there’s an empty leather armchair. I left my headphones in my room. It’s silent. I am alone with my thoughts. And as I keep writing I keep looking over to the red pillow sitting in front of me and, somehow, I still think of the white wooden floor.

A couple of weeks ago I came out again.

I took out the box I’ve hidden in my new room. New but now new, known and mine, but still I’ve hide. The box in behind the shaving cream and paracetamol, brown and plain. And I looked at the syringes inside, and at the prescription and at the name I’ve chosen seven years ago. A name, a person, a someone that wanted to be but, instead, pretended to be someone else.

I was proud, but I wasn’t.

And my mum cried again, but this time she called for a miracle.

You are brave when you start the transition. You are strong when you decide to fight for yourself.

And I didn’t feel brave. I didn’t feel strong.

And I was scared.

I still am.

To be trapped in there somewhere where I have to keep on fighting to be.

I don’t want to go back to my old name. It stings.

For now.

I do not want my new name. It doesn’t fit.

I was born female, grew up male.

I keep thinking about my father’s black socks and white chairs and, now, I do not regret a single thing. And I do not regret leaving and I do not regret giving up.

I am worried. I am scared that I’ll make a mistake. That my dysphoria will challenge me again and I will collapse to the floor and I will burn everything around me.

And it will take me some time to be female again. To be what I didn’t had the courage to be. To stop taking place in between people that knew who they were, deep inside.

I grew up male and now I’m letting him go.

And, for the first time in forever, somehow, I feel free.