Lead Shoes.

I wake up and I’m already exhausted.

I don’t wake because of the shakes or the twitches I’m just used to those now but there’s sometimes you just get a spasm that cramps you up so badly you wake up from it medication and all.

Both legs this morning as the muscles tightened and I swear I heard things creak and crackle.

I’ve got Spastic Quadriplegia… and No I’m not really a quadriplegic well I am and I’m not. See I’ve got CP Cerebral Palsy and it’s a condition that basically has my brain’s motor controls and all that stuff all haywire it’s like there’s a kid with ADHD playing with the neuro muscular controls of my body.

Shakes, tremors, strength just switching off and then my favorite, the way that there’s this underlying current like thing in you that’s it’s like your muscles are always on even when you’re not using them…not too, too bad when I’m asleep but waking up.

I hate waking up because I’m me again.

In my dreams I can run, walk do things without dropping them or messing them up…paint…

Heh, if I tried to paint awake, then it’d look like a Jackson Pollock. Shakes remember.

In my dreams I can dance.

Yeah dance.

And that leads me to the second thing in my life. I’m transgendered. So not only is my brain completely out of whack for my body it’s Really out of whack for my body.

I get up, well it’s sitting up.

Cough… ow. It’s so nice waking up feeling like someone’s been beating you all night.

I turn myself and set my feet on the floor sort of… my feet point forwards from the tightening of the tendons in my legs. Ballet feet that’ll never work, I reach over and push down on the lotion dispenser and start rubbing my hands with it and then my arms before working on my legs. It’s more of a massage that moisturising.

Confused? How am I doing all of this? Simple there’s a lot I can do, my hands are better at doing what they’re supposed to than my legs but I tremor or twitch dropping stuff is part of how I operate it just happens it’s not my fault any more than someone with MS or Parkinson’s. And when it’s not the shakes it’s the off switch, just suddenly my hand just won’t have any power going to the muscles and it’ll just stop working.

Doing things is a carefully planned experience of learning just what I can do. So I can do a lot of things but there’s a lot of things that I’d loved to do that I just can’t or just will never be able to.

Massaging yes, walking no not without a walker or crutches if I’m desperate but most of the time I’m in my wheelchair. I love it and I hate it at the same time.

I finish that and I’m feeling strong today so I grab a cane, I have a collection in a stand and pull my walker to me. Now I’d normally catch hell for this but there really is sometimes only so much of this that I can take even though I should be used to this.

I get the walker in position and I lock it in place and then push myself up, it takes a lot but once I’m up, the walker supports me. I go slowly and painfully the entire ten feet to the bathroom. I’m so glad that I’m not that bad that I can’t use the bathroom by myself. It really sucks that it took me fifteen minutes to go that ten feet. And feeling wiped after that’s not great either.

Of course that’s when my Aunt Holly comes in.

“Mike…Mike time to get up….Mike?”

“I’m in the bathroom!”

“Without your chair?”

“I’ve got the walker.”

There’s a sigh I can hear from in here. “Okay just be careful, you’re here only because we got lucky.”

“Okay…”

I use the toilet sitting down. An odd thing for me to enjoy, my little bit of pretend I guess. I do both sets of business and after that I take a shower/bath. There’s butt-slide friendly stuff built into the bathroom and I’ve got one of these seniors’ bathtubs that you can sit in with the door and the whirlpool. It’s not that we’re rich my aunt and me but well it’s stolen. Or I’m pretty sure it’s stolen. My aunt isn’t the greatest example of law biding citizen out there. Tattoos and slutty clothes and hangs out with bikers and all kinds of tough guys she had just got out from prison for a two year stretch for having a grow operation when she was contacted about taking me in.

That’s why we’re lucky. I almost wasn’t here.

The memories come with the steam. As I feel the water help sooth me if only a short while.

***

7 Years ago….

I was nine when things had come to a head. All of it. They always Knew I had CP, Mom and Dad. But it just hadn’t really kicked in except for little bouts of clumsiness that you could just sort of chalk up to me being a little kid.

Dad said the Doctors were full of it and he had me in sports as soon as I could play them. Hockey was his big thing, he was some high school hero that went nowhere and he was bound and determined to live his glory days through me.

But nine was when it happened my legs have always been the worst and I was all geared up to go to practice on morning and had even gotten into my gear and just like that I couldn’t walk right….

I fell a dozen times going from the house to the van. Dad was so pissed that he grabbed me and almost literally threw me inside the van. He drove to the rink anyway and it’s didn’t matter if we knew it was going to happen sooner or later. It didn’t matter how scared I was either.

I couldn’t really get out of the van I tried but it just didn’t happen. I know it sounds like it just up and jumped me, well it did…oh there was the build up of these little things but that day it became I guess official… and he was pissed. He didn’t beat me or anything like that but he sure as hell took it personally. Like my CP was my way of finally saying no to him that he couldn’t override.

Yeah, I wasn’t interested in playing sports that much, sure it could be fun but the other boys were just so loud and the games that were supposed to be fun, any of them Dad and some of the other Dad’s just made really suck because I had to be the best, I had to win.

My Dad was one of those Sports Dad’s they kick out of arenas nowadays.

It was to the hospital and tests and tests and tests and Dad just kept looking at me as time went on like I was something he stepped in. Four months into it they put me into the big heavy clunky metal leg braces.

It was like my own version of hell.

They were like wearing Lead Shoes…

Everything Dad had wanted was pretty much squashed and then it slowly got worse and worse.

School sucked. The few kids that were cool with it wanted to play robot games or power armor stuff all these games that were sort of the rough stuff I really wasn’t into. Of course I had no Idea I was transgendered… I just thought that I was a freak. Then my Mom just up and split, we still don’t know where she went to but she took off on me and Dad and that and me gave him the excuse to get even more into the bottle.

The kids started to tease me as younger kids will do. I was the gimp, the retard and I just, just hate Forest Gump because it was way too easy for them to start yelling or chanting “Run Forest Run!”

5 Years ago….

I was eleven when I got my first wheelchair and we had to move into my Dad’s mother’s place because I just couldn’t do the stairs anymore.

Grandma was cool or at least she was to me even if she was really churchy. But other than getting taken to church with her and school I didn’t get out much.

Oh yeah new school when we moved and I had to take the bus. The handicapped bus, yup the short bus.

But it wasn’t too bad, I mean I was way too visible because you get stared at all the time when you’re in a wheelchair and then if they’re not doting on you in this kind of make themselves feel better because I’m a cripple…which I wasn’t…so that made me angry sometimes. Then the CP would kick in sometimes and make me do something that really sucked like spilling something or dropping things and all the stupid stuff like those whispers of “How do they go to the bathroom?” or “Who dresses them?”

Stupid, ignorant hurtful stuff.

Kids can be really, really cruel.

Invisibility can be cruel too. Because when they’re not pitying you, or being ignorant or teasing you because there’s lots of bullies that will pick on you if no one is looking you’re invisible because they don’t want to see you. You’re a reminder of the world isn’t perfect.

Okay enough of that section of my shitty life. The real thing was at Christmas when I was eleven. Dad was working or drinking and me and grandma were watching TV. And I saw the Nutcracker ballet on TV for the first time in my life. I mean the show was cool, I loved the whole thing but seeing that girl in costume, dancing like that…it completely mesmerised me.

She was everything that I’d never be…graceful, delicate, free…beautiful.

I kind of got obsessed about ballet and dancing and more importantly female dancers and at first Dad thought it was me discovering girls which pleased him and made him sad and sent him back into the bottle or rather gave him the excuse. And he was starting pills too; he avoided me and pretty much left me to grandma’s care. The church wasn’t doing it for me, it was okay but it wasn’t making me happy.

For the next few years it was what got me through. Until last year it got worse. I got caught.

1 year ago….

See me and my dreams of being a dancer, a girl dancer were my lifeline. I was staying alive more or less by living out the impossible in my head. And as much as I loved the ballet my tastes were really varied and I loved contemporary dance, so beautiful and so artistic and I could almost project myself into the bodies of those girls on TV.

Grandma didn’t like me watching the videos with the dancers and stuff like in all the hip hop stuff. Whores she called them.

She was the one who caught me in a pair of pink hose and ballet slippers and a leotard with two socks stuffed in the chest. I was on the bed dangling my feet and watching them just trying to picture what it was like.

Oh yeah she freaked out.

I was going to hell.

She hit me only once. I guess I deserved it. I asked her while she was freaking out. “Is it wheelchair accessible?”

I still remember that slap she gave me.

Dad did not take it well either.

He took all of my dance stuff the books and the posters and trashed my room looking for clothes and found some….and make-up.

Where’d I get the stuff, just at K-mart. “Stuff for my sister.” or “Stuff for Nan.” I didn’t have much. A couple of more girly leotards and a cheap make-up kit.

He’d have beaten me if it wasn’t for Nan, he did trash my computer….

I don’t get out, and the computer was one of the only connections I had, one of the only freedoms I had. I slit my wrists that night I was that despondent and depressed and I woke in the mental ward and spent three months there.

I never brought up being transgendered, they brought up my fixation on dance and the quack there said I was fixed on it because of my condition and that I was too young to have a sexual component to it but if I did I was likely gay.

Going home and living there was fun.

I was dad’s “Gimpy little faggot.”

He was really unpleased that the shrink said that he had to get me another computer and that my access to the internet was integral to my well being given my disabilities. I’m not a violent person but that guy I wanted to punch all the time.

Grandma took sick, Hodgkin’s and she got really bad.

Dad became even worse and he started stealing her Oxycodone and taking it. And selling her stuff after awhile and he just fell apart.

I woke one morning and they were screaming or rather he was creaming at her.

“Where the fuck is it! I know you’ve got money stashed away you old bitch!”

“Get out! get out of my house Robert and you take your devil child with you!”

“You and the fucking church! you’re not going to heaven you can’t buy your way in! Not after all the shit you did!”

“You’re worthless Robert, just like you’re father!”

I heard the slaps, and the yelling and the crying. I got to my chair and out in time to see Dad over her checking if she was breathing and he looked at me panicked and he took off.

I got to Nan and she was beaten up really bad.

I dialled 911 and the police came with the ambulance guys and they took me and Nan to the hospital.

She had a massive heart attack from the beating Dad had given her and died an hour after we got to the hospital.

I told the police what I had heard and what I had seen and as much as I didn’t want to turn him in it actually might save his life.

They caught him and after two days.

Nan’s church put me up for awhile and during Dad’s trial they helped me with a place to stay and even helped the family court find my Aunt Holly.

She took me in, it was her or foster care, well one of those foster care homes and stuff.

It was a good thing too because Nan left everything to the church. And they had heard from her just what kind of pervert and sinner I was and were more than happy to be rid of me.

Aunt Holly did get Dad’s stuff and Dad’s van with the wheelchair stuff. They wanted even that, but apparently she knows some very good lawyers.

She’s a shock to the system for sure. My mother’s kid sister she’s in her late twenties and she’s got really short almost guying short black hair and she’s got tattoo’s all over her arms with flowers and roses mostly but naked girls and grim reapers and guns and knives and stuff. Lot’s of piercings too but she’s been good, setting things up and moving me here from where I lived in Dearborn to here in Oshawa.

Oh and it turns out Mom was from here, and I was born here. So technically I’m a dual citizen and stuff.

***

Oh… huh she said something.

“Uhm sorry I missed that I was just thinking.”

“I asked what color panties you wanted to wear.”

…………………… oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

“What… what are you talking about?”

“Can I come in? It’s easier that talking through the door.”

“Uhm…okay…”

She comes in and she’s not too tough looking or anything like that if I led you there. She’s intimidating though because she’s got that hot urban rough life girl thing down really good. Think Pink with jet black hair and Bif Naked’s tattoos.

She comes in holding a brand new pack of panties from the Jessica brand. My mouth goes dry. She looks right at me. “I know, I’ve seen some of the sites you’ve been surfing.”

“You’ve been spying on me?”

“No but the wireless is mine and stuff and it shows up if you’re looking.”

“Why were you looking?”

“I wasn’t not for that but when I did I kind of had a pretty good idea.”

“But why aren’t you tossing me out or freaking out?”

“Mik…Okay if we’re going to really talk honey what’s your real name?”

My real name…Oh god no one in RL has ever asked me that before.

I can’t help but to sniffle it out. “Mikayla…”

“Cool, it suits you. Okay look Mikayla, I’ve seen all kinds, known all kinds and you don’t spend time in a women’s lock up without meeting an FtM or two.”

“Oh…really?”

“Yeah, not all Butch bull dykes are really that they just didn’t know. They get into counselling and that’s when they know or figure it out. I’m cool with it.”

“You are?”

“Hell yeah girl, C’mon we’ve got a lot to do today and not just your physio appointments either.”

“Like…?”

“Getting you to a gender specialist, Kayla you’ve got enough shit going on honey. You’re my niece and I love you. You don’t have to wait to be the real you anymore.”

“But…Why…why are you doing this? No one’s been…”

“Kayla…It’s because….To me…Family is everything.” She comes over and leans down and kisses my forehead and smiles.

I sniffle on the verge of tears and look at her.

“Can I have the blue pair?”

(More? Comment and let me know.)