In my dreams I’m a boy. Just a boy like any other. I want to be a girl, I want it so badly. I want to be Audrey, I want it with every fiber of my being, but it’s a reality that I can never hope to manifest. In my dreams I try to be a girl, I try to wear the clothes, do the makeup, change my voice, but the makeup melts, the body hair regrows in torrents, my voice deepens. I am living in a nightmare and it’s only gotten worse as of late. Even in the subconscious realm I cannot escape what society dictates I should be. In my dreams, the enemy wears my face.

I awakened with a start, sweating heavily and shaking. I was in my dorm room, sunlight creeping through the closed blinds, the Dark Panthon logo screen glowing dimly from the other side of the room. We’d put in an all nightery and still I managed to wake up before Mason. The first thing I did, as always, was reach for my phone right beside my pillow. 10 new notifications; I wasn’t the most popular person was I? There was an e-mail from the GAT mailing list, something about a meeting. They’d added me to it a while ago, I never attended the meetings. The second notification was from Mr. Stenson, my l literature teacher. Oh, shit.

‘Todd – I need to see you, stop by my classroom at 3:30 PM.’

Of course, I’d never finished the stupid paper on ‘The Odyssey’. My eyes wandered up to the corner of the phone. 3:15 PM. Of course it was. I flew out of the bed and slammed face first into the front door. I swore that next year we were going to get a bigger dorm. Grabbing nothing but my phone and wallet, I fled from the room still in my pajamas. I made a beeline from the dorm to building A13 which, by the way, wasn’t that far from my place. I was out of breath by the time I reached the classroom, Mr. Stenson was in his usual spot, at his desk near the front.

“Todd,” He said rather flatly. “I thought you weren’t going to make it.”

“Well I love a dramatic entrance,” I shrugged as I made my way to the front of the classroom.

“And a dramatic drop in your grade point average,” He pointed to a paper sitting on his desk, it was a spreadsheet, my name sitting at the top in bold. “Your GPA has held pretty steady all year, so this is interesting to me. You’ve started to drop, badly, not just in my class but in all of your other classes. I think you’re a pretty good student, brilliant really, so this doesn’t seem like you. Want to tell me what’s going on?”

How I wished I could tell him what was going on.

“I um…I guess I’ve been distracted,” I shrugged. “I missed the Odysseus assignment, I guess.”

“Yes, you did, and honestly I was looking forward to your paper but the fact is, you’ve missed three assignments. By all rights I should fail you, and all of your other teachers are thinking the same. Unless there’s a drastic change you’re not going to make it through this semester. Now, that isn’t something we want to do. I recognize potential when I see it, I’ve notice you’re acting in the Les Miserables production, not exactly the behavior of a slacker so I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt here.”

“What…what do you mean?” I asked. I had to pass this class, I had to pass every one of my classes; I couldn’t tell my parents that they’d paid for me to go to college just to have me flunk out. I could never show my face at home again. Oh hell, parent’s week was coming up, they’d find out even sooner.

“What I mean is you need to make up this assignment, and you need to make up the last two that you missed. You should consider yourself lucky, I would fail most anyone else but…frankly I don’t want to see a promising student fail out of Woodcrest over personal issues. I can tell there’s something going on, and while I don’t expect you to tell me what it is, I do expect you to resolve it and get your mind back where it belongs: on your schoolwork.”

“I’ll try,” I said, nodding. “I mean I’ll get the assignment done, but I’ll try to resolve my…personal problems.”

“See that you do,” He nodded. “The Odyssey assignment is due at 5 PM next Tuesday.”

“Alright, thanks,” I said as I turned to leave. I pressed out into the hallway and exited the building. I was failing. I was failing school and there was really nothing I could do about it. What was I supposed to do? If I failed, I wouldn’t be here anymore, and my relationship with the GAT and Tri Pi houses had helped me more with my transition than anyone else. If I left this place, if I went back home, I would backslide. Had I really made any progress though? I was still me, I was still this…guy. The only difference was that people here, they knew who I was. Some of them. I was accepted by girls at GAT and Tri Pi, in their eyes I was a girl and that made all the difference in the world. I sighed and pulled out my phone, pulling up Tiffany’s number.

“Sup?” She answered. She sounded distracted, which was par for the course with her.

“I’m failing out of college,” I said bluntly. The line went silent for a moment.

“Okay,” She said as if she’d heard this line a million times. “Get a list of the assignments you need and meet me at the GAT house in an hour, we’re going to see if we can fix this.”

I felt like she understood the situation, maybe she didn’t want me to leave either. The line went dead; she did that a lot when she was ‘done talking’. Getting a list of the assignments was easy enough; all I had to do was look at the student portal and pull up past assignments; anything I’d missed would be highlighted in read. There was probably a lot of red.

As I prepared to cross the street and head to the GAT house it hit me again. Dysphoria. Heavier this time; I didn’t know what was causing it, I’m sure it didn’t matter. A sledgehammer to the face, a punch in the gut, a longing to be someone I could never be and a wave of uncontrollable despair, dragging me into a sea of my own self-loathing. My vision swam and my gaze was lost in the scenery of passing cars. I just had to step out there, just a few steps and it would be over. I would never have to feel this way again, I could…be free. Why didn’t I? What would it matter? I wouldn’t feel much pain, and then it would just fade to blackness. I wouldn’t know anything, I wouldn’t feel anything, I wouldn’t need to BE anything.

“Please let me be you,” I whispered again to Audrey, buried somewhere deep inside. “Tell me how to do this.”

I snapped out of it, the pain was still there, ever rampant in my soul, but I was alive. I knew it, though. I knew that I wouldn’t be alive for long. I had to come out, I had to transition, or I wouldn’t live to see the end of the year.