I’m a ninety-five year old man and my dream since early childhood had always been to be a teenage girl whom a kind, young man fell in love with. He wouldn’t have necessarily been handsome, wealthy or clever, just kind and someone who cared about me. My favourite song has for a long time been ‘Words Don’t Come Easy to Me’ by F. R. David, for it resonates with my soul in ways I have never understood.

I was nearly twenty before I understood the implications of my mind. I came from what I later realised was extreme poverty and cell phones and the internet were things I had barely heard of never mind understood when they were common place. As an older man I watched the 2015 Disney production of Cinderella and my personality was almost destroyed as a result. It was the dream I had always wanted without realising it. The film was not perfect. I knew that when I watched the André Rieu Shostakovitch second waltz recording of the dance scene, which was tearful for me, much more so than the Disney version. I wanted to die.

I have no relatives and even fewer friends. Now I am on my way out of what has long been described as ‘This vale of tears’, and I can’t say I’m sorry. In my dying I am having dreams, or mayhap illusions / delusions, of my most heartfelt desires. The young man who fell in love with me when I dreamt I was a maiden is there, and I am the maiden I always wished to be. At my age even female I should be a wrinkled old woman, but I see myself as a girl. However, now death doesn’t seem so hard. For me it’s living that has always been difficult.

Now I have left my first life behind, and that young man is no prince, but he does love me and that is more than I have ever desired.