Dear nieces and nephews,

By the time you are reading this, I shall have been dead at least a week, probably a couple of months. I’m writing it so that you may understand and change attitudes for the next generations. Mostly this is questions that you will probably not be able to answer, for I can’t either.

Does flooding with tears at the slightest provocation make me a girl? Maybe you’ll come to know, but even as I face death I don’t. From as far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a girl, and I don’t think that ever changed as I got older. By that I mean I still wanted to be a girl, a girl not a woman. I’ve never seen myself as a woman, just as a girl. I still flood with tears at the slightest provocation. I did last night watching clips from ‘The Queen’s Gambit’. Why should I have done that? I don’t know, but I’ve always been like that. Over sentimental, yet at the same time case hardened against the vicissitudes of life, of which I truly believe I have had more than my fair share. I’ve always been like that to protect myself from the family of which we are all a part of, so called friends and society at large, none of who would even try to understand and even less empathise with my situation. So I presented as a shy, hard line male who never married, nor had a relationship with a woman, just like a lot of the local farmers’ sons; result is it has never been remarked upon.

I’ve only ever had one friend; a woman twenty-odd years older than myself who definitely was a woman who appreciated a little male company from time to time, even overnight occasionally. She too had issues, as seen from local society’s point of view. She was interested in machinery, which I as a girl neither understood nor wished to, and she lived her life more like a man than a woman, despite being completely feminine in her thoughts and desires. It was perhaps an unlikely friendship, yet there it is we were close friends for decades. She admitted she’d never cried in her memory, though she was understanding when I did. I know I’ll never be a girl, and that makes me cry too when I think about it, and it’s only my friend that enabled me to keep living this long. Without her I’d have have ended my life long ago. I miss her, and it’s only the friendship she gave me over many years that enables me to continue now. I don’t have a religion, but if there is any justice in the universe I’ll be reincarnated as a girl next time around.

Love Dorothy