-oOo-
I watch from the shadows as someone pretending to be me lives the life other people think I should.

I stay in the darkness where none can see me. I dread the disapproval, the disgust, all that tells me that I am wrong, that I should never have been.

I hide here, too ashamed to show my real self, too unsure that, should I embrace the me I so want to be, I would become someone even I could not respect.

Why am I different?

What am I?

I look in the mirror, as I have so many times, and a sad old man looks back. I have the shape of a man. I am hairy like a man. My brows are thick, my lips thin and pale, my chest is flat, my belly round and between my legs… I am a man.

So why, when I had lived less than a decade and a half, did I choose to put on my mother’s skirt? What man would do that just because he was bored? What man would feel that quickening pulse, that flood of ice cold adrenaline, just from wearing a piece of cloth which allowed my legs to emerge from one hole in the bottom instead of two?

A man feels excitement from the chase, from the fight, from being part of the crowd. The only chase I have ever been in was when I was running from a fight, the only fight when I didn’t run fast enough. And although I have often been in a crowd, I have always felt alone.

Am I a man?

I remember dressing being like a drug, always wanting a new fix and always wanting more. Soon just a skirt wasn’t enough; I needed a slip, a bra, a blouse, a dress, tights, shoes, even makeup. I needed to be more completely dressed, and then when I’d achieved that, it was not enough to be locked in a bathroom, hidden from disapproving eyes. I needed to wander around the house, then outside in the garden, then across the field.

It felt so good to be dressed; the grass really was greener. It became more than a rush of hormones and a release of tension, but brought with it the first stirrings between my legs. I was so naíve, I didn’t know at first what was happening. What was that sticky substance with the sickly sweet smell? Could it be, could I dare to hope that it was that which made me a man leaving my body? I longed for that transformation, but it never came. Instead I learned that it was one more conformation of the physical maleness in me.

It became even more like a drug. When I was dressed I was high, but never so much as I had been the previous time. When I was drab, I craved the next time my parents would leave me alone for the night and I could indulge my secret passion. And when that moment came and went, I would be left with such a sense of guilt.

What I was doing was wrong; I learned that when my mother caught me one day. At first I thought I might escape unnoticed. I was only wearing a skirt and tights and sitting with my legs under a table, but my guilty expression was enough of a clue and she saw. She couldn’t face it; she turned away with a look of shock, of disgust. She never spoke of it afterwards, but I had seen enough. It was wrong, and I had seen how wrong in the lines of her face, seen how little she understood — just as I didn’t understand — how little she could bring herself to accept.

I couldn’t stop. I tried, but the longer I held off, the greater the aching need became until eventually I would give in and find some way to change, to pretend I could be beautiful. Then even as the relief of the change washed over me, the guilt would rise and I would feel even more wretched than before.

The woman in me remains, waiting impatiently just below the surface and pleading for release. I resist still and only rarely allowed myself to take advantage of the opportunities to dress and become her on the surface. Even this has become less fulfilling as the years have turned my body into an ugly, bloated caricature of my younger self. I can no longer pretend I am attractive and the clothes mock me for what I have become.

I seek refuge in my imagination and stories of impossible things. Magic and science and miracles lead me to a place in my mind where for a while I can believe that things are otherwise. There is no place for me as I truly am in this world so I will pretend. As much as I have to be here I will pretend to be what you expect me to be, but when I can I will seek out the place in my mind where I can be… me.