Born Twice
By Alyssa Plant

Chapter one

Rebecca Juliette Anderson, a first with honours from the University of Manchester… That paper seemed so important, like something she had waited her whole life to see.

Becca read her graduation certificate over and over again as she sat in the Departure lounge at Manchester Airport. As the crowds surged around her, going to and fro, she felt like her world was a bubble, she couldn’t hear anything outside her own thoughts. She could feel her heart thumping inside her chest, this was her new start, her rebirth, that beginning again she had dreamt of since she first started to truly become herself during her first year at university. She wanted Bogart to pop out of nowhere and sweep her off her feet, ala Casablanca, but she knew her life wasn’t a movie, she giggled as she started to think about her life. It felt so cheesy to be doing that, at a time like this. It’s a stock montage in films. If her life was a movie, it would be going straight to rental she thought. The more she thought, the more feelings welled up from her past, what was being left behind.

21 years ago, a whole lifetime ago, a beautiful baby boy was born on a ward in St Mary’s maternity hospital in Manchester not 10 miles away. That beautiful baby was given the name; Charles Richard Anderson. His loving parents David and Christine Anderson raised their child with love and care. The very best School, the best chances and the best life they could offer. Little did they know what their good intentions did to little Charlie…

From the age of 2, though to his 18th birthday, Charlie suffered the all boys private school his well meaning parents sent him to. He was different to the other boys, so very different. It took him years to realise how. His pain was completely invisible to his ever so loving parents. Charlie wasn’t a boy. The shy, friendless bullied teen was a girl in boys clothing. She was the only person who truly knew what went on inside her turbulent brain. Throughout her teenage years, our heroine struggled with her identity, was she just mad? Was she really a girl? What would her parents think? Fearing the worst, she bottled it up inside her, keeping her darkest deepest secret, herself, hidden from view.

She did her time in what felt like a jail sentence. She pretended to be a boy, she acted, and she was someone else a male caricature. Her parents never noticed their child slowly withdrawing from them. Dismissing it as simply teenage angst and rebellion, after all, what young boy wants to be loving and emotional, and close to his parents? How desperately she wanted to be there, be her daddy’s little girl. To help her mother, to shop for pretty clothes, to be taken on dates by cute boys. The boys she shared her jail with. It got far too much for her. Her mother’s sleeping pills and her father’s whiskey offered her a way out of the misery. One night, she simply went to sleep. Free at last, from the torment, anguish, and pain. She very nearly succeeded. Had her caring mother not come in to kiss her goodnight, something she had never known about. Her mother’s love saved her life. Waking up in hospital gives you a different perspective. The tubes and wires, our heroine made a promise to herself, she would be herself, and it would NOT kill her. It had killed Charlie, he had left her body. She was only a girl now, no more hiding.

Her parents had been shocked to find out she was depressed, but her fear of rejection kept her from telling them why. It got worse.

When she turned 18, she left home for university, finally free of the all boys’ prison she had spent so long in. She felt so free, and began to be more herself; her hair grew longer, behaviour more natural, she flourished finally beginning to become herself. It was a long slow process, she mustn’t let her parents realise that their son was dead. It went too far after she started taking female hormones with her doctors help. She couldn’t hide the changes. And she had to face her worst fear.

Becca remembered that vividly, like it was yesterday. She remembered her stomach being so knotted and flip-flopping around like a fish out of water. She felt so vulnerable and fragile when she finally did it. She poured out her soul to her family, and instead of loving the child they raised, they threw her out in the cold to fend for herself, disgusted by their perverted child with a new attention seeking ‘hobby’. Our heroine was utterly devastated Left alone and unloved, she fought to pay for her university tuition, and to survive on her own. She vowed that the night she graduated, she would be onboard a plane somewhere, to begin again, where nobody knew her, As Rebecca, and only Rebecca.

This is how she came to be sat in the departure lounge at Manchester Airport…

Stretching, Becca slid her certificate back into her carryon bag, a small purple rucksack. Shouldering it, she walked over to a nearby caffeine dealer and purchased a large cappuccino. Holding the warm cup between her hands, she stood looking out the dark window across the airport. She couldn’t see much, but the lounge itself reflected back at her. How she had changed, her mousy brown hair fell just past her shoulders in luscious waves. Her slim toned body was perfectly feminine, nobody would ever imagine this young girl, had once been physically male. Of course part of that remained. It had taken every penny Becca could earn to stay afloat, and with a roof over her head, and the plane ticket and apartment rent hadn’t been cheap. She wasn’t going to be a complete woman just yet. Her one dark secret remained, hidden beneath her jeans and underwear. It was the last dirty smudge on her life, something she regretted not being able to resolve before beginning her new life, but something she would have to live with for the time being. It had cut short many a relationship for her, either out of whichever guy’s impatience for sex, or her revealing her past. Either way, she was a lonely young woman.

It was time to break with her past, to start fresh and aim for the future. She pulled her hoodie tight around her to keep out some of the chill of the evening. Hadn’t airports heard of heating? There was one last thing she had to do. Turning she walked over to a payphone, her fingers fell to the numbers in practiced order. Her home telephone number was something she would never forget.

The ringing was deafening. It was like a death knell chiming;

“Hello, who is it please?”

“h, hi mum, its m, me”

“I’m sorry, who?”

“It’s me, uh, Rebecca… your daughter?”

“Oh Charlie, well you are still playing this silly game are you? When are you going to come home and be out handsome boy again? Isn’t this silly game getting tired? We said we would pay for a psychiatrist to cure you of this madness…”

“Look mum, I don’t want to talk about that right now, it’s not why I called…”

Christine Anderson snorted quietly “Can’t you even talk normally? You sound ridiculous”

“Um, this is normal mum. And look, I just wanted to talk to you one last time, I’m going away… for a long time a long way away, and I, uh, I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“What are you playing at? Are you going to go through customs dressed as a woman? They will see your passport!”

“MUM, my passport says I’m a girl” Becca hissed looking around to make sure nobody was overhearing her. “I’m legally a girl; you’re the only ones who don’t see the plain damn truth. Look, I just wanted to give you a chance, and it seems some things don’t change, look, I love you, and ill always love you all so much, but I cant go on like this, your ignorance and bigotry is killing me inside, and I need to leave, to go somewhere nobody knows my name, somewhere I can move on. You took away the chance of a family. You wanted what you wanted and be damned to anyone else!” Rebecca could feel herself getting angry and tried to count to ten.

“Look, I love you, more than words can say. I always will”

“Charlie lis…..”
*Click*

With that, Becca replaced the handset onto the phone, and quietly sobbed, the tears felt like acid on her cheeks. She had known the final goodbye would come. She had always seen it as something in the future. A distant threat that would never come to fruition. But it had come, it was time, dabbing her eyes, she put on a brave face and headed across the lounge to the boarding gate for her flight.

Could it be different? Would it be? Would she find the love her parents couldn’t give?
This was her Baptism of fire; she was getting her second birth.