Chapter One
Moments of explaining and the waking

March 30th 1997

March 31st 1997

April 1st 1997

Well, I missed two days in writing to you diary. I have a good reason, and I know I have to explain what happened. If I don't, maybe I will forget everything that has happened to me over the last few days. Perhaps it will fade away, and I'll never be able to benefit from the experience and feelings I had over this weekend.

I have a bit of explaining about what started it all, to say the least. So, I will try to piece together the broken memories and fill in the blanks where I can.

It all started on Sunday 30th March. I had woken like any other morning. I awoke questioning and wondering why. Why was I not a woman, and for the love of God, why was I still alive? Why did the nightmare of my life still continue, and when could it please just end?

I had woken like that for such a long time that it was impossible to remember when I had first felt that way. I really couldn't remember when I didn't feel the dread of waking up.

For as long as I could remember, I had been asking the same question over and over every morning. Why hadn't the Gods/the Devil/Nature (whatever!!) done such an easy thing as killing me?

I had given them a choice the night before, just like every other night I begged them. It was a simple request really, change me, make my body the same as what I was inside, or just bloody kill me, one or the other. They couldn't even do that! So, that morning I felt angry and pissed, like every morning I woke, finding my straightforward wish hadn't been fulfilled.

Once again, like every other morning, I forced myself to push those thoughts aside and went over what I would do with my day. There was no use just lying there in bed; at least if I got up and did something, I could forget about my pain and my hunger for happiness that wasn't being granted.

I arose from my bed and found some underwear. I pulled it up over my male sex, the thing that always felt wrong; it always felt like it should never have been there. It was like a torment, something that reminded me every moment of my life that I wasn't as I should be and that I was different. There it was, dangling in the one place where I wouldn't be able to ignore it.

Slowly dressing in jeans and a T-shirt, I wondered why this was still happening to me. I had thought I had pushed back all these feelings. I had thought I had protected myself from these ideas. I felt the need to just accept, but even though I had forced myself to believe I couldn't change, I still had a burning wish for just something to change.

Sighing, resolving the thoughts and feelings again, and pushing the confusion into the back of my mind, I breathed in, knowing what I needed to tell myself. I wasn't a gender. I was Mattie.

I was nothing.

I was just me, and gender and sex meant nothing.

Those were the words I needed to carry on. I was nothing, and like nothing, I didn't need anything; not gender, not sex, not happiness. I just lived, put on a brave face, acted out some semblance of life, and moved on.

Leaving my safe bedroom, I walked out into the world. As always, I felt fragile stepping out of my sanctuary. I'm exposed outside my room. Everything and anything can bring a reminder of my discontinuity, my Dysphoria, quickly dragging up the pain.

I walked to the bathroom and headed for the tall mirror on the wall. As I looked in the mirror, I was again reminded that this woman, the woman I was inside, had a male's body, a male's frame. I was male sex, and no matter how much I told myself I could just ignore it, that male sex stared at me in the mirror-like an evil demon ready to torture me.

If you believed my "friends", I looked like a duck, walked like a duck and talked like a duck. Therefore, I was a duck to the people who saw me as the mirror did. The only problem was that their logic couldn't account for the swan beneath the duck's plumage. They couldn't see the swan that had cried for so many years to be set free from this torment.

But, like every other morning, I caught myself. NO! I wasn't this person in the mirror. I couldn't be a woman, so I would just ignore my sex and gender, push it away, ignore it... move on!

Who put that fucking mirror there anyway? I turned away from the mirror and walked to a smaller mirror that just showed my face.

Collecting my comb, I started to brush out the mat on my head called hair, at least what was left from years of receding hairline and stress.

I quickly got the rest of my bathroom chores out of the way; I hated the mirrors; they lied! I hated my face; it wasn't me! I again pushed thoughts of gender back into little boxes where I kept all my deep, painful emotions.

The next step in my morning agenda was another open wound full of terrible emotions. Every morning I battle my way through the little things we all do to prepare for the day. Each of them reminded me or forced me to doublethink things that are second nature to everyone else.

The toilet: How can one simple (if poorly designed) utility hold so much anguish. As I took my jeans down, I stood there questioning, 'Do I sit, or do I stand?' That split second of thought, of indecision over something that shouldn't require it, always pulled at my mind and soul. It was enough to bring a tear, or depressing thought, nearly every time. Of course, standing there, facing the bowel with my jeans down and getting cold helped make the decision. I did it standing up, the quickest way that involved the most minor hassles. I would then chastise myself for standing... and the anguish would start again until I pushed it away.

Pulling my jeans back up, I found myself doing something that seemed to come like second nature.

I tucked.

I pushed my balls into my body and pulled my penis back between my legs. Pulling up my underwear, I trapped my balls and penis like that, making a smooth surface.

It suddenly hit me that what I was doing had become like an impulse. Why did I do it? I tried to think why, why do I hide it? Then it hit me. I am trying to hide it.

I didn't hate my penis. No, I disliked the damn thing being there. People could see the bulge it made against my clothing, even if it was only a tiny shift in the fabric; it felt like a mountain to me that everyone could see and would look at. It was a visible sign that I was physically a man!

In fact, I like the way it makes me feel when I get turned on; it is enjoyable to have an organism and feel the fantastic release of pressure. Yet, at the same time, the guilt afterwards always made me feel sick to the stomach. It always felt like I had done something that I knew wasn't right, and I was wrong to do it.

I flushed the toilet and washed my hands as if washing away the thoughts of my tucking. Now my thoughts had moved on to the next stage of my morning; breakfast and meeting my flatmates.

A well-trained and rehearsed happy smile came back over my face. I couldn't let anyone know that I was upset yet again. I placed the mask firmly over my face, and inside I pushed everything back. There was no need to let Duke and Lisa in on the pains they'd heard far too many times before; I needed happy thoughts.

There I was, in the kitchen, munching toast, drinking coffee, and talking sweet nothing to Duke and Lisa. I spent the time working towards my next task for the day. Every job I did in public was like a robot, automatic and controlled. To the most negligible complications, the direction was never talking about or doing anything of purpose.

Back in the bathroom: I brushed my teeth. I avoided the mirror as much as I could, look staring down at the basin until I spat out the toothpaste and watched the tap water wash it down the drain. While I did this, I played the day through my head, over and over, like a mantra.

Thinking about the tasks that I had to do throughout the day helped hide the thoughts of gender and pain effortless. Those painful thoughts were like sticks caught under the raging stream; the stream, of course, was my tasks, my chores. I knew as long as I could keep the "watermark" of that stream high enough, I could theoretically float above the sticks. The hard part was maintaining a balance between keeping the water above the reeds without flooding over the riverbank. When the water raged over the riverbank, I became overwhelmed and panicked, unable to maintain cohesion. The unfortunate thing was that I tended to do that too many times, which usually caused me to break down.

With each breakdown, I felt even worse. I couldn't show people the pain I had inside me. The whole damn emotional issues were becoming tedious, monotonous, and I didn't want people to think I was a martyr or needy. I could deal with this my own way.

So far, so good, I had displayed nothing of my problems. But then I also knew nothing of how the day would turn out either. I made my way to my computer. Duke and Lisa were going out, allowing me quiet time to work on my stories and the assignments I had to finish.

As usual, I held another cup of steaming coffee in my hand. The sweet smell of the coffee filtered through the room that cold New Zealand, Palmerston North, morning.

I opened the garage up and headed for the upstairs towards the study. It was an excellent study, there was a beautiful view out the windows of kilometres of gorgeous countryside. I once stood at that window and looked out to the small brook below the house. I watched two rabbits playing there. All their worries in life were mere survival and procreation. I bet they didn't have problems not knowing where they fitted in like I did every morning. Did rabbits have thoughts on their gender, on if they had been born wrong?

I looked out the window that morning towards the meadows that lined the hillside. The cattle, the sheep, all peaceful and grazing on the fresh morning dew-covered grass. I took a sip of the coffee while I watched a small lamb run-up to its mother and start feeding. This was becoming a habit in my new living place; Sipping coffee while looking over the hills. It was so peaceful and settling.

I walked over to my computer and turned it on. Of course, the monitor only came on as black and white instead of colour. It was a fault that I had thought I had fixed. Cursing softly to myself, I reset the computer and tried again. This time, the computer worked and loaded up Windows 95 easily and in colour.

On this lovely sunny morning, my first job was my email to Eddie. Eddie and I were thinking of making a comic book series together. Well, I had been thinking over a number one comic book idea, and I had to get this idea off to him. Sipping my coffee was still hot; I started Word for Windows and wrote out the plot for WOLF #1. This was going to be a hit; I knew this idea would come out really well.

After typing out the plot line after about an hour, I pasted the story to Internet Mail (my email program) and sent it away. Screeches, hissing, buzzing, and various other noises echoed in the room as the program connected my modem to my Internet provider and sent the mail on its merry way. Then the email program collected the mail waiting for me overnight. I got five emails that morning, which was strange since I usually got about two hundred every morning. Yet, they were all addressed to me this time and none from my email lists.

The first two were about my writing, and they were great emails. They told me how they liked my writing, and they hoped that I would continue to write for the story list I was on. These emails were terrific; they gave me an incredible feeling of joy that people liked reading the work I was writing.

The following email, however, stopped my joyful thoughts in their tracks. It was from Daniel. Daniel was an 18-year-old boy I had met on IRC the night before. He was a boy who had somehow managed to break through all my defences and had somehow turned Malisa (my female self) back on once again. I can't really explain what had happened that night, but I will try. It would probably explain why I found my heart suddenly grabbed, and my breathing stopped.

I had gone on to IRC the night before to see Dana as I wanted to talk to him about the Genie-Bot and some ideas I had. Dana wasn't on, so I just spoke to the beautiful people in TSA_list and looked for some more of my friends.

I went to an old hideout of mine called TVSEX. Here I managed to find one of my old friends, and we had a little chat. While I was on this channel, I got a private message from one of the people on the channel. They were interested in chatting. I usually said no about there, telling the person to get lost; however, I felt this time. 'Hell, why not. I haven't done something like cyber for a very long time. It would be neat to mess around again.' So being a fool, I agreed.

I know now that this was so stupid of me, but I did it. However, I never knew it would have impinged on me like it did.