I sat by the living room door, eagerly awaiting with nervous anticipation. The seconds felt like hours as the hands on the clock on the wall slowly swept by each tick mark. Every few minutes I’d peek out between the blinds, hoping to catch a glimpse of the package that I knew would change my life.
I’d saved up for months just to be able to order this, forgoing lunch every day at school and doing odd jobs around the neighborhood to supplement what meager income I made from working as a bagger at the local grocery story. My father made me put most of my paycheck into a college savings fund, otherwise I would have been able to afford this much sooner. As it was, today marked six months to the day since I first laid eyes on this particular piece of perfection, and it was finally arriving.
After what seemed like three lifetimes, the FedEx truck pulled up to the curb and the driver made his way up the walkway. I was so excited that I practically burst through the front door before he even had a chance to ring the doorbell. I so desperately wanted to open the package and put it on right there, but I managed to compose myself long enough to sign for it and close the door behind me as I went back inside.
I practically floated up the stairs to my bedroom and placed the package on my pristinely-made bed, slowly slicing open the tape that held the box together. I tried not to look inside until it was completely open, because I didn’t want to spoil the moment. Carefully pulling it out of the box, I let the contents unfurl and laid my eyes on the most glorious thing I’d seen in my life: my first dress.
It was perfect.
The shimmering blue fabric practically glowed in what little sunlight broke through my closed curtains, and I could have sworn I saw the gown swishing back and forth, as if I was already wearing it and strutting my way to the stage as the most beautiful prom queen my school had ever seen.
I took extra care not to wrinkle even a bit of the flawless dress as I hung it from the hook behind my door before slowly taking off the drab clothing I’d been wearing while I waited for this life-changing dress to finally arrive. I slipped off what would be the last pair of jeans I would ever wear, folded them nicely and put them back in the drawer where my other soon-to-be obsolete pants were stored. The T-shirt I was wearing went straight into the laundry basket, though at that moment I thought a trash basket would be more appropriate. Compared to this dress, all my old clothes were trash.
Finally, I pulled my boxer shorts down to my ankles, then gently stepped out of them, leaving them on the floor. I couldn’t be bothered to pick them up and delay this moment any longer. I slipped on a pair of panties I’d stolen from my sister’s laundry weeks ago. They were a bit snug, though skipping lunches to save money had also had the added benefit of helping slim down my already trim frame even more. In fact, I worried a bit that the dress might be too loose now, but as I looked at it on the hook, I knew it’d be a perfect fit.
It had to be.
My body trembled as I slipped the dress off its padded hanger. I held it up against my skin, staring at myself in the mirror. I knew there was no turning back from here. I turned away from the mirror and slowly, gently, unzipped the back down to the waist and held the dress out in front of me. I was unsure of whether to step into it and pull it up, like a pair of pants, or to pull it down over my head like a shirt. I didn’t want to do anything wrong, for fear that it wouldn’t work. I decided to step into it, since it was a one-shoulder gown, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to squeeze the whole thing down past both shoulders without tearing it.
The fabric felt incredible against my legs, like nothing I’d ever worn before. The robes I’d worn when my parents forced me to join the church choir were soft and shiny too, but I’d always worn them atop a cotton shirt and pants. Because we left them at the church each week, I never got the chance to wear them without my regular clothes, but I’d spent many a stray moment imagining how they’d feel directly against my body. Not even in my wildest imagination could I have dreamed that they’d feel as good as this dress did in this moment.
It was like I was in an entirely new universe as I pulled the dress up past my waist and maneuvered my left arm into the shoulder. I called upon every bit of flexibility I’d ever demonstrated in my life as I zipped up the back with my right arm, practically pulling my shoulder out of the socket to do so. But beauty is pain and this pain was worth it. I was finally dressed in my perfect dress. I took a deep breath and composed myself, trying not to let out a squeal of joy – prom queens didn’t squeal, they, smiled demurely.
Turning back toward the mirror, I closed my eyes and silently calmed myself. “This is it,” my mind’s voice said. “This is everything you’ve been waiting for. Your dream is about to come true.”
Upon opening my eyes, I realized how true those words were. It was no longer just the fabric of the dress that was shimmering, but a swirl of light rising up from the ground. It continued to circle around me, enveloping me from head to toe. As it did, I could feel myself changing.
It started with my toes. I poked them out from the edge of the dress to see that they were now tipped with a pearl polish and gently wedged into a pair of strappy silver shoes with a two-inch heel. The top strap wrapped gently around my now-hairless ankle as my leg began to thin. I pulled up the bottom of the dress and kicked my leg out and watched as all the hair slowly receded into my body and my skin smoothed out, becoming free of blemishes with an unmatched porcelain complexion.
I had to put my leg down and brace myself against the wall as my body continued to reshape itself. My hips flared out and my waist tapered in, giving me the curves I’d always dreamed of, which were complemented by the seams of the dress.
The changes made their way to my hands, which were no longer rough, but smooth and soft, with perfectly-manicured nails coated in a light pink polish, matching the subtle color of my lipstick. I could feel my arms growing more lithe as the hair disappeared from them just as it had my legs. My shoulders slimmed and my flawless skin looked even more beautiful as the dress wrapped around my left arm and under my right. I began to rub my hands against the fabric of the dress, pressing it against my newly reshaped form, when my chest slowly swelled. With each breath I took, it filled the top of the dress more and more. I began to worry that the dress would burst, but as I put my hands on my bountiful breasts, they stopped growing, settling into two gorgeous handfuls of flesh encased in satin.
As I slowly caressed my outstanding breasts, I felt a warmth in my crotch. The feeling was all-too-familiar, but instead of a growing erection, I looked down to see a shrinking one. My testicles had already made their way back inside my body, and my penis was slowly following. I dared not touch it for two fears. First, that the shrinking would stop, and I’d be left stuck halfway through the transformation. But I also feared that this would all be too much, and I’d release everything pent up inside me, staining the dress in the process.
Taking another deep breath to compose myself, I looked back down to see the last of any noticeable bulge disappear, leaving only a flat stretch of blue fabric draped below my waist. I didn’t have to take off the dress or the panties underneath to know that I was now the proud owner of a beautiful pair of lips surrounding my own virgin vaginal opening. As the last of my penis retreated, leaving only a tiny clitoris behind, I let out a bit of a yelp, at a much higher pitch than I was used to.
Instinctively, I reached for my throat, which was now missing a prominent Adam’s apple as well as any unshaved stubble. My neck lengthened, like the beautiful swan who’d just moments earlier been an ugly duckling. The bones in my face reshaped as my hair cascaded past my chin. The locks lightened, going from a mousy brown to a lovely shade of blonde with the slightest platinum highlights. My hands shook as they reached for my lengthening hair. I didn’t want to ruin the styling, but I had to feel it for myself. It was more impeccable than I could have ever imagined. Each golden strand looked as if it had been spun straight off Rumpelstiltskin’s spinning wheel itself.
My reflection in the mirror had never looked so stunning. My blue eyes sparkled in tune with the dress, framed by the most glamorous makeup I’d ever seen. My pouty lips looked ever so kissable, my cheekbones longed to be caressed, and my eyelashes fluttered as the last of the swirling magic faded away. Thanks to this dress, I had become the girl of my dreams. I wanted this moment to last forever.
But it couldn’t.
I looked back in the mirror, and the illusion faded away. I wasn’t a beautiful prom queen. I was an awkward teenage boy in a dress. No wig or makeup or padding on my chest could change that. My face wasn’t stunning – it was covered in a 5 o’clock shadow that was growing out through a poorly-applied makeup job that represented the best I could do with what little I could cobble from my sister’s vanity and a few weeks of watching YouTube tutorials. My blonde hair wasn’t gold – it wasn’t even mine. It was a cheap wig from a local Halloween store, with out-of-place hairs sticking to my face. Each time I tried brushing them away, they just ended up getting caught in the press-on nails I’d haphazardly applied to my hairy, unwieldy hands.
As I stared at my reflection, I wished desperately that my dream would reflect my reality, but no amount of wishing was going to make that true. I turned and leaned back against the mirror, hoping maybe I’d fall through into another universe, but instead I slowly slid to the floor, the satin of the dress rubbing awkwardly against my hairy legs.
Sitting on the floor, I looked down at my crotch, where my penis was tenting out the dress, making it obvious to anyone who might see me that I was no woman. Some might say I’d been blessed with such a large member, but this blessing was a curse to me, a curse that I could only see one way to break.
Still wearing my cheap wig and my ill-fitting dress, I walked into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. As I did, I heard a car pull up the driveway. I knew it wouldn’t be long until my parents came home and found me, so I had to act quickly. I grabbed the unopened bottle of sleeping pills and ran back to my room as quickly as I could, trying not to trip on the dress as I did.
I sat down on my bed and starting pouring the contents of the bottle down my throat, taking sips of a bottle of water from my nightstand to help them go down quicker. The effects of them started to hit me quickly, and it became harder to pour them into my mouth. I had to concentrate to make sure I didn’t spill any, nor spilled any water on my dress. I heard the garage door close as I reached the bottom of the pill bottle, then let the water bottle fall to the ground.
As I began to lose consciousness, I took one last look at myself in the mirror, then closed my eyes and let myself fall back on my bed. My life flashed before my eyes, and the last thing I saw was the girl I dreamed of being, smiling back at me. She looked beautiful. It truly was a perfect dress.
I hope they buried me in it.
I never expected to wake up.
I wasn’t supposed to wake up.
But there was no mistaking it, I was waking up. And I wasn’t at home. The beeping from the device next to my bed was unmistakable, as was the feel of a breathing tube up my nose.
I knew in that instant that my suicide attempt had failed. My stomach felt queasy, no doubt an after effect of swallowing so many pills and likely having them pumped out, and my eyelids were still heavy. But as I slowly opened my eyes to take in my surroundings, it was clear that I was in the hospital.
And I wasn’t alone.
“You gave us quite a scare,” she said in a voice that was more comforting and less angry than I’d expected it would be. I was still coming around, so I couldn’t quite see who was talking to me, but it didn’t look like a nurse and it didn’t sound like my mother.
I tried to speak, but my throat was so dry that words wouldn’t come out – not that I would have known what to say in that moment. What do you say to someone when you never expected that you’d have to speak to anyone ever again?
I wondered if she’d found the note I left, if my parents had read it yet. For that matter, I wondered where my parents were. Did they know about this? They had to, right? How angry would they be with me? I didn’t want to think about having to face them, but it was all I could think about. This wasn’t supposed to go like this. I was scared, confused, and – worst of all – alive, and I just wanted to be left alone to die. But all I could do, strapped to this bed, was cry.
“Don’t do that,” she said.
“Do what,” I scratched out in response, my raspy voice starting to come back slowly.
“You’ll ruin your makeup,” she said as she got up from her chair in the corner and walked over to my bedside. Her hand touched my shoulder, and, like magic, I felt an incredible sense of calm, something I hadn’t felt since...
“10 years,” she said. “You’ve been keeping this secret for, what, 10 years?”
I nodded and sniffled, trying to stifle the tears. One escaped, and she took a tissue from her purse and wiped it away for me.
“You did a pretty good job,” she said. “With a little more practice, you’ll really get the hang of this.”
I was fairly certain she was just humoring me, but I had to admit the compliment felt nice. It’d been a long time since I heard anyone say anything positive about my appearance, and even if she was lying, it was a good lie. A necessary lie.
“I’m not lying,” she said. “I know plenty of girls who couldn’t do makeup half this good, especially without any help from your mom.”
“You know what is lying,” she asked as she turned away from my bed and looked at the far wall.
I nodded my head, as I knew exactly what she was going to say next.
“That’s lying,” she said, pointing at the mirror on the wall.
“That’s showing you the person the world has told you every day that you need to be, but it’s not showing you who you are.”
They were my words, direct from my note. When I sat down to write it yesterday – well, when I sat down yesterday to re-write the note I’d written dozens of times before, I found myself reflecting, coincidentally enough, on the song “Reflection” from “Mulan.” I remembered watching that movie as a child and understanding for the first time what I was experiencing. I thought writing those lyrics would be enough, but as I looked at my note, I realized I needed to put that sentiment into my words.
And now they were her words. But in her voice. And in her voice, they didn’t sound as harsh, or defeated. They sounded… defiant.
She ran her hands through her blonde hair and stared down her own reflection in the mirror.
“It must tear you up inside to look into this thing every morning and not recognize the person staring back at you.”
“I hate him,” I said. “I hate everything about him.”
“So that’s why you tried to kill him,” she asked, turning back at me. I tilted my head on my pillow, desperately trying to avoid eye contact.
“But it wasn’t just him you were killing,” she said. “There’s a strong, vibrant, beautiful woman laying on that bed right now, and you tried to kill her too, even though she never did anything to you.”
I could hear the anger rising in her voice. This was the tone of lecture I’d expected to be hearing from my mother when – if – I woke up, but the message was different.
“You probably expect me to say something like ‘why would you try to kill yourself? You have so much to live for. So many people who love you,’” she said. “But I’m not here to tell you that. You’re gonna hear that from enough people in the next few days, probably even people you’d never expect to say that to you.”
I tried to interrupt, but she was on a roll and my whisper-quiet words weren’t about to stop her.
“Your parents are going to smother you with love, love that you don’t think you deserve, and, you know what,” she asked, though she had no intention of letting me answer. “You’re right.”
I turned my head back toward her and gave her that eye contact she wanted. I was still groggy from the drugs – both the ones I’d taken and the ones that were dripping into my body from the IV connected to my left arm – but I couldn’t help but be entranced by her impossibly blue eyes.
“You don't deserve their love, or their scorn, or anything they could give or take from you,” she said. “But that girl… that woman who you tried to kill? She deserves all of it.
She continued to raise her voice as she fought off tears of her own. But I could see them welling up in her eyes, and even though I didn’t know her, I felt like I’d let her down.
“All the bad things in your life, and all the good things – and trust me, you might not believe this, but there are way more good things than bad things – she deserves all of them.”
She closed the door, not to give us more privacy, but to show me what was hanging from the back of it: the dress.
I started to cry again, but these weren’t tears of sorrow, they were tears of joy. The second thought I’d had when I’d woken up just a few minutes ago – the one right after “why aren’t I dead?” – was “I’ll never see that dress again.”
But there it was, perfectly preserved, the shimmering blue fabric shining even more brightly than when I’d first taken it out of the box in which it arrived.
“She deserves to wear this dress to her senior prom,” she said. “And you were going to take that away from her.”
I hung my head, the seriousness of what I’d done hitting me for the first time. I didn’t want to die, not really, but I didn’t want to go on living the lie that I lived every day of my life. Every day for the past 10 years.
“Am I a boy or a girl,” I remember asking my father that day.
“A boy,” he said, laughing that deep and hearty laugh that you’d expect from a man like him, big and broad and strong and… well, a man.
“But I don’t want to be a boy,” I said. “I want to be a girl.”
When you’re a kid, people tell you that you can be anything you want to be, but they don’t really mean it. When you tell your first-grade teacher that you want to be an astronaut when you grow up, she humors you for a little while, but then eventually tells you that very few people become astronauts and that you should pick a different job for your future. When you tell your summer camp counselor that you want to be a professional basketball player, he tells you that you’re not going to be very tall, so you might want to consider a different sport.
And when you’re a 7-year-old boy who tells your father that you want to be a girl – not just a girl, but a princess… a queen… a goddess – you get told you’re a boy and you’re going to grow up and become a man and you’re going to marry a beautiful woman and have children and grandchildren and that’s just how things are.
But that’s not how they always have to be, I thought, as I picked up my head, seeing her dazzling smile brighten the otherwise-depressing hospital room. I have a choice in my future – I have the choice to have a future.
I couldn’t wipe the tears away from my cheek – my hands were still strapped down, I assume as a safety precaution to prevent me from doing anything stupid (well, more stupid than I’d already done) – but there were no more tears flowing. I wasn’t sad anymore, at least not in the way I’d felt when I looked at my awkward reflection while wearing my dress the day earlier. And I wasn’t angry; the time for being angry with myself for not doing something – something smart, something right – earlier was past.
Those feelings had been replaced by a new one, or at least one I hadn’t felt in a very long time: confidence. Maybe it was knowing I’d come through this, my lowest point, and somehow survived. Maybe it was seeing the confidence she radiated as she walked back over to the door, brushing off the tiniest speck of dust from the dress hanging, waiting for me to put it back on.
“Now it’s perfect again,” she said, echoing my thoughts.
Her smile waned a bit as she walked back to my bedside; I noticed the sound of her heels clicking against the hard floor for the first time, as the sounds of the hospital monitors faded into the background.
“It’s not going to be easy,” she said, as she stroked my far-too-short hair. “There are going to be a lot of hard times. Times when you feel like the whole world is against you. Times when you want to give up … again…”
With what little voice I could muster, I said I wouldn’t, and she pressed her ruby red lips against my drying cheek.
“I know,” she said.
She walked toward the door, then turned back to me one last time.
“The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all,” she said. “And you… you’re going to be truly beautiful. Trust me.”
I did. I couldn’t explain it… I didn’t even know who she was, but I trusted her more than I’ve ever trusted anyone about anything.
My eyes grew heavy again, and before I knew it, they were shut. Before long, the beeping sound of the life support machines filled my ears. Then, there was something else: the unmistakable voice of my mother.
“I think he’s waking up,” I heard her say.
She was right. This time, I really was awake. And for the first time in my life, I was alive.