Winter, a story

I was listening to a streaming service and I heard a song one day.  "Winter" by Tori Amos.  And as I was listening, something just struck me.

It really got me in the feels, ya know?

Well, after I stopped crying, I began writing this story in my head.  This story is kind of autobiographical.  That means that it evokes many things I have felt throughout certain phases in my life. It encompasses some things I wished had happened. And it uses tiny snippets of what did happen in a way little different than it did.

Tori Amos' song is not about transition, nor is it in any way about my life.  But, many of the words and phrases do dovetail into my life experience very well when I listen to it.

I hope she forgives me it's use for this.

Without further ado, my story: Winter.

Winter:

A child runs down the staircase, lit from the sun glistening on the fresh falls of snow outside.  It is a cold morning, but there are too many things to see; too much to do. They reach the back entryway in no time at all, skidding to a stop. Grabbing their snowsuit, they struggle to pull it up over the leggings they wear, hiding the festive winter pattern under pink and purple colored nylon and polyester insulation. 

The snow suit is a little small, and a hand-me-down at that, but it is their favorite thing in the world because it is so pretty, and it lets them stay out in the cold, beautiful, snowy wonderland outside longer. 

They brush the long hair that has snaked its way out from under a headband over their ear in frustration. They bounce eagerly as they wait for their father’s arrival.  He promised they could go sledding and he hadn’t arrived yet, despite them jumping on their father to wake him up.

Finally, in what seems to be an eternity, he arrives. With a deep chuckle he takes his little one’s hand and they proceed to the park.

The park is not very crowded so early in the morning.  A few boys are already sledding, and a woman is throwing a ball for her dog.  The child looks up at their father and he smiles, releasing their hand, and nods.  There is a burst of joy from the child as they drag their sled to the paths and begin to play.  For a while, all there is - is sledding down the hill, and running up to repeat the process. Because of chance or fate, it is not until almost noon that the park begins to fill up. Soon the boys in the park begin to surround the child.

“Hi,” the child opens the conversation with lowered eyes.

“What?  I thought you were a girl.  What are you doing in that super gay snow suit.  Are you gay?”

“Wh.. I.. no, I just like it.”

“Gay boy” “Queer!” “lookit this freak” the chorus of voices begins, and gets louder, and more insistent. 

Then comes the pushing.

The child tries to defend themself, but they are smaller than their bullies. And there are so many of them.  In time one of the boys pushes the child off a retaining wall into a particularly deep drift.

The snow bites like icy needles into their hands as they try to get out of the drift.  They keep looking for their father’s help, but it never comes. Finally, exhausted and with painful hands, they exit the snowdrift. They find their father looking down on them. 

“I put my hand in my father’s glove.  All I could see ahead was a day of fun in my favorite season.  His grip on my little hand, so reassuring. He’d always be there to protect me, I thought.  That morning went from being another wonderful day to be alive, to the beginning of a tortured soul.

“‘You must learn to stand up for yourself ‘cause I can’t always be around.’ he said to me as he again wrapped his hand around mine and we walked home. ‘I was watching, and I would have stepped in if I thought you were in any danger, but I also needed you to stand alone. You need to make a decision in this life who you are and want to be, but know, whatever it is, I love you and I want you to love you as much as I do.' 

"Unbeknownst to him, that was when I decided I had to be a boy; be cis. No one was ever going to doubt my gender again, especially not me.  I never wore another snowsuit.”

Spring:

The boy is at recess during a particularly bad year in school.  It is only junior high, and puberty is making itself known to everyone around him…  and himself. Teenage angst grows into some existential dread he can’t put his finger on.  It is making him wonder what’s wrong with him.

At the end of the week is a school dance; the first of his time at junior high.  Around him he sees signs of couples forming up. He feels the desire to couple as well, but he can’t figure out how.  He doesn’t get where he belongs, so he doesn’t know where they might connect with him.

To the side of the playing field are a group of girls, chatting.  He knows many of them, goes to the same classes and has befriended a few.  He wants to go over there and talk with them too. They make sense to him, at least in some ways.  He can talk with them for hours except when they talk about which boys are cute and who should date whom. 

He looks over at the boys running and playing on the field.  There are some playing the ubiquitous pick-up games of basketball, others are rough-housing and, still more, walking and talking.  Sure, there are some girls over there too, but not so many. The divisions are rigid and ruthlessly enforced. 

He looks at the boys.  There are a few that even he can see are attractive.  They are lean and muscular and some are even smart and quite nice; gentlemen, even if not quite men yet.  I mean, if he relates to the women so much, is he gay? What would it be like to date one of those guys?

No.  It doesn’t work.  He likes girls. His attraction is exclusively to them, and that’s all there is to it.  Which is why he can’t hang out with them much. As much as he relates to them, he desires some of them too, and he doesn’t want to creep them all out.

Holly, he thinks as he looks back at the girls.  She is the best. She is a bit of a jock, and she rocks that short hair.  But she excels at academics too, almost to his equal; able to keep up with his banter without a misstep when they talk.  He should ask her to the dance, it’d be fun with her around.

He walks over to the group with a shuffle in his step and waits for a break in the conversation, head down..

“Holly, can I talk to you?”

“Sure, gimme a sec.”  They move off a ways and she looks on in anticipation to what he had to say.

“I was wondering, I mean, maybe, if you’re not already…  if you don’t already have plans. Wouldyougotothedancewithme?”

She lays a hand on his forearm and smiles. 

“I am sorry, I am moving soon and I don’t want the encumbrance of a relationship or anything.  I intend to go stag and dance with whomever. I will dance with you, once, if you want? If you don’t find someone else to go with, that is.

As she moves away he fights the tears of frustration.  He leaves the playground and hides away in the honors program room.  He has a few close friends there. Their social group so different to the stressful one out on the playground.  He also never goes to a single junior high dance.

When his dad asks why he wasn’t going to the dance, he explained that none of the girls like him enough to go with him.  His dad tells him about when he was in school, and played football. That he had struck out with a couple girls but he kept trying until it worked.  But the boy isn’t like his father in that way; it isn’t the same. It wasn’t until much later than his peers that he even had a first date.

“As the winter snows melted into the spring of our lives, there was a blossoming of relationships.  We were learning more about where we fit in the world. The girls discovered boys, generally. Saw them as they postured and posed and played for that notice.  It was subtle, most of the time, but it was there.  

"As an outsider, I saw it where they could not.  I wanted to be part of it, but I didn’t fit in. So, leaving it behind, I put that part of my development on hold and hid myself away with the others that didn’t fit.  I should have, but I didn’t, examine who I was; why I didn’t fit. I skated around the truth, and I somehow knew that was akin to standing on the ice as winter was melting it below me. 

"Sadly, before I could find myself, my father died.  My protector and cheering section was gone and I was on my own.  That did not help, I assure you.”

Summer:

He puts down the last box and with a sigh opens it to reveal a picture in a frame and draped in a black sash.  I made it, Dad. I am here in college, he thinks as he places the picture on his desk.

The unpacking takes some time, but he doesn’t have much and his roommate wasn’t there yet. Complete, he proceeds out of his room and down to the recreation center.  He finds some people that seem a bit like him and mingles on the edge. He laughs at their jokes and nods at their deep points, but spectates as a passive watcher.

He placed himself in the crowd to see the majority of the room, so he sees when a guy comes in to the common space.  The guy is in a leather jacket, open over a silky blouse like top, and tight black jeans. He looks edgy, and tough, but a little soft as well.  He sees the boy almost exactly at the same time as the boy sees him, stops for a moment, and then runs directly over.

“Please be Gay!” he says with a grip on both of the boy's forearms and a hopeful face.

The boy smiles and says, “I am super flattered, but no, I am not into guys.  Sorry.”

“Damn!  Well if you ever are, please tell me.  I’m Jimmy, who are you?”

The two introduced one another, and then Jimmy introduced the boy to everyone around them.  They sat beside each other that day as the conversations continued and the boy finally joined in.  With Jimmy the first friend he had made on campus, he gave himself permission to make more, and so he did. 

At one point, people’s pasts came up.  Jimmy asked if any of the boy’s friends from high school came to this university.

“No, I didn’t have many friends.  I didn’t fit in many places.”

“Well, here’s your opportunity.  You’re in the wedge: we all didn’t fit in places!”

He met friends he could geek out with here too, but he also met friends who lived alternate lifestyles.  He met people who were LGBT and who were Kinky. People who dated more than one person at a time and people who didn’t date.  And, he was like them all, outcast from ‘normal’ society and trying to find a path to self love.

Through this circle, he met Dean.  She was a Lesbian; yes, with a capital L.  She rode a motorcycle and wore a leather jacket and Doc Martens everywhere.  She became another very good friend of the boy. He worshiped her, wanted to be like her, and if only he were a girl…

He never told her any of that, of course, because why be creepy for something that could never be.  He would join her in mocking the straight boys who flocked around her. He’d point out girls for her and she’d reciprocate, as they had similar tastes often.  Whenever they hit the bar, they’d be wing-buddies.

And then, college ended.

“My friends, especially Jimmy and Dean, tried to get me to open up, to see that the freedom they had to be themselves was a freedom I had as well. I was allowed to love myself.  

"I agreed - but then I didn’t.  I knew what society would think; what it did think.  I saw how people talked about the possibility of a trans person being a love match.  I didn’t realize that if I didn’t love myself, no one would love me either, cis or not.  I found that out, over and over, until I finally learned it.”

Autumn:

The glint of sun shines off the stainless steel knife in his hand.  He stared at it. He hasn’t been in to worqk in two days; can’t be bothered.

He came home from a great weekend trip.  He had been to his favorite place in the world, a place he had shared with his father often, growing up.  He remembered it with fondness, if a little sadness. As he was coming back, he had an errant thought: I could die now, and at least I’d die happy.

That thought stuck with him.  He couldn’t get out of bed the first day back from vacation and called out.  He was still in bed the next day. Finally, in the late afternoon, he found himself here.  He was sitting in the tub, a knife in his hands and grief in his heart.

‘I’ll always want you near,’ he remembered telling his father often.  Every time they spent time together doing the things they loved. ‘Things change, my dear.’ was always his father’s response.  He knew his father was referring to high school and college. When being ‘your own man’ causes you to separate from your parents. But, he never had the chance to find out.

He knew deep to his core he could use his father right now.

The idea of going in to work and continuing to pretend he was a man was unbearable.  He couldn’t take it one more day.

Again he looked at the knife.

He had a radio playing in the background, his constant companion.  Music was always that thing. That little bit that made him able to feel something, anything, but bleakness or rage.   When the depression and the dissociation was too much, from puberty to now he had music. He could lose himself in the music and be…

Then he heard something, a lyric… a tiny piece of a song…

“When you gonna make up your mind?

When you gonna love you as much as I do?

When you gonna make up your mind?

‘Cuz things are gonna change so fast…”

When am I going to love myself, she asked in her mind.  Then said says it out loud. Then she was scream/singing it at the top of her lungs and sobbing wracking sobs.

She slammed the knife down on the edge of the tub and got up.  With a purposeful stride she made her way to the living room and sat behind her computer.  The page is still up: the page to get an appointment to the gender clinic.

She began making calls…

“I was at rock bottom.  I didn’t know what living actually was, but I knew I wasn’t doing it.  I was existing. I had relationships, but they never worked out. I found one woman that loved me, but I was destroying that relationship. I was angry and lashing out and withdrawing.  Because I couldn’t love myself, because I knew I wasn’t being myself. 

"My hair was going grey, and the fires were burning low.  I had so many dreams sitting upon a shelf, unused. I lived my life to make my father proud, but if he were there he’d have said he wanted that as well…   Because I wasn’t. Because I wasn’t me.

"On that last day of that last month of that last year, I realized.  If I had nowhere to go but to my death, I had nothing more to lose. What in the hell was stopping me from being me, then?”

Winter:

She runs down the stairs in a flurry of feet and nervous excitement.  The hallway is lit by the sun reflecting off the fresh snow outside. She’s running late, much later than she expected, she can find her jacket easy enough and her purse is there.. But she can’t find her mittens and it’s going to be cold outside.  With a growling grumble she gets ready to brave the outdoors anyway, hoping they will show up.

Stopping by the hall table, she struggles into her winter jacket. She pauses a moment to look at the picture of her father and his gloves placed before it. 

She smiles with a quiet fondness, as she grabs the gloves and puts them on.  It is as if her father’s hand is around hers once more. It gives her courage, and resolve, and a little spark of love.  And with another flurry of frenetic action she is out the door and away.

Sitting on the table, beside the picture and on top of the mittens, is an invitation to speak at a conference to transgender youth.  On it is her name, beneath the title of the talk she is giving..

-I want you to love you as much as I do.-

“And so, that brings me to today.  Here I am, living my life as me. It hasn’t been easy, or quick, or always obviously the right choice.  But it couldn’t have come any later, and I often wish it had come much sooner. 

“I missed out on a lot of living trying to be what others saw.  I tried to be what others wanted. But I didn’t live until I started being me for me.  Until I began loving myself as much as my father did; as much as anyone in my life did.

“And so, I want to tell every one of you.  I love you. I love you so much, I will do whatever I can to make it so you can be you.  But most of all.. 

"I want you to love you as much as I do.

“Thank you.”