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When I was eight, I ran all the way to the forest at the opposite edge of the field behind my house, and I slept beneath a bush with my heavy knit blanket that my Gran had made for me. I woke up covered in dirt, and twigs had tangled themselves into my hair. I trudged home happily, pretending I was returning home from an epic adventure or battle. My mother grounded me for a week and forbid me from going into the forest. There were Bad People in the world, and they preyed on Little Girls like myself, and I was too small to protect myself from them.

I protested vehemently. They would not bother me; I would simply tell them that they were mistaken, because I was a Little Boy, not a Little Girl. My mother tittered nervously and patted me on the head, pulling away a tiny leaf from my dark brown curls. I didn't know why she was laughing.

I often wonder if that was the point when I first realized that I was not what everyone else told me I was, or if it was an awareness that was always present, and was smothered as I aged by outer influences and my own desire to be "normal". I have never been able to pinpoint the moment of sparkling clarity, the Heavenly music and bright, warm lights that accompany a revelation; I don't think there ever was a revelation. The knowledge of my self was always there, and then it was buried underneath childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood before I finally cleared away the rubble and discovered my long-lost identity at the ripe old age of nineteen.

There was no "Aha!" moment, no "Eureka!" There was a frantic scrabble through piles of crap and rubbish, and finally, finally, exhausted, I set eyes upon my broken and bruised self peering up through the trash. And I fell to my knees and greeted myself, and apologized for the abuse I had suffered for all those years. It was a reunion, not an introduction; we had been estranged friends who now had to reconcile nineteen years of confusion and bitterness. It was not beautiful. It was painful and reluctant.