We Became Our Fantasy
Since the spring it feels like I’ve been caught in this material eddy, unable to make any big steps, barely able to maintain the day-to-day. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the things outside my reach, as modest as they may seem. But as much trouble as I have coping with big and small things and ghosts from the past, there are times where perspective clicks and—
- I’m a girl (sort of)
- with maybe 40 years of life left
- living in a small apartment
- by herself
- across from a large park
- close to downtown
- of a major city
- in the northeast
- in the autumn (currently).
It’s just, this is so close to a life that I’ve wished for since I was little, that I knew would never be available to me, that for years only ever seemed to get further and further from reality. In the ’90s I wrote stories with characters in almost exactly this scenario—yes, who were female, and had gender issues.
The main missing piece is an ability to support myself, and in such a way that I have mental reserves to do creative things again. (In the stories, money was always vague but I figured maybe she did computer stuff?) Other than that, it’s all just… continuing. Working on the transition, working on the therapy. maybe even piecing together my own social circle, once the plague dies down. Making this city the home I’ve never had, building a world I want to live in.
But on a basic level, like. I’ve more or less done it—including the parts that seemed, when i was younger, physically impossible. This was the escape I dreamed about, where after high school I would finally sort myself out and become alive… and where I was a girl somehow in these fantasies, which was absurd of course, but whatever.
Hell, with how drawn-out and reluctant my first puberty was, people regularly assumed I was maybe 20 until I was close to 40. It’s catching up a little now, but—it feels like even on a cellular level I was just hibernating; waiting until the moment I could truly live.
Now if only I were able to safely go outside….