I came into this world unwanted. I navigated it at the sufferance of others who wished I were someone else, if indeed I were there at all. And for forty years I agreed with them.

But the tools they gave me, those were absurd. There wasn’t any kind of a reality to them. When I really look at what’s in me, and I think about all that I value in the world, I realize, it’s in there too. All that love, all those dreams were there the whole time.

The things I want and wish that life could be, they’re right here. They’re what make me a person.

Finally I feel wanted, by the one person who knows best and will never leave me alone.

My predecessor wasn’t equipped. They were one 30-year-long dissociative stress response. A literal embodiment of all my worst feelings. A walking nightmare.

Now when I feel anxious, at times I feel like I’m slipping back into them. Then I chill out, and check in with myself, and I call myself back to reality. I don’t have to be that person anymore. They were never real. They were never even my idea.

I am so proud to be me, now that I can see me. And there are so many dimensions here I have yet to fully apprehend.

All these things that I find cool in other people, I also embody them, at least to some extent, in my own individual balance. And now, I get to explore that.