Once Upon a Time There Was a They

Once upon a time there was a girl. She was beautiful. She had everything that one could hope for. Loving parents, a good school, a big house and play room, many friends and good clothes and food. I am this girl. She lives inside of me and is still very much a part of my experience. When this girl was seven or eight years old she cut her hair short and decided she wanted to be a tomboy. She dressed up as a man and a bum for halloween. She expressed herself in her clothing choices as best she could. And soon she became obsessed with boys. One of her best friends was a boy at five, and when she was ten she became close to another boy. Secretly she longed to be a boy, but the voice inside of her was so soft that it was easy to ignore. One reason she ignored this voice was because she soon learned to ignore pain. At ten or eleven her boyfriend turned on her as she became interested in another boy and both boys banned together and harassed and bullied her. When she was in middle school she started to have issues with girls. The first boyfriend followed her to her new school. There were many girls issues. At school and at soccer. The first boyfriend caught wind of this problem and pressed harder on the wound.

When she was fourteen she moved to a prep school and became best friends with a boy who was also a football player and a snowboarder. They loved to spend time together on the mountain. This friendship went sour as well because it was complicated and ruined by lust. She left the school to avoid more bullying and found herself an artsy liberal high school junior year. She did well at this school but had gotten an eating disorder freshman year and was trying to heal. Her only friend at that school dismissed her and let her go, so she was on her own. She started exploring her sexuality within. The best she could come up with was bisexual. She did well at the school and went off to a very good college that was only women. She did not like the way men looked at her and thought this would be a good place to focus on her music and studies without the distraction of boys. Her decision to follow the boys to high school instead of attending the catholic all girls school her sister had attended, had not fared well. But it was not a good fit either. She tried to date girls but it did not feel right. Her grades plummeted her first semester as she was practicing two sports and took a heavy load of classes. She began to falter. Her only friend in her mind was a girl she had spent some time with first semester, and this girl decided she was a stalker. She ended up at a psych ward her second semester and her good father came to pick her up. He greeted her with red licorice and they headed home.

Years later, right before the economic crash of 2008 and many stories untold, she found herself in the psych ward for the third time. She had given up on traditional four year college. She had worked several jobs. She had learned to paint. She had written a memoir. She had a loving relationship with a good man. She was half way through massage school. She had many friends and a sweet house that her father had helped them buy. She loved her three dogs and two cats. It is unclear what really happened. It could have been the extensive massage therapy both given and received in school. It was most likely the wrong meds in combination with the stress of full-time school. The break was horrendous. She had to leave the city and start a new life in a small town. This worked and she was stable for nine years.

Then her mental health became very tenuous and she had to quit work and survived four more major episodes while avoiding the hospital. Again the reason was unclear. She most likely was working too hard and coping with it all while drinking. In that time she managed to cut back and quit drinking entirely and gratefully took on the label of dual diagnosis. Today she is in AA; LGBTQ AA, Trans AA, and Agnostics and Freethinkers AA. She loves God but practices realism and existentialism as well. She is finally coming into her own in her mid forties. She is they/them. She is he/they. After all these years and all these trials, she is finally discovering that she is in fact not a she. She has found that small voice inside once again that spoke to her in childhood. No doubt getting sober, committing to therapy and medications, and having a good psychiatrist has helped them on their healing path. They are still in love, and they attend recovery meetings twice a day. They are me. I am they. And I am so grateful to be coming into my own perfect self after all of these years. Aho.