“Most days I feel like loose wires that dangle, but with you I connect.”* I look up. You see me, I see you. Zap! Heart starts beating again. Resuscitated. Brought back to life. I wasn’t dead, just... elsewhere. Dangling. You know?
Phantom limbs, phantom lives, names of ghosts past. Let me tell you who I was growing up. Picture this. Jaws drop, heads tilt, lips tighten. Let me make you look downwards. Tables turn. What will you do with this terrible violent knowledge? Does it split you open? Do you know who you are? Can you see me now? This is what I have done. This is what it took for this body to blossom. Is it a sacrifice? A modern medical miracle? Is it cosmetic, or corrective? Is it ethical? Isn’t it beautiful? Is it what you would do if we were in each other’s shoes? I can’t possibly tell you the difference it has made.
Life goes on. Post transformation I am legible to the world. Scorn, shame, hundreds this body to blossom. Is Choices made in moments of shades of disapproving it a sacrifice? A modern of desperation rarely turn glances, have drifted out for the best. My moment quietly away from me, medical miracle? Is it of desperation stretched into so many small sore cosmetic, or corrective? Is from approximately age memories. That should 11 onwards. I couldn’t it ethical? Isn’t it beautiful? make me happy, solidify picture a future me, I my triumph, bolster Is it what you would do if we couldn’t face the present my confidence, prove me. I took what I could my righteousness. But were in each other’s shoes? get. I looked down. I that terrible knowledge felt angry, said nothing. I can’t possibly tell you the persists. I am legible, but Shame, loathing, desolate, difference it has made. by a thin margin. The barren. Yet feisty. One of rug could be pulled out the fun things about years from under me again. No of desperation is the sense that there is nothing person is truly free unless all people are free. That to lose. Freedom: lack of expectations, guidelines, doesn’t seem very likely, does it? I wish I thought boundaries, limits. Slipping silently around the ties I was free. I wish I could forget what it felt like that bind others, by being “other.” Grim resolution, before. I wish I could let it go, accept what I’ve keen perspective, both odd, out of place for got, accept what I’ll never have. I wish I could youth. But where else could I have gone with all move on. Life goes on but I stay right here. those empty moments, awkward glances, missed connections, small sighs, disapproving looks, and *from Gregory Douglass missing explanations. I would have given anything for an explanation, for a moment of kinship. What is it that makes me different? Dan Dumont lives in Nashville TN, works in accounting, hosts a weekly meditation group, Transgender. The word entered my soul like a and volunteers with Just Us, the local group for knife, doubled me over, dead parts sliced through, LGBTQ youth. raw, bloody, reborn. All at once there I was, with fresh new hope, cut free. Left one hell of a scar though. Scar tissue itches, and big scars are the worst. Without feeling, missing the proper nerve endings, you can never quite scratch it.
[LQ]
Table of Contents
Who wants a story with a trans theme? I never did. The word entered my life like an avalanche. Buried, numb, disbelieving, I had no choice but to start my life anew. No way to unrecognize, unlearn, unidentify, push the intruder out. Blissful ignorance gone like a balloon into the sky, not coming back. Shit, that’s me. Awful, violent knowledge, This is what I have done. ruining everything, forcing This is what it took for me forward.