CHAPTER 1
“Lucy,are you paying attention at all?” Molly’s voice echoes in my head.
I look down and see her stern face staring at me from across the desk, her grey suit angular and sharply contrasting the golden sunset pouring in through the front windows of the office building. A sunset that reminded me that I was resigned to the night shift.
“Yeah, of course, you have my full attention.” I say, even though I would at most be giving her a quarter of my attention.
“Can you tell me anything I just said to you?”
“That it’s December 22nd, and that the office will probably be pretty dead tonight, but that’s no reason to slack off or not do what I’m supposed to do?” I shrug, my purple hair brushing against the collar of my jacket.
“Well…ok, yes, that was pretty much it…” Molly says. “But if you could at least act like you’re paying attention, that would be great.”
“How do I act like that other than what I did?” I put my purse down on the desk and resist the urge to get my phone out, knowing that would only serve to piss Molly off entirely.
“Lucy…” Molly gives me a tight smile. “I have so much going on right now, and I just need to make sure the people I have doing things for me will do those things as I expect...”
“So, I shouldn’t be a sarcastic little shit about things when you talk to me, right?’
“That’s exactly it.” She nods. Molly’s face softens a little as she looks around the lobby while I’m getting settled in. “So, when the office is closed, do you have…anywhere you’re going?”
“Molly, you know the answer to that.”
“Lucy…” Molly looks at me with genuine concern.
“I have friends, they’re just all out with their families now because, well, they can still go back to families that still talk to them.” I say.
“And yours…”
“You know how it is.” I shrug, “once I became Lucy, they still thought I’d be Lucas for them for…some reason. Once I started showing up to family gatherings looking like this…” I sweep my fingers up and down, indicating the form I’d worked so hard to craft, “things were awkward, and…I mean, I’m hot, so I’m not going to change for them.”
“You know I want to tell you I’m proud of your strength and resilience in all of this, but you’ll tell me to not say that.”
“Correct.” I smirk. “I do tell you to not say that.” I pause. “But I appreciate that you feel that way, and I appreciate that you want to tell me.”
“Were you always this prickly and standoffish?”
“I was worse before, if you can believe it.” I slide my phone out of my purse and put it in between my monitor and keyboard. I figure the situation with Molly has diffused enough at this point that I’m good. And based on how she walks away, probably rolling her eyes as she does, I figure it’s at least not my problem.
CHAPTER 2
I stareat the syringe jabbed into my thigh, and as the clear, oily liquid makes its way through the needle in the slow way it always does, I think about how I’ve gotten here.
Over the course of four years, I’ve injected myself with, in total, about 2 grams of estradiol valerate, 10 milligrams at a time. That’s a statistical rounding error…lighter than a sugar cube. Also, don’t give me shit about doing this during my work shift, or that I should do it in a more controlled environment. HRT gives me too much energy for me to do it anywhere close to when I want to go to sleep, so doing it in the cleanest restroom on the 10th floor is what I’ve had to settle on.
With the plunger fully down, I pull the needle straight up and out of my thigh, a dot of blood and oil welling up in its wake. I lay a bandage over it, the ritual calming me. Needles used to scare the fuck out of me, and now I could do this in my sleep…if the rush of the E wouldn’t keep me awake all night. Sometimes I’ll hit a blood vessel and have to deal with a mild horror show, but today’s injection seems to have gone off without a hitch. Now, I just have to keep doing it every week for the rest of my entire life. Gladly.
I stand up…slowly, very slowly. I’ve learned my lesson with that after passing out a couple of times after eagerly jumping up with the estrogen flooding my system.
Even with that minuscule amount of estrogen absorbed by my body, the effects have been beyond dramatic. My formerly flat chest is now adorned with soft, beautiful breasts. The way my jeans hang on my rounded hips always astounds me. I stare at myself in the mirror. My face has gotten rounder and softer. I’mbeautifulnow, and I can’t get over it. Laser hair removal did what the hormones couldn’t quite take care of, and now I can, for the most part, be the person I want to be. My hair falls to my shoulders now, and I constantly get compliments on it.
But I can’t ignore the isolation it brought, too. Discovering you’re trans is a tough enough journey, but the strain it puts on your existing relationships will show you exactly how strong they are, and which ones will break when tested by something as extreme as you bring your true self. Some of my friends accepted me with open arms, others shied away. It was a subtle separation, beginning with a lot of ‘ahh, no, I can’t hang out, I have a lot going on’, eventually drifting to more and more time between check-ins, until eventually no contact at all. I used to mourn the friends I lost, worrying that there was something wrong with me. But I wasn’t the one with the problem.
My family was, of course, not having any of it. I wasn’t exactly their favorite son when all this began, and I quickly became their least favorite, grudgingly acknowledged daughter the moment I told them. They tried to connect for a while, tried to make it seem like they were OK with it, but I saw the disapproval in their eyes grow. After a couple of years, they gave up that charade too. Now it was the occasional call around holidays, basically just formalities to establish proof of life.
I’d made new friends, and found family in queer circles. Other than that whole thing being full of drama that could be toomuch at times, it was nice. And to be fair, some of that drama was of my own creation. I had meetups with other transfemmes here and there, and had even been in a few relationships since transitioning, all with other trans women. Having a new life after living in the shadow of myself for so long is one of the most exciting things I’ve ever experienced.
But this time of year reminds you how isolating being this different can be. I’ve never minded the isolation, though. At least that’s what I tell myself.
