15. Dear me

Dear past me,
Foremost, yes, you are indeed still alive. You tried to bury yourself six feet down below, but it did not go to plan. You survived. You woke up in a hospital room, and you did not die. Except, in a way, you did. I am sorry. Let me explain: As you know, the only thing you were ever certain about was the fact that you were not a guy. You were raised to obey, and you were raised to adopt opinions instead of making your own. You were raised not to question anything and simply go along with everything you were told to do. In spite of it all, you knew one thing for sure: You were not and never would be a man.
At age six, you stumbled into your mother’s closet and pulled one of her dresses over your head. You stepped into her high heels, tried to walk and failed miserably. When they found you like that, they laughed and were amused. They laughed until you told them that you liked it. It was the first time you were told that it was unnatural for a ‘boy’ to like things for ‘girls’.
You learned to keep quiet after that. You learned to always pick blue over pink and to stay away from anything that was even mildly considered ‘for girls’. You learned to behave ‘appropriately’. At least you learned to do so as long as even a single pair of eyes lingered on your feeble frame. You grew to like empty rooms, and you grew to prefer loneliness. Because only in the dark, you could simply be. You appreciated the freedom from their stalking eyes. Those eyes that were always scanning every single inch of your body in search for a flaw. You released a breath you did not know you were holding whenever you ended up on your own. And it was fine. Until it was not anymore.
You held hope for a brighter future as soon as you turned old enough to leave this hellhole. The despair only caught up to you when you realized that the hate extended far further than merely the people who raised you. You ran and ran until you could no longer go on. Putting everything on the line, you revealed your true self and were immediately shot down. You tried to start anew and hide once again, but it was far too late for that. You never felt at home anywhere because you got the concept of home wrong all along. Home is not a place to come back to every afternoon. Home are people. People who care and accept you for who you are. You had the insane and incomprehensible opportunity to meet those people. They clutched you tightly to their chests and never let you go. They showed you that there is another reality you had discarded long ago. They drowned you in love and provided you with your strongest desire: happiness.
I am happy. I have survived and now I live.
The demons in your head will never leave. You cannot turn back time and make undone what has long since passed. You can, however, accept them as part of who you are without letting them define you. You can carry that weight while growing stronger until you barely even notice that it is still right there.
You have to reach out a hand and hold it steady. It will be bruised, denied and attacked. You will bleed and you will continue to bleed. In the end, it will be worth it.
I once asked myself from where you can grasp the energy to start a chain reaction. The answer is simple: Find support and community. There are always people like you out there. You just have to find them. If I can ensure that even a single person’s dead name stays dead by telling you this, then it will have been worth it.
Yours sincerely, Audrey