I was never a boy. I was always a girl. In spite of the lies that were constantly being told to me, by my body and by the world, there was never any real doubt about this truth. I was just one of those girls who were told that they had to live as a boy. But now I look back on my childhood and I know that this was my time. The one piece of the puzzle I thought I would never be able to find. It was my girlhood. It was my youth. When I was a girl.
I posted a song on my YouTube channel entitled Once Upon a Blue Balloon. It is a journey song, beginning with the blue balloon my parents tied on the mailbox at the end of the driveway on the day I was born. It travels through the struggles and eventual horrors of pretending to be male and trying to be male.
The song ends with the joys that come with living authentically. Then upon an angel wing. Time became a living thing. Life itself awoke in Spring. And butterflies began to sing. It is outside the definition of humanity for any person to deny these joys to another.
It has only been in the last few years that I began to truly understand the absolute, indelible reality of what was happening. Being a girl, but living as a boy. Being a woman, but living as a man. Buying into the lie that my body has some magical power to tell my soul who I am.
In the long and the short of it, all things were leading me to the moment in time when I could shed the dark enclosure of pretending to be a man, remove my soul from within the lifelong prison cell, and walk openly into the light.
What happened next was nothing short of a miracle. Whether by the hand of God, or by a pebble placed gently into the middle of the ocean causing a ripple of peace, truth, and correctness to extend from one end of the universe to the other. It was a miracle, indeed.
There was no becoming a woman in some mythical sense that a man becomes a woman. There was becoming a woman in the sense that a girl becomes a woman. It is the natural progression of all that had always been meant to be. The awakening of the soul. The epiphany of the actual intent of the Creator.
In the movie, Field of Dreams, there is a scene where Ray Kinsella, speaking to Terence Mann, says "You once wrote, 'There comes a time when all the cosmic tumblers have clicked into place, and the universe opens itself up for a few seconds, to show you what is possible.'"
This is the transition. It is not a transition from male to female. It is a transition from impossible to possible. From darkness to light, deception to honesty, pretend to real. It is a transition of truth. A transition of life. From being a girl to being a woman. I have finally come into my destiny, and all the cosmic tumblers have clicked into place.
You know, I cry a lot more easily today than I used to. Does that make me more of a woman, or just more of a human being? Or is it that embracing myself as a woman makes me more of a human being?
Things became a lot more clear when I stopped trying to become someone and simply started learning to be. Because there is only one thing I know for sure - I am precisely and perfectly who I am supposed to be.
As my journey progresses, it is my hope to be more of a human being. Authenticity makes that oh-so-much-more possible. And now when I remember my childhood, I do not remember being a boy. My memories are of places never visited. Memories like twirling down the aisle of the local department store, next to my mom, on the life-or-death mission of finding me the perfect dress.
I remember these things that never happened because I can no longer recall ever being a boy. I have only the perfect memories of childhood. The one missing piece of the puzzle has finally been found. It was my girlhood. It was my youth. When I was a girl.