#i already got my saw tickets.. now i just need my insidious tickets

[x-inc4nd3scent-x]

its now my goal to see insidious chapter 2 and saw unrated in theaters in the same month

[mollymauk-teafleak]

baby, you’re like lightning in a bottle (chapter one)

Peter Nureyev has a new name, a fake identity, a fake life to step into to complete his very first off planet solo mission. Unfortunately, it involves going undercover as a high school student at Oldtown High. And the people he meets there mean his mission will go anything but smoothly.

This high school AU was the idea of my amazing girlfriend @spiky-lesbian

Please leave a comment over on ao3 or reblog if you like this! 

---

If he repeated his mission over and over again in his head, he couldn’t fail.

That’s what Peter Nureyev told himself as he sat on the hard plastic chair, gripping it’s edge with knuckles tighter than they needed to be, his jaw set hard like he was trying to chew something that wouldn’t go down. He would fix his face, smooth his posture, shift his face into the look of unshakable confidence he’d spent so long perfecting but he needed to look nervous right now. He needed to look like a cornered animal.

Which was convenient, at least. Less work for him.  

Repeat the instructions. Remember the rules. Follow the plan. Don’t fuck up. It sounded so simple and, if Peter believed hard enough, it would be. First rule of thieving, belief in your own skills is half the battle.

There was a secretary at a desk across from him, taking up most of what little room there was in the anteroom to the office. She was mostly focused on her computer screen, typing or tiredly slapping the flat of her hand against it when it glitched out, but every so often she’d give him a sympathetic glance. The kind of glance you’d naturally give a clearly underfed, scrawny teenager, starting a brand new school in the dead centre of the roughest part of Oldtown, with his too big, second hand clothes, scuffing his worn trainers against the carpet. The kind of glance that said oh you poor thing, you have no idea what you’re in for.

If only she knew, Peter thought with a dry amusement. If only she knew just how far he’d travelled, how out of his element he was right now, how he’d simultaneously faced things so much worse than a high school and was so deeply terrified by it. If she saw everything in his cheap rucksack that weren’t school supplies; the long range signal device, the pen drive stuffed full of the galaxy’s most insidious malware, the plasma knife, all carefully concealed amongst the notebooks and pens and pencils. Peter wondered how her face would change then.

It was as if remembering it was there had reminded him what he was here to do and the nerves welled up fresh, like a wound had been prodded. His heart began to thud in his thin chest, his palms began to prickle with heat, the old tic he’d been trying so hard to suppress made his knee bounce. Peter tried to tell himself it would be fine, talking himself through the plan, repeating the mission again and again as if to prove to himself that he knew it by heart. As if simply remembering the words Mag had left him with would be the same as pulling off his very first solo, off planet job.

First rule of thieving, don’t go into a gig you aren’t ready for. Mag was a pragmatist, he’d always been the one sensibly pouring water on Peter’s fervour, after all, making their risks calculated and manageable. And so much was riding on this, the work Peter did here would open up whole new streams of income for them back on Brahma, so much more fuel for the fight. With everything invested in it, the ticket to Mars, the accomodation for a month, the effort to build Peter a fake life solid enough to get him enrolled in a government funded high school, there was no room to play it fast and loose. If Mag said his apprentice was ready for this, then it had to be true. When had he ever steered him wrong?

Peter allowed himself a sigh, one that the secretary wouldn’t hear or, if she did, she’d chalk it up to the understandable anxiousness of the new kid. He’d come a long way from the first time he’d stolen an apple from a stall under Mag’s careful eye.

To keep himself focused, he played a game. Peter did that a lot, he found himself uncomfortable with any time not consumed by some useful distraction. It was why he always listened to the radio as he fell asleep, no matter how many times Mag threatened to take the power brick out of it. He just couldn’t stand idle silence. So he pushed his glasses up his nose and took a quick study of the secretary’s desk to see what information he could glean about her.

His brain worked fast, plucking the bits of information out greedily. Family picture, wife, three children. Notes on her desk, the numbers of different homes for the elderly in Hyperion. Infirm parents and an upcoming heavy drain on her finances, then. Her nails were long but the polish was chipping, like she drummed them on her desk frequently. A short temper or just stressed? More likely the latter, she’d been kind to him so far. Or at least as kind as someone who worked in a place where she must see a hundred neglected, underweight kids with clear signs of poverty could afford to be without going insane. Her desk had no signs of organisation whatsoever, not so much as a sticky note to pin a flag in that riot of loose papers. So she was distracted, under pressure and clearly prone to losing track of information.

Peter thought he could drain the full contents of her bank account within a month.

Obviously, thinking that didn’t make him feel good and he’d never actually do it. But he could feel how proud Mag would be, if he brought him all of that from just a minute of observation, her whole life mapped out in a blueprint. How he’d smile at him and squeeze his shoulder and remind him of the first rule of thieving, know how to read your marks in a single glance, a glance might be all you get. Peter had mastered that one at age seven.

The secretary’s intercom buzzed suddenly and Peter didn’t need to fake his nervous jolt at the harsh, staticy sound. The voice on the other end was too muddy to make out but the secretary lifted her eyes and said, “You can go on through now. Mr Spoor is ready for you.”

Nureyev nodded, scrambling to his feet, patting himself down in a way that would look like he was trying to neaten himself up when in fact, he was deliberately ruffling his hair, yanking down his t-shirt so the frays on the hem would be visible, missing the smudge under his ear. First rule of thieving, you’re never in such a position of power as when the mark underestimates you.

The principal’s office was pretty meagre but at least had a slight edge on the rest of his run down, underfunded school. The chair Peter sat in was worn through so the stuffing poked out, the desk between them had deep gouges in it that hadn’t been sanded down, the computer to the side of them was an ancient model that Peter could have cracked with his eyes closed. That boded well for the rest of his mission.

“It’s customary to have these orientation meetings with your guardian present,” the principal's voice was cool and had no trace of a warm welcome in it, not even a greeting. It matched the expression on his craggy face, “I was expecting to meet them.”

“Um…” Peter swallowed hard, shifting uncomfortably, shrinking himself down, “They, uh...my dad...he...he was sick this morning so he couldn’t come.”

There was a lot that could be read into that, half a hundred hidden explanations that, given the catchment area of Oldtown High, Mr Spoor would have seen again and again. So he didn’t press, just giving Peter an unimpressed glance like it was his fault that his non existent father was absent, turning to the screen.

“Very well then...Peter Ransom, correct?”

“That’s right…” Peter nodded.

“That’s right, sir.”

Peter gave a little start, cheeks reddening to come off as merely intimidated and unsure rather than outwardly defiant. As fun as that would be, it wouldn’t make his task any easier, “Sir. Sorry. Sir.”

Mr Spoor likely would have narrowed his lips if they weren’t already worn down to a permanent grimace of disapproval, turning back to the screen and whatever information was on there. Most of it counterfeit, of course.

“So you were born on the outer rim...passable scores in your previous assessments…”

Peter kept his face impassive, though something roiled inside him. The grades Mag had put together for him were fantastic, he knew that for a certainty, and he could match them with his ability. But he didn’t rise, he didn’t bite. He just looked suitably shy and intimidated, scuffing the toe of his sneaker against the floor, fidgeting with the large, second hand glasses Mag had given him to replace his usual sleek, cat eye ones.

“You’ll be starting with us as a senior, given your age and...supposed ability. I expect you to maintain an acceptable standard of work, given that you’re joining so late in the year. We cannot afford for you to fall behind,” Mr Spoor continued, looking more at the screen than the child in front of him, “What is it exactly that brings someone from a place like Brahma to a Martian high school?”

Peter swallowed, “My dad got a job on Mars, sir. He said things would be better for us here...that I’d be able to go to a good school and make friends…”

The principal didn’t even try to hide his snort of disdain, deepening Peter’s instantly formed dislike of the man. He must have thought this new student of his was blind, that he hadn’t seen the graffiti covering the front of the building, how the chairs didn’t match in the classrooms he’d passed, how the books were dog eared and the floors permanently scuffed. Did he enjoy seeing these children clearly born just after the war, with their tattered families and nightmares of a time they could only half remember, crossing the galaxy for something close to a life worth living, coming through his school and being ground down just like the rest of them? Did he find it amusing, seeing a boy who’d grown up scared of the sky itself daring to hope that things might be better here?

Again, Peter repeated his mission in his head.

“We might as well take you on,” Mr Spoor said, as if he didn’t particularly care one way or the other, “I’m sure you’ll fit right in with our other students.” The way he said it made it sound neither reassuring or like a positive.

“Thank you, sir,” Peter feigned a mix of relief, excitement and fear, “I promise I’ll work really hard and do really well.”

The look Mr Spoors gave him made him wonder how he’d like a plasma knife at his throat but, thankfully, it was brief, soon replaced by dismissal, “You’ll begin classes after lunch. Go wait outside again and my secretary will give you your timetable.”

With more breathless, slightly panicked enthusiasm, Peter retreated, looking forward to rewarding himself with a momentary, bitter scowl in between the door closing and approaching the secretary.

But, as it happened, he never got the chance. Because there was now another student was occupying the same chair he’d been sitting on. And Peter’s heart stopped dead for a moment, for a number of reasons.

One, their face was covered in blood. Splatters of it radiated out from a nose that was now swollen and tender, from a lip that was messily split, and Peter knew enough of basic field medicine to know their left eye would be black and purple and swollen nearly shut the next day. The fists angrily clenched in their lap had split knuckles too, just to complete the image.

Two, the face beneath the gore was beautiful.

Peter steadied himself, swallowing hard and taking the seat next to his new schoolmate. Almost immediately, the uninjured eye fixed a glare on him so sharp and vicious that Peter promptly shifted to the next chair along.

He knew the over eager, overcompensating new student he was supposed to be playing would immediately try to make friends, stick his hand out in the gap between them and introduce himself in a too loud, too sunny voice as Peter Ransom. Probably to be met with another glare and possibly a punch to the face, given how much they were twitching with what was clearly post-fight adrenaline. But for some reason, he couldn’t quite manage it so they sat in a frosty silence, punctuated only by the secretary's nails tapping on her computer keys and the steady drip of blood from their nose to the floor.  

Still, Peter had a thief’s curiosity. He stole enough glances at the other kid to glean a little bit about them. They were his age, though shorter and stockier by nature, with an anger naturally set into their face that poor newbie Peter Ransom would never feel. Their hair was a mess of black curls, piled on top of their head and shaved underneath, their ear held numerous piercings they were clearly too young to have acquired legally or hygienically. That surely wouldn’t be permitted by the dress code Peter had studied avidly along with the schematics of the school, the faculty list and every other piece of information he’d been able to get about Oldtown High, determined to do a good and  thorough job. The code would probably have had something to say about their combat boots that were a size too big, their fishnet tights and short skirt, their sleeveless shirt with, incongruously, a picture of a cartoon man on it and the bright, bubbly text reading ‘Turbo!’. There had probably been bigger misdemeanours to think about at the time than a dress code violation.

“What the hell are you staring at?”

Peter jumped at the rough, angry voice, realising the kid was scowling right at him. Their face was clearly made for that expression; Peter had faced down armed guards, lasers from the clouds, jobs that would have landed him in jail for ten times the years he’d been alive but he’d seldom felt so intimidated.

And people didn’t normally notice him looking. After all, first rule of thieving, your eyes are your greatest weapon, don’t be obvious when you use them.

“I...nothing, I’m not…” he searched for a response, glad it was in Ransom’s nature to be easily put off.

“Do I look like the kind of guy you want to mess with right now?” the scowl deepened, sending a fresh line of blood running down their chin from their broken lip.

“Um...no,” Peter decided it was better to give simple answers.

“Yeah,” they gave a dry snort with no humour in it, “So keep your eyes to yourself or lose them, pal.”

Blood, angry tones and threats didn’t scare Peter Nureyev but they weren’t the reason he looked away hastily and was glad of it. It had more to do with dark eyes, holding depths he knew he’d never open up with just a glance, a faded white scar across a flat nose that he thought he’d like to trace with the very tip of his finger, full lips that looked soft somehow even as they were curled in anger.

Peter gave himself a mental slap, repeating his mission again, louder and firmer. He could practically hear Mag laughing at him all the way from Brahma.

First rule of thieving, stop mooning after every pretty boy who so much as glances at you, Pete! How many times do I have to tell you?

He had to admit, he’d been hoping for a smoother start on his first off planet solo mission.

Fortunately, the secretary spoke up not long after, “Peter? Peter Ransom?”

He jumped to his feet, receiving a few papers from her. A class schedule, a map and an outline of expected behaviour. Peter had seen all of this and far, far more in his research but he made sure Ransom looked at it with apprehension, as if it was written in another language.

“And for you, Mr Steel, another detention slip,” her voice took on a kind of fond, bemused exhaustion, “Add it to the collection.”

The other student jumped up and swiped the pink piece of paper from her hands, stuffing it carelessly in the pocket of his skirt, “Thanks, Brenda.”

She rolled her eyes and turned to Peter, “It’s lunchtime at the moment, I’m sure Mr Steel here would be happy to show you to the cafeteria.”

Instantly, Mr Steel stiffened and shot her an exasperated look which she soundly ignored, turning back to her computer screen in a manner that suggested he could stand and look at her like that all day, for all she cared. Eventually, he gave a growl and stomped out of the office, down the corridor. Peter followed, pausing in the doorway to give him a chance to storm off and leave him behind.

There was no hiding his surprise when, after a few seconds, he snapped, “Are you coming or what?”

Peter did.

Nureyev knew every inch of the hallways but of course Ransom didn’t, so he fixed an expression of wary awe on his face. There were some things that didn’t take a lot of effort, like the swear word carved into one locker that he’d never even heard of or when the sound of a muffled explosion shook the floor above them where the science rooms were. They passed other students, who shot unsurprised looks at the state of Steel and appraised him like a piece of fresh meat in a butcher’s. Peter would have loved the chance to try his knife or his wits against one of them, he’d long ago learned to make up for the scrawny appearance that made them look at him so hungrily.

Stick to the mission. Follow the instructions. Do your job.

Abruptly, Steel stopped, without turning around, “Cafeteria’s down that way. See you.”

Peter blinked, glancing at the double doors he was indicating with a thumb, which were practically shaking out of their frames with the sound of what had to be a riot behind them, “Aren’t you eating too?”

“What’s it to you, pal?” Juno did turn then, just enough to fix him with an incredulous look.

Before Peter had to come up with an answer, they were interrupted by a loud shout of, “Juno!”

Peter thought his eyes were playing tricks on him for a moment, an exact copy of Steel was bounding down some stairs to their left. Except this one was smiling, a hundred kilowatt grin, and wearing leggings, an oversize sweatshirt and sneakers that flashed when they hit the floor.

“Oh god, Juno, your face is a mess,” he grimaced at the sight of his twin’s face, “Jones did a number on you, huh?”

“‘Bout half the number I did on them, they got carted off to the emergency room,” Steel, now Juno, grunted, still stiff and awkward, throwing glances in Peter’s direction.

“I’m sure they deserved it,” the other Steel shrugged, turning their grin on Peter, “Hey! I’m Benzaiten, you can call me Ben or Benten. You new?”

“Um, yes! I just started today actually, I...I’m from off planet and…”

“That’s cool! You can tell us more over lunch,” Ben’s tidal wave of positivity bowled over him, reaching out and squeezing his shoulder.

Both Juno and Peter froze.

“Over what now?”

“Uh, that’s kind of you but...um, I don’t know if I…”

“He’s new, Juno, of course he’s coming to sit with us!” Ben shrugged, like the matter was obvious.

Juno was staring daggers at his twin, looking ready to throttle him, “The guy says he’s fine, so he’s fine.”

“Come on, Juno, don’t be a bitch,” Ben laughed fondly, like he didn’t see that his twin was gritting his teeth hard enough to shatter, “We’d better get moving, Mick and Sasha will already be waiting…”

He turned on his neon flashing heel and bounced down the hall in the complete opposite direction to the cafeteria, not waiting for them. Juno groaned and pressed his fingertips to his temples like he was trying to ward off a migraine. After what was clearly him counting backwards from ten, he frowned and set off after his brother.

“Come or don’t come,” he growled over his shoulder at Peter, “I couldn’t care less.”

For a moment, neither Nureyev nor Ransom really knew what to do. He repeated his mission again in his head.

Blend in. Sneak in after dark. Find the evidence. Upload the malware. Send it to Mag. Run.

Nowhere in that list did it say follow a beautiful, angry stranger and his bubblegum brother god only knew where. In fact, Peter was pretty sure they fell squarely under the definition of a distraction, something he knew to avoid. He knew what the sensible choice was, the decision someone who could be trusted with missions like this, who would work tirelessly to be the best thief he could be, would make.

But...wouldn’t this count as blending in?

Armed with that flimsy excuse, Peter followed Juno Steel.

[goingsllightlymad]

Baby It’s You - Part 3.

Pairing: Roger Taylor x reader, Brian May x reader

Summary: The year is 1981 and Roger Taylor is pretty sure he has made it. With the Game Tour stretching out before him and the band more successful than ever, he doesn’t think that anything can mess up the perfect picture that is his life. That is, until he receives a letter from an astrophysics PhD student studying abroad, and finds himself sucked into her world of secrets and mistaken identities. Roger Taylor is about to find out that his life is a lot more complicated than he ever thought.

Wordcount: 3507. 

Warnings: Okay so this one is Not Good. Look, I know, you know, we all know. Let’s give me a fucking break, okay? 

________________________________________________________________

You had been coming up the street, back to your apartment and the comfort of your bed, when the letter came. Leaving the library a little later than usual, you caught the evening post in front of you as you walked, the postman with his shiny bald head and neat uniform driving up beside you, stopping here and there to duck into buildings and empty out his bags. By the time you had got to your apartment block he was already in front of you, opening up the letter-boxes and sifting through his piles and piles of letters. One by one by one, the pile dwindling quickly until at last one went into your box, and then another minute and he was leaving, the front door banging shut behind him. Unlocking your box, you took out the letter, turned it over in your hand.

There was your name on the front, messily written in some strange handwriting that you did not recognise at all. The right apartment address, all the same. And then, in the very corner, the stamp of some hotel address, from where it had been sent. Dover. Why would you be getting a letter from an unknown sender in Dover? You locked up the letter-box and hurried up the stairs to your apartment. Opening the door, you found the apartment all but quiet. At eight thirty on a Friday night you really shouldn't have expected it to be, still you felt your heart sink at the crowds of people in the sitting room, draped all over the sofa and coffee table and spilling out into the kitchen and the bedrooms. You knew better than to try and go into your bedroom - you didn't want to know what you might walk into.

Turning on your heel, you backed out into the corridor, retraced your footsteps down the stairs and through the front door, out onto the street. The light was dimming quickly, the streetlamp on the corner turning on as the night drew in and the warm ebbed from the city that never slept. You were beginning to think you would not either. Under the streetlight there was a bus-stop which was really only a narrow bench and an awning, a poster of the bus-times plastered on the post of the streetlight. Sitting there, you took a deep breath and opened the envelope, closing your eyes and only opening them when you had unfolded the letter in your hands.

Dear (Y/N),

You read it all, and then read it through one more time when you were done, a little surprised and a little more amused. It seemed like a silly thing that you would do, and you might have laughed at yourself if you weren't outside, in public. That might be a bit weird, even by your measures. There was something about it that was so very strange, so very endearing. You felt all at once like you were doing something very secret and very wrong, a dirty secret or a love affair. You had never done this kind of thing before.

When you looked up from the page at last it was all but dark, the street deserted as the last of the students walking home from college had disappeared into the buildings along the way. There was a glow of lamplight from each window opened onto the street, the leaves of the trees painted an ethereal gold. All at once the night was beautiful, New York not so bad. All at once this little letter had made things so very complicated.

You knew this was the end of it. You had written, they had written back. No more to make of it, nothing else you had to say. You'd write to your boyfriend tonight, tell him what a foolish thing you'd done by mistake. By tomorrow morning you'd have forgotten about all of this entirely. Still there was that part of you that buzzed with questions they had left unanswered in one letter that was nowhere near enough. You could not be satisfied, and deep down you knew that this was never going to be only one letter.

Rubbing your tired eyes and standing from your bench, you walked a little way down the street, over to the park a few blocks over that you had coffee in sometimes. You needed to clear your head, you needed to come to your senses. Your head was filling up with thoughts you had never seen coming, never thought you'd have to deal with before, and the truth was you did not have the space. You needed your head for thought of space, for thoughts of astrophysics and houses and rent and employment and affording a plane ticket back to London in four months; not for random letters from strangers in Dover who asked you about your day more than anyone else had this past eight months. After all, it was just a letter. So why did this feel like something so much more?

You looked again at the letter in your hand, the words growing bigger and bigger in your mind until they wrapped around your throat, the insidious promise of something that no one knew that you. The adventure that you had dreamed of when you took girls to the observatory and looked above the line of their lips to the stars that flickered on the ceiling. Oh these letters, oh this person, who was the stars to you with every word they had written. You cursed the words they had not said.

Their questions in their letter - how could you just not answer. How cruel it must be to leave them so unsatisfied. Would that they cared enough to be unsatisfied for you. From the pond in the park, the pigeons rose up into the sky. You would write when you got home.

And then the chill of the night breeze, running its fingertips up your spine, whispering into your skin. The sting of reality creeping back in, and the letter felt heavy in your hand. Was it even any of your business? It had all been some bizarre mistake, all your own fault, and you had dealt with it. You promised yourself that you would have nothing to say, not when each night you passed the hall phone, knew you could not call Ben, your Ben, when there was not a thing that you could say. He always seemed so far away. The pigeons settled back onto the grass, the sound of wings beating the air fading away into the low hum of New York nights. There was a couple on the bench by the waterside; as you passed, you saw their hands together. It had been so long since anyone had held your hand. It had been so long since anyone had asked you about your day.

You wanted to reply. You wanted to know more. You wanted to talk to them again. You wanted to ask the, all those things that they had left unanswered in their letter, because they probably thought that you would leave it there. Strangers who had once had something that for a moment might have tied them together but made no sense anymore. And all the world could know that you should leave it all that way.

Don't reply, don't keep secrets. But:-

Don't you deserve to have this, just this once? One person, one secret. It wasn't like the world would end. It wasn't like you were cheating on anyone. The only person getting hurt was you.

You sank to your knees by the water's edge, took from your pocket the fountain pen and began to write. Writing on the back of their letter, sloppy but you were smiling. You wondered what they must think of you.

Dear Anon. ,

Won't you tell me your name at least? I feel I know so little about you, the poor stranger who now knows all my woes because they had the misfortune of being at the receiving end of my sheer idiocy. That being said, I think I have to agree. I should hate to leave it here too.

And there it was - the final seal. No turning back now. The only way to go was onwards, to do the things you should never do. What would Ben think of you now.

As for that "exciting life" of mine, I can very much assure you that that is entirely untrue. Astrophysics is lovely, but it's not exactly the kind of thing that keeps one going the way that music does. I think if I could do anything at all with my life, I would become a musician. At least that way I could get out of bloody university. Must be nice, all that stuff. I wonder...

Don't do a PhD, it's a lie. Doesn't teach you anything but how to hate something that you thought you could do forever. I love the stars, I love the theories, I love the things I'm learning, I just... I hate having to learn it all. You know what I mean? I should rather hope you didn't die of boredom. It might make our letters a little more strained, I should think. Thank you very much for your delightful vote of confidence in me, telling me that I'm "complaining". I can't quite tell whether to feel insulted or called out! Either way, I shall in turn rely  upon you for my glimpse of reality and whatever it is you do. There. I need you and you say that you need me. I think we have a (strange) arrangement. Still, it occurs to me yet again how unfair it is that you know so much of me, and I nothing at all about you.

Tell me who you are; or if not that, what you do. What keeps you up at night. What do you dream of? What dark secrets have you never told another soul that you must now tell to me, because it is not very likely that we shall meet randomly in the street. I want to know so much about you.

You really must not worry about me, my love. I shall sleep plenty when I am back on my home soil and out of this damn university. Even right now my roommates are holding another party. I know I really shouldn't blame them - it's Friday night, I get it, and I'm glad that they're having their fun, it's just not my scene. I don't know, I've just always been the sort of person to prefer the quiet evenings to the ones with so many other people around. I fear you'll never have met a person as horrifically introverted as me.

I hope you do not blame me for this, but I really must agree with your friend. You say that Ben is right about me, but your friend is not wrong about you either! We may both be hypocrites together, for it seems that you will not rest until I get some sleep, and I will not sleep until you get some rest. Checkmate, dear. I know for a fact that I should not listen to you, a stranger in Dover writing me one letter when a mistake of mine has inconvenienced him, still I think you know I always will. Your advice may be terrible indeed, still it cannot be any worse than my own.

Get some sleep. Take care of yourself. (My wonderful words of wisdom).

Are you away from home a lot? I should hate that. You are free to call me a terribly boring creature of habit (for that is exactly what I am), still I cannot bear to be away from my home; my cats; my bookcase. I won't lie, the books are most of it. I am a bit of a nerd. I must make myself content with all the stories you must have. All the wonderful places you have been; the people you have seen. I want to know everything about it. You must have the most incredible of lives.

New York is getting better now that I am learning to see it the way you do. The diners, the people, definitely the accent. I am particularly fond of the accent. I shouldn't laugh at my roommates, but that doesn't mean that I don't. It's just so very endearing! I wonder what is the sound of your voice. I love to read your words. I think I should love to hear you say them even more. Then at least it will not feel as though we are on opposite sides of the Earth.

I am afraid to say that tonight I cannot hear our beloved pigeon orgy while I am writing to you - as I have mentioned, I have been quite driven out of our apartment by the party that's positively raging there by now. You must not laugh at me when I tell you that I am writing to you from the park on the corner. I like to sit by the lake when I am thinking, and I suppose this means you make me thoughtful. I shall let you wonder whether I am thinking of you, my dear Anon, but then again you know I am. For now at least, you have quite fixed yourself into my brain. I could not not think of your letter if I tried.

I am sure that my pigeons are quite content, getting more action than I do. Not that I envy them. I mean, I envy them a little, but not... nevermind. Romance is quite definitely dead, I hate to say. At least, that is what I have found. Not that you should set much store by the pessimistic ramblings of a girl you shall never have the misfortune to meet. Still, love is not a luxury given to the lowly and working-class of us. We must reserve that right for the rich and the famous. The politicians and the rock-stars.

If I were larger than I am - smarter or prettier or simply somewhat interesting - I think that I could fall in love eternally. I think that I would love at first and every sight. I think that I could be the most hopeless of romantics that you would ever have known. I am only now wondering if that is a good thing, or something very bad.

You live on music - strangely that makes sense. You and I are just the same that way. "Your soul is made of music"... however can you say that you are not a poet or a writer or a philosopher or a god, and then say such things, so beautiful, that I think you write like no one ever will. Your soul may be made of music, but in your hands your soul bleeds through.

I wish that I could go along the concert of that band, but I do not have the strength to face the crowds they say will be there (or the money to spare for a ticket, but that doesn't sound half so impressive to say). But... I have listened to their music, the way everyone seems to want me to so much. I like them. Kind of. I do adore the singer, I mean. The guitarist seems a little over-confident, I have to say. Definitely a fan of the bassist (I do have a thing for good bassists). And the drummer... Oh, the drummer. I think he's quite fantastic. I've never really noticed the drums in a song before. I suppose we should just hope that this poor man never finds out that I think he's grand (I think he might find that a little bit weird)! I suppose it is this hopeless anxiousness of mine that's keeping me from going, nothing more, although I don't think they mind too much. It's not like they're ever going to know. I hope.

Ah, Lennon and McCartney. Unfortunately not two of the Beatles (that would indeed be intriguing of me, and would make my life a great deal more exciting, I should think), but my cats. If I had half the Beatles living in my apartment I'm sure you should be the first person I would tell, my dear stranger. There: another secret, and I do not even know your name. I feel as though I am at quite the disadvantage here.

How can you not have seen the Princess Bride? It is my absolute favourite - I always used to watch it with my father when I was little. "Sappy romance films"? It's a classic! True Love may be a myth, but it's the best thing to come of our miserable little lives. We can at least dream, or else we are but pointless. And don't tell me no one has ever made you feel this way! (I take it from your misplaced derision of 9-year-old girls that you are a man, which actually makes a lot of sense now). Romance is not made up, just hard to find. I'm sure someday you shall write to me and apologise, because then you'll have to admit how wrong you are about this. Someday.

God, don't remind me about the wedding. I can't stand the thought of it as it is. All those godawful dresses and the sitting around for the ceremony and everyone crying and old people I've never met before asking me when I'm going to get married too. I think I'm going to kill someone if they ask me when "my turn" is. I think you're meant to say Well Done with whatever, and Best Of Luck for whatever else. And then inevitably drink too much, hook up with someone questionable (which I can't even do because, as you have found out, I have my wonderful boyfriend there - sarcasm) and generally regret the whole affair. I am sure I shall be very much wanting of your enthusiasm. And whatever else you may give to me.

You mention your 'line of work' so much that I cannot help but speculate (I hope you will forgive me)... You travel much, are generally single, love music... an artist or a musician or an actor. Someone famous, someone very beautiful I am sure. Won't you tell me who you are?

Take comfort at least in the promise that you can never be 'forever alone' when I am likely to plague you with letters for as long as you respond. Although perhaps that is not the most comforting of thoughts.

Reply soon, or as soon 'as you wish',

(Y/N) x.

Your knees ached when you stood at last, your trouser-legs damp and grass-stained from the ground where you had knelt. There was a coldness in the park that you had not noticed before, and you pulled your coat closer around you to keep from shivering. The couples on the benches were drifting away, one by one, and you would soon be alone again. You signed the letter with your name and a little kiss that was nearly two, but two might have been too friendly and none might have been too aloof, at the bottom of the page where your words were cramped in a tight black tangle so as to make them all fit. You could have told him everything, if you had had the room. Slipping the note back into its envelope and folding it closed, you crossed out your address on the front and wrote the hotel's address again. You could only hope that it would get to him. You could only hope that he would read your words at all.

The postbox at the entrance to the park seemed further away than every day before, and the letter was heavy in your hand. You knew you shouldn't post it; you wanted to more than ever. In that moment all you could think about was everything, and everything was him. You dropped the letter into the letterbox and hurried away. No going back now; it was done.

At the apartment, the party was raging. More people than before were crowded in the living room, where your notes spilled over the coffee table around the champagne glasses and beer bottles. Tomorrow you would search for them, gather them up, resume the tedious life that you had left behind for that sweet hour or so alone with him. Tomorrow you would reenter the world, resume humanity, become an adult. Call your boyfriend.

Right now you pushed through the people, to the bedroom door down the hall where they would be already. People on your bed, kissing with the lights off. You turned them on, sent them out and locked the door. Tonight was for you, and tonight was for the boy who was half a world away. On the table by your bedside, a champagne bottle was opened, left behind; you took a long swallow, your hands around the neck, and let the night begin.

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oh jeez. Coming Back and I guess, Coming Out?

Well it has been over a few years I think since I was last on here and boy has things changed, myself included. I wasn’t planning on coming back on here as it was a horrendous triggering mess, couldn’t stand the bitchiness and toddlers... But my best buddy dragged my sorry ass back. My blog was an unmitigated disaster, I cringed for the longest time and was furious with myself. Mass deleting spree. It’s a long old read, maybe the longest post in the entire universe, but I cannot put this concisely. If you make it to the end, I thank you for witnessing this.

TW for CSA, SA, R, Su, Si. Just tread carefully. Crude, explicit and uncensored. 

If you know me in real life, please please do not reveal this information.

Some things are the same, still parenting, still confused, still in therapy, still fighting the same old demons but a lot has changed. I have grown up for a start, wizened up a bit, got some of my shit together and I am now single. I gave two fingers up to the NHS mental health service after the complete closure of therapeutic services in my area and sought private medical care. I am in private analytic psychotherapy weekly, getting to know myselves. I have now been formally/clinically diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, which has been a tough nut to get my teeth around. An old me, unsure who, used to write about it on here with complete assurance that it was the case and I didn’t recognise that attitude when I came back on. I will now be a lot more cautious with what I write with relation to my mental health because it puts me at great risk. I do not want the whole perimeter for my existence to be based on my mental health anymore... Even though it still governs my existence.

So yes, we are a “system” working towards consolidation of trauma and experiences in therapy and with private specialists, but we are primarily Aly. 

Another biggie to cover, and this will be the first place other than the survivors forum I will post this on, is that I am having serious issues with gender dysphoria. Now this is gonna sound very strange, for most that have known me I have seemed someone who sexualized their female body continually, putting it on display and clinging to it. Well... It came as a shock to me as to anyone I haven’t already come out to (literally 5 people I know in real life?). I will do what I can to explain and make sense of what is an ongoing discovery with my therapist.

Trauma fucks with people in many ways. Sexual and psychological trauma is an insidious beast that disguises themselves in many forms. Now as I have already covered, I have DID. A condition caused by having to adapt to survive severe and repeated complex trauma in childhood. I still have not much of an idea what that is but other me’s do. That is neither here or there for now, that is my business, but what it does is erase chunks of my memory of things I have been unable to process/deal with. 

As a kid, I was abnormal to say the least. A large chunk of that was due to trauma, switching continually and just casually failing my way through anything other than academics. One thing I didn’t understand was how the heck I couldn’t connect to the girls around me. I didn’t understand them, couldn’t get my head around how they worked or how they looked. I was tall, scrawny, long haired boyish thing that was torn between doing what they loved (getting muddy, trashing shit, buying the most ridiculous jeans you can imagine, pummelling people in rugby, pummelling people in the playground ((not proud of it)), studying, hanging out with boys, being silly) and who I felt I should be (cute, girly, into pink, dancers, sweet, gentle). 

That conflict tore my little primary school brain apart. What used to happen at home is a mystery but school was agony. I would go in a dishevelled mess and was a freak, as all and sundry used to make clear. Girls didn’t want me as their friend because I wasn’t like them, and my attempts to emulate them came across desperate, copycat, attention seeking behaviour. But dammit I still tried. Tried the pink, tried the cute stuff, but they were my sisters stuff... Not for me. I loved them but they didn’t look right on me, made me feel worse. My younger sister was an alien to me; a proper real life girl and that highlighted my freakishness. I was being rejected by everyone. Experiencing massive emotional and physical neglect at home, bullied at school, turned away by counsellors and tutors, ofc rejected by the boys and girls I fancied. 

ENTER FROM THE LEFT MY MAGICALLY SHIT DISSOCIATIVE POWERS.

I had a few angry boy personalities about by this time, I didn’t know they were boys until like September last year. I had a mass emergence of parts, all male, that stored these memories like time capsules. Memories I had forgotten due to my dissociative amnesia. Anyway, similarly to how these parts formed and were there early, so came a female personality. One that could preform girl where the rest of us couldn’t. Not very well at this stage, she was a young girl, but she dutifully tried to copy the girls we grew up around. Camouflaging what I guess was early stage dysphoria from myself and those around me. This part felt terror at appearing anything like a boy, because looking like a boy when we should be a girl would get us bullied and rejected again. And we were alone enough. 

Around this time, I think between 9-11, I was visibly changing a lot in photos. Sometimes I would be incredibly tomboyish, othertimes... painfully... a mismatched attempt at what we felt a girl should be. Combine that with the elusive sexual abuse we aren’t clear of yet, we prioritised being sexually attractive over all else. Boys liked girls that had tits. Boys liked girls that liked their tits. My family liked girls that were girls, and tits were a thing girls had, make up were what girls wore. Girls liked girls that looked like girls, and were jealous of girls who looked sexy. Well that is who we will be, couldn’t be cute, so let’s be sexy instead. I wore miniskirts that were obscene, tank tops saying “sexy kitty” on it, and stuffed my croptop to make sure my tiny prepubescent body looked that little bit more adult. That didn’t go how we wanted it to. We looked more like a freak than ever because parts were still clinging desperately to their boyhood, and we looked like a clusterfuck to be honest. A sad one though. Desperately sad and my heart breaks to look back at that confused person in the photos.To be clear though, we were not at this point attaching any of this to gender, boyhood wasn't at this point me saying “LOOK I AM A BOY” but kinda what we really were without connecting the word boy to it. I wasn’t afforded an opinion of my own at this age, raised in the church, within a violent and abusive household in literally one of the whitest, hetero-normative, conservative towns in the UK erases ones ability to discover themselves.

In a final act of madness to solidify that i was a normal girl we went to an all girls school. 

Mistake.

Before we even got to that dam school we watched The Matrix. For the first time we saw someone that looked like a girl but also looked like a boy. We were mystified. We bypassed Trinity, she was a she and we didn’t connect at all, but the blonde one (who died very early on) has short boyish spiky hair. So we took our smol ass to the hairdressers and insisted we got our past shoulder length hair cut completely off. That did not go the way we planned. We looked older, looked somehow more like a freak girl/boy thing, and it was horrifying. We also looked like our mum, which was another problem related to the abuse stuff. We cried for ages because we felt like a freak, didn’t understand why we did it, couldn’t change it and we were about to start at the new, All Girls Grammar school. Shit. 

The first two years at that school was hell. My mum finally kicked my dad out, but we were still having to see him weekly. I was at this point dissociating all the time. I would have three loads of school stuff with me all the time, for reasons i couldn’t understand. I didn’t understand why the other girls had one pencil case when I had 3, had to have 3! How in the heck did these girls carry their stuff not in a bag or a giant tray like I had to?! Well I was catering to the parts that were present without knowing it. Either way I was bait man, freaking bait.

Skinny, tall, covered head to toe in excoriation marks, short tufty hair, looked like a boy, but so desperate to fit in I wore my dam mums make up. I got lost all the time, was crying all the time or having fits where i would smash stuff, steal things, yell for no reason or be very sexually overt. I was torn apart. A website was set up by my old so called friends called The Aly Fan Club, where they took photos of me around school, uploaded them to the net and commented on them, with people (usually men) commenting what they wanted to do to me. I took all this in silence because when i got home, my amnesia would wipe that shit clean from my brain for ages. From one hell to another. 

Coming out as what I thought was gay at this time was another huge problem, like any emo nerd I drew all this trash and put it on dA. In no time at all, most of the school knew I liked girls and there was now something NEW to bully me for. I tried to see this as punishment for my bullying behaviour in primary school to justify it but there was no justification. So much at this point was about punishment.

Punishment for being a freak, for being a loser, for not being like anyone else in this entire dam school. Punishment for looking so gross, for wanting these awful, naughty things, for liking the wrong people, for drawing how i felt... I needed to be punished. So I let it continue. I was an awful person and i needed to be punished.

But here is a thing. Breasts. When mine came in they came in suddenly. It felt like all my prayers had been answered and my ticket to being a girl like all these other girls had been called. I was One Of Them. I hated my body so much because of the hatred I got from others and my own discomfort that when these babies came in I adored them. Not what I anticipate anyone expects to here from someone suspecting they are a trans guy? “if you were truly dysphoric you would have hated them, that would have made it worse!” well for most cases probably. What these fatty parts gave me was attention, which i had been starved from in almost all aspects of my life, family included. What’s more, this attention was positive. I had never experienced such a thing for my body before that wasn’t... locked in another trauma pocket. 

For someone who was ready to kill themselves at age 12 because they were such an unforgivable, wretched, disgusting, freak, that wasn't even a girl, that couldn't stop biting themselves till they bled... The power my newly sexualised and definitely female body gave me was sorely needed. People fancied me now. They wanted to touch me rather than just hit me, or throw things at me. They wanted to pull me not swear at me or spit at me. Survival Aly adapts, it is what we do, so we adapted. But things were still not right. Self harm was a massive problem, so were suicide attempts because we were still... not quite there yet. We ventured online a lot, where older men from across the world would ask for photos, videos and meets. I had no idea this was sexual grooming, but we were also dependant on that to survive. Somehow though, the impact of that, some bullying that was still happening, my everpresent self hatred, confusion and discomfort and increase in abuse in the home led us to attempt suicide in the school toilet when i was 14.

We tried to cut our neck open this time.

A teacher found us and dragged us to student services. My mum as usual was angry as heck and embarrassed. Apologising for my behaviour and the inconvenience. My dad was cloying like molasses creeping into my head. I remember because i bled all over the blouse of Ms Ginsberg, a tutor i fancied since forever. It wasn’t that severe, it was considered a superficial wound, but the amount we were doing and the continual attempts were serious cause for concern. Then my step mom found photos of me being sexually active at 14 and before, my mom found a load of the video files for the other men and I was hospitalised. Something miraculous occurred during this time though, another part came out. One that was confident and proudly female, one that was overtly sexualised but more cunning. She was a chav, an incredible cheemo (idk if anyone remembers this fashion disaster movement thing). She could adapt and fit in to any social situation and essentially helped us waltz out of hospital with no memory of being there for years. 

All memory of confused tomboy/greyspace/whatever the fuck i was me was gone. This me didn’t give a dam and was in it for themselves and to survive, to be adored. And sex was their weapon, they just had to be cunning about it. By this point I was 15 and didn’t really think more about what I was. We were screwing guys now, guys and girls, thought this was something to be proud of. Dismissed the old small group of friends i had for the guys that hung around at the park and girls that used to go out and get drunk. We took naked photos of ourselves and put them online, and paraded ourselves around scantily clad because it made us feel powerful and loved. 

At 16 i was raped. I was again at 17 twice, and this pattern continued beyond being hospitalised for the second time at 20 (the worst 21st birthday ever), beyond getting pregnant which was also conceived through rape. I had been sexually abused and raped a lot during this time, but my dissociative amnesia would wipe the memory. So I would know something bad was happening but was denied processing it by my inbuilt survival mechanisms that kept me alive as a kid. I was unable to get out of the loop or register any danger because the switching would be so automatic, so ingrained, it basically was not up to me to get us out of the situation because another part was there in brace position having dissociated fully. All during this time I preformed female because it was necessary. I didn't have room to question my gender because i was too busy surviving and trying to literally not die. 

Then the pregnancy. I cant relive any of this trauma stuff too much, that isn't the point of this post but during this time, my gender was more apparent than ever before. Drawings we used to do of parts that had male appendages but still looked female started to change. Become more male. The internal distress was so monumental for many reasons; rape pregnancy, the gen father not leaving us alone, fear of my dad, still loosing my mind, desperately trying to be loved my my partner at the time. But there was another distress there. 

I cant be a mum. Women become mums. I cant hold this child in me. This shouldn't be there. 

Everyone was hammering home how much of a glowing woman I was and each time they said it I wanted to die. I tortured my body, got others to torture it too. Despised it, loathed it. It wasn't right to any of my parts. Three parts got us through that pregnancy but we dont know who gave birth. I dont remember it. We destroyed almost every pregnant photo of us. What were we disgusted by aside from the feeling of being broken, used and bred? How undeniably, unquestionably female we were. 

Even so things were happening inside my head and body that made us feel insane. We started feeling like we had a penis, like felt like we could touch it, could feel stimulated by holding an appendage there (tmi i know). We tried in secret without thinking about it, moving our breasts up, down, flat, out of the way (fairly impossible by this point i was a lactating G cup *vomits*). We had glimmers of feeling male... which... felt good. First time we pegged we cried in the toilet with the door locked because it felt real, felt right though we couldn't explain it. So we were too scared to do it again, tried to force feminise ourselves again because that is WHO WE SHOULD BE. I mean look? I have a kid now, i am “mom”. Stopped drawing these mysterious genderconfused parts and forcefully only drew accurately what our body was. Which was agony.

Until September 2017. 

Ploughing through therapy, maturing, making milestones in recovery when we started to talk about childhood trauma, my dad, the first and only time i drew myself fully as a man for my friend, and BAM! Bam! is not overrated it was literally a Bam! moment, because the part emergence I mentioned earlier occurred. And with these male parts came the bloody nail bat of gender dysphoria hitting me in the head over and over till I self harmed for the first time in years. The male parts were terrified and disoriented at first, they had a lot of growing up and catching up to do, some more so than others. They remembered being 15, 13, 10. Remembered the first pegging experience, remembered... things we had no connection to. Now they are mostly my age, helping each other to mature and grow as needed due to being a parent. 

The first used to cry and scream in the mirror, punching walls because the body was wrong. Attacking our breasts like i had done subconsciously for years but this time, because they knew their breasts were wrong. They drew themselves over and over to solidify their gender identity when all else was screaming they were female. We pulled away from our partner, couldn't be touched, couldn't be interacted with because it would be a reminder of our gender. We flinched at being called a woman, a girl, female, and with that came memories of feeling like that as a kid. Fuck me, we were dysphoric as a kid. The first proper realisation.

Up until this point we had NO idea we had ever experienced gender dysphoria. But this is how DID works. It erases traumatic information and stores it in the parts that dealt with it. When the parts properly emerge, this information is leaked out over time. So great. Dysphoria.

Another part came out to implement what I am now starting to think is their cure for this, to ultimately feminise us. Because we needed to be female. Erase the dysphoria and with it that other male part. Nothing feminises me quicker than one of my most terrifying abusers. So guess what bellend got back in contact and re-traumatised the system, this one *points to self in dismay*. Long story short, shit went down, not un consensual shit as before but still shit. That part would routinely draw the male part being hurt by this guy over and over again till they freaked out. 

But wait! The hellscape is not over. From stage right we have another destructive part, hyper-masculine, angry and unempathetic. Grateful to him because his presence pulled us away from that guy (he viewed him as pathetic and beneath him), but now we are just... drinking. Getting wasted in the park, hitting things, smoking up at night again. My specialist had told me to get to know these parts as they are vital for my recovery so we drew what they needed us to draw and goddam these guys are hurt. These are protective parts. They took the shit we couldn’t. And this one, swearing at my partner, exploding all over the place, trying to run away, self harming, kicking the shit out of the wheely bin outside survives threat of physical violence. The one that went to my old abuser survives some of the more extreme sexual violence and torture and the first male part deals with psychological abuse. I can see it in their drawings, their confessions and in our therapy sessions. We have other parts but they dont want to be discussed.

All of these parts are heavily dysphoric because they are all male. Unquestionably so. Their rage at this body is because it isn’t the right one.  So where do I come into it, me being the primary/fronting part, or leader of the twisted UN committee that is my brain?  That has taken longer to figure out, and has been a more agonising journey. 

I am dysphoric too. 

I cannot erase now i have them, the memories of my childhood spent dysphoric. The memories of trying at any cost to be a girl. Which shouldn’t be hard considering genetically I am one. I have had to fight within myself my transphobia i didn't even know was present. We aren’t talking bigotry here, but the genuine terror that i could be transgender. When most of the make up of who I am, and my survival to this day has been formulated by trying to accepted, loved, normal (though i failed at that horribly), not rejected and safe from physical, sexual and psychological abuse... Coming to terms with the fact you are transgender is not a comfortable thought. Not one I welcomed, and one that terrified us. 

The fear of being transgender was so great it made us sick, sent us into crisis, started us self harming again. Trying everything we can to not be transgender because I have been through enough and survival brain is screaming as loud as it can that this will cause serious problems. But we couldn’t. Cant draw myself as a girl at all without wanting to cry or wretch. Cant wear girls clothes because i feel like i am crossdressing?! Cant wear bras, cant do feminine make up, cant do anything I used to do to be accepted anymore. Cant be a girlfriend anymore. 

We started without realising it trying to make ourselves masculine. We would zone out and be drawing on facial hair with eyebrow pencil, tried using vetwrap to bind my chest, do not do this, it bruised us for days. We bought a mans top and a guys jeans and we lived in them exclusively unless family was over. We started wearing boxers, packing (though going to the loo and watching a dam sock fall out your pants makes your dysphoria worse and left us feeling humiliated so stopped doing this). I started drawing me not my parts but me and that me was always always male unless we were trying to force ourselves to draw a female us. 

We reached out eventually to my best friend Ruth, and they encouraged us to get a binder. This provoked fear again. Self harm, self medicating, the usual destructive bs. But now the distress levels were triggering depersonalisation and derealisation; both symptoms of DID survival patterns. We stopped being able to recognise ourselves in mirrors because the damn amnesia was wiping it in an instant. My hands would feel male then flick to female, my body was glitching continually and I tried to get out of buying a binder by talking about my “genuine transgender friends” saying how I couldn't be trans because of their experience, that I am so obviously taking the piss, that I cannot be trans this must all be trauma. But Ruth stuck with me, as did a few other people, and still pushed for me to get a binder just to see how it felt. 

I did and when it arrived and i tried it on the reaction was... well... overwhelming. Much like looking in the mirror seeing what is a very female face with a drawn on beard, i was looking at a body i hated being crammed into something that kinda hurt to put on, and making me look like i had a deformed ribcage. I cried. I dont know what i expected in that moment. Maybe that all the dysphoria will go away and it would be fixed and that would be that. All okay. But no. I felt sad that I was punishing my body for not being right, angry at myself for not being able to just be a dam woman. I MADE A BABY WITH MY BODY THIS SHIT SHOULD BE EASY. 

Standing in a mirror, with a binder on, boxers on and socks stuffed in them trying my best to look like a man, I felt like a freak. 

But then i put a shirt on. And holy heck i could see my feet. I was small, the first time i have ever looked at myself and seen a small body rather than something deformed that i see when i see my breasts. I looked smart, I looked beautiful in that shirt. The tears were still rolling down my dam cheeks, and i was a snotty wreck but I for the first time in 4-5 years I also didn't feel rage at being fat. Because I wasn't fat, not in the slightest. Standing there in shirt and boxers with flat chest, masc make up on, i looked like a guy... just about. And i smiled. I smiled so much. 

I urgently facetimed Ruth and was like “come see how good I look” something I hadn’t genuinely felt in a very long time unless a man thought I was sexy. But here, in my tip of a room, almost dancing on cam for my best friend, showing her how i could bend over and no udders were just dangling there, how i could type and see my hands move... I looked at myself and felt good. I didn't care if anyone else thought i looked good because I felt on top of the world 

This was my first introduction to gender euphoria, that wasn’t related to some obscure masturbatory habits and pegging. That feeling made things liveable for a while. I wanted to chase that feeling because it felt incredible. I was working out before but now I did it to not get thin, to not starve myself but to love myself. I started taking weight training seriously, and whilst the gym was a trigger for my dysphoria (room full of massive dudes who all see you and talk to you as a girl in your skimpy ass gym kit will do that to you) I pushed on. My shoulders are getting broader now, muscle definition starting and i love each of these changes. I eat more than I ever have done but I eat healthily because this male me, this real me that i seem to love I want to treasure, look after and care for. 

I am not gonna wear baggy clothes and cut my hair off to look like a passable cis guy because that feels like punishment, and I have done that enough in my life and been punished by people in ways that have left me unable to walk and bleeding. I want to see my body when i work out because i love seeing the muscle definition, I wince at my breasts but try to imagine it being different. I love my long floppy hair, and I am not gonna change that because men with long hair are stunning. People talk about “the cut”, and I get the feeling of shame that i must be making this all up because i dont want to cut my hair off, but I am not a boy, I am almost 25. I have lived through some shit, I am not a boy. I am... a man. And I like how my hair feels like a lions mane. I associate cutting my hair off with my own lack of control and desperation so i dont want to return to that ever. 

My therapist has been exceptional. He wants me to embrace this because he has seen massive improvement. Yes I am in and out of crisis a lot, there is a lot on my plate and dysphoria is a c*nt when you are already struggling, but here is the dam thing.

For the first time in my miserable fucking life I don’t want to be hurt or punished. I don’t want to be beaten, spat on, assaulted or killed. I don’t want to starve, I don’t want to be anywhere near any of my old abusers or rapists. I don’t want to submit to be liked. I don’t want to preform as a character to be accepted. I don’t want to be dependant on anyone to survive. I don’t want to sexualise myself to be loved. 

The dysphoria will challenge this, oh man it does. My depersonalisation and fear of being trans challenges this. 

Little voices going “you are not really a man. you have tits. you have a baby. you are a mom. you are doing this for attention, all this because you have to be somehow sicker than you already are. It is just trauma. You are making all of this up. You are trying to just not be the snivelling wretch that they made you into. You make a mockery of a very real cause. You are not trying hard enough, a real trans guy would cut their hair. You like your appearance sometimes which means you must not be trans. You are not a man, you are just like literally any of those cases of confused survivors of abuse that you see all over the internet, that is you. You just cant admit it because you are scum. It’s the same as everything, none of this is real, none of this is true. You are nothing like a man. You are a nothing, A NOTHING”.

Those are the voices that send me into crisis. That have me self harming, suicidal, terrified, self hating. Not when I pass as a guy, not when I draw myself as a guy or just... am a guy. The doubt and pull back to my assigned gender is what is killing me. Well alongside the actual traumas and parenting a toddler, alone, with over £2000 in debt. I never want to lie, but unpicking the truth when you are multiple people and have amnesic survival programming to prevent you from uncovering traumatic realities is very hard.

What is amazing though.... which I will cling to when my binder is crushing, when Instagram is full of BS about what is True Transgenderism, when FB is full of trans hate and I am still annoyingly in the closet with my family and most of the universe is this... When my BFF Maddy calls me an amazing, perfect boy, I blush and well up with tears and feel seen. I felt visible. When she sends me gifs of someone snuggling the death out of a tired proud lion, ruffling his mane, I feel seen again I cry with happy relief feels. When she or my friend Ruth says i look handsome, or masculine and I am blushing again forever, that is precious. When I look in the mirror after working out and see my shoulders broader and chest almost flat from the binder, hair swept back, I look strong, i look male, i look right. well almost. When i complete a drawing of how i wish i looked and i get it correct, i feel ready to punch the goddamn sun in its stupid face like LOOK! I EXIST! When I dream of being a guy and being touched by another person as if i am a guy, i feel like i am gonna take off from this planet and leave it in my dust... because not only do they see me, but they accept me and love me for who I am, who I want to be rather than who they want me to be or who i need to be... It makes me put that blade down and walk away. Make a hot chocolate or draw something.

So... I guess this is it. I am a guy. 

A closeted guy for my safety for now. But a guy.

A guy with a shit tonne of trauma. But a guy.

A guy with DID, and female personalities. But I am a guy.

A guy who has a 2 year waiting list before he can talk to a gender clinic about this but still. I am a guy. 

A guy that yes, despite all my best efforts, looks androgynous at best, and uses feminine appearance for protection because they are still too scared to present fully as male. But still a guy.

If this changes in future, well then... whilst living without dysphoria would be just the best... I dont want to loose who I am now i have finally caught a glimpse of them for the first time. It has made me a better person, a better parent, a better friend... Why would I ever give that up? It is gonna be a long old road, it may all change, I may change again, I may legitimately forget all about this. I may be too scared to ever come out to my family. The doubt, fear and dysphoria may actually win the next time I am in crisis. I may just delete this post out of shame but fuck it.

My name is Aly and I am a fucking guy.