The Objectively Most Rational Decision

-- Day 0 --

You know that feeling when two people share some inside joke that goes way over your head, and you're left confused and unsure about how to respond?

That's how it felt for just about every single social interaction I had ever had. Even when I was a child, I felt alienated from my peers on some fundamental level, some vague notion that they all knew something I wasn't privy to.

I must have missed personhood orientation, because I had never really felt like one.

Often, back in those days, I would say some - in my mind - innocuous thing, and the other person would get angry at me, and I wouldn't know why, and then I'd get angry at them for making me feel awful and so confused. Then, because I was hopelessly impulsive, I'd hit them and get sent to time-out - or later, the principal's office - to be forced to stew in my own emotions.

Eventually, I had the epiphany that if people were always going to get mad at me for seemingly random shit I said, I might as well embrace it. Oh, did my words offend you? Maybe you should stop being so sensitive, because I'm only speaking the truth - and so on. It was a helpful façade in the pursuit of avoiding those worthless, uncomfortable emotions, one so comfortable and oft-worn it simply became me.

I, obviously, didn't endear potential friends. I genuinely hadn't had one since the third grade.I didn't need one, of course - my peers were overwhelmingly idiotic, and I couldn't find any commonalities between them and myself.

The rationalizations were generated, oh so readily.

Retreating endlessly further into myself, my lonesome bedroom evolved into a safe haven - a place where I was utterly free and utterly trapped. I reveled in the hedonistic freedom of having no obligations while facing the existential terror that this

- fucking, this - was what my life amounted to.

I didn't want that. I would honestly rather die than to end up still here when I was 30.

I laid there, staring up at my bedroom's ceiling. Despite all logic, I was hoping for something tangible to happen after I let that tablet dissolve sublingually - something to tell me that the estradiol running through my bloodstream was doing anything.

But, of course, I felt no different. If anything, I felt severely restless, as I often was. I was averse to falling back into my empty routine, but I couldn't think of anything productive I wanted to do.

Clean my room? The mere thought was enough to sap all motivation from my being.

Computer it was, then.

***

-- Day 11 --

I hated how easily old habits could be fallen into. Despite my newfound resolve to actually fucking make something of my life, I always did the same shit every day. Wake up, sit at the computer, eat, piss, sleep. Ad nauseam - and fuck, was I nauseous.

I wished I could be productive - that I could just do things without my brain so desperately sabotaging all attempts. I just stayed in my room and fucking festered. It was the same way back in school - I never did learn how to do anything that wasn't immediately effortless. I couldn't even say I was a procrastinator - because that would imply I ever finished my work, instead of wallowing in pointless self-pity until it was past-due and I got whatever scolding I was in for. And, y'know, at least I didn't have to hate myself about it anymore.

I knew I was using the nightly dose of estradiol as illusory productivity - a simple, easy task to excuse myself from actually doing anything. I stopped showering again, for two weeks now - I felt too lazy. Lazy - I hated that word. Probably because it applied to me. God damn it. I needed a plan - something more tangible than 'wait until girl'. In either sense.

Maybe I should get some daruma dolls to torment me with their one-eyed glare. It might not help - but at least I'd feel worse about myself.

It was when I went to the bathroom for a piss that something irritating happened. After I went, and washed my hands - or at least poured a smidgen of tapwater on them - I found my mother blocking the door to my room.

"Eric," she sighed. This wasn't good. No confrontations, thanks - they were always terrible, as a rule. "We need to have a talk."

"...No?" I'd rather not. I tried to brush past her to my room, but she remained firm. Ugh. My fists clenched reflexively. "What?" I scowled.

"Take a seat," she gestured to the couch. I rolled my eyes, but humoured her. This kept getting worse. I hated interacting with my mother for a second longer than necessary. I slumped back into the shitty, worn cough and lazily glared up at her.

She sat beside me on the couch, took a deep breath, then said, "Please be honest with me. Are you... transgender?"

Clearly, she found the bottle. God fucking damn it - snooping around in my room? That was my one rule, since I was a kid. I did not like to have my sanctuary violated.

Whatever - what should I say? That I was doing this purely for the objective improvements to my life that would result from being (or at least appearing as) a female? Probably not. No - I'd need to lie and tell her I was really trans. It'd be a hard sell - she had known me for my entire life, and I had obviously not shown any signs, because I wasn't actually trans. Still, if she believed the lie, she could be a useful asset to help me with my transition.

I cast my eyes down, and rubbed my arm. Act embarrassed. "Um... yeah."

She gave the worst possible response to that - a hug. I was not a touchy person - the opposite, actually. Unwanted, prolonged contact always made me begin to shake with annoyance, then anger. I stiffened as she wrapped her arms around me. "Get off me," I spoke, an edge leaking in.

She pulled back, "R-right, no touching."

I nodded sharply. Wait a minute - was she seriously crying? Clearly I hadn't been on estrogen for nearly long enough to develop female sentimentality, because I had no idea why.

I narrowed my eyes. "Why are you crying?" I asked, but with my flat tone it was more of a statement. Females. Honestly. Tearing up at every little thing. Couldn't be me.

"I'm sorry," she said, " I just... I always knew you were unhappy - I wished I could help but you'd just block me out. If this is what's really been- been eating up at you and making you retreat into your shell, I'm so, so sorry I never realized."

Well, that was awkward. Emotional moments were never my forte, (and I pronounce that word correctly - if it was supposed to be pronounced the wrong way, it would be forté) and the fact that it was predicated on a lie made me feel nebulously uncomfortable.

Straight into the emotional black hole it went. More important: how do I respond?

Before I could begin to formulate a response, I was subjected to a question I hadn't prepared for in the slightest:

"So, um, do you have a name...? Like, a girl name."

Oh yeah. That was a thing. A name. I needed a name. I couldn't just be a girl named Eric. Well, I could - but that wouldn't fit the lie at all.

Shit.

Speaking impulsively, before thinking out any sort of answer, I said, "Er...i...s...? Eris!"

I might have simply changed the last letter of my name, but you take what you can come up with in two seconds. Besides, it was cool - Greek goddess of discord. She had those goddesses fight over that golden apple. The original troll. Heh.

Nailed it.

My mom tried to pull me into another hug - no. Instead, she wiped her eyes. "Hi, Eris," she smiled faintly at me, "I love you."

I didn't know how to respond to that. I get that parents are supposed to love and care for their children and all, but... don't? It felt weird and uncomfortable, and I didn't like it.

I was gonna confront her for the snooping, but this situation went far too far out of my rulebook for interacting with other humans - I ended up doing what I always did: I retreated to my bedroom.

***

-- Day 14 --

I had a cat when I was a kid - a grumpy old tabby named Cleo. She could be quite cantankerous at times - she was very fickle about petting, and preferred, often, to hide behind couches when I was around so she didn't have to deal with my childish energy. Nonetheless, she had been around long before I was born, and there was never a time she had not been part of my life.

Until, a couple weeks after spring break when I was nine years old, she died. From natural causes, at a respectable age of 23, but I was still inconsolable - I sobbed for hours, and again during the cat funeral in the backyard.

I had never, once, cried after that point - until, two weeks after starting HRT, the emotional black hole failed in its purpose.

It was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I was laying in my bed, staring blankly at the ceiling, too demotivated to do anything at all - a state that was very typical for me.

The sun, in its endless capacity to annoy, managed to slip its way through the narrow gap between the blinds and the wall to find its way directly onto my face.

It was warm.

It was also incredibly aggravating. Instead of rolling over with my back to the window, as I would usually do, I lifted my hand to block the light. The sunlight, shining on its back, created a glowing outline around it - like the moon during a solar eclipse.

Normally, I wouldn't care. It's literally just light. Nevertheless, I was struck by a mood I couldn't recall ever experiencing before. I could best describe it as a... sense of quiet wonder.

I sat up in my bed, back pressed against the wall, and let the light hit my palm. Ethereal specks of dust flickered in the sunrays of the early afternoon, and the minute features of my hand were illuminated in detail. Not just the larger creases, but the softly meandering, parallel lines that spread out like a wave, the knot-like pattern within the creases, the subtle variation in colour from the pale center to the pinkish edges. A fingerprint doesn't end at the tips - it continues on past the phalanges and across the palm, with its subtle whorls and waves forging an individually distinct pattern.

Then, suddenly, I realized I was crying.

It wasn't a sob. There was no noise, no motion. It was simply moisture, quietly escaping from my eyes and rolling down my face without any fanfare. I wiped at it, numbly, with my wrist.

More tears came out. And more. And more, and more, and more, and I curled into a ball and I waited for it to stop - and through it all. the only thing I could think about was how, despite the sheer amount of tears, despite the hot trails they left on my cheek and the damp spot they left on my bedsheet, I didn't make a sound. I didn't make a face. They poured, and they fell, and I stared blankly into my arm, wondering why I was incapable of even crying like a normal person.

Was I honestly, genuinely so broken that I didn't know how to cry properly?

I didn't do anything - anything at all - that day.