I am filled with trans joy.
Except when I’m not.
Not because I’m not April.
She is I.
And I am she.
Wholecloth.
The grief comes from something deeper.
I keep meeting the woman
I was always supposed to become,
and realizing
I couldn’t give her
my twenties.
I couldn’t give her prom.
Or college.
Or awkward first dates
where someone called her beautiful
before she learned to doubt it.
She never got to discover makeup
because it was fun.
She learned it
because forty-two years of camouflage
left bruises.
She never got to dance badly
with girlfriends
without wondering
if someone was watching.
She never got to grow up
as herself.
She had to excavate herself
out of someone else’s adulthood.
People tell me,
“At least you’re here now.”
And they’re right.
God…
they’re right.
But sometimes
I look at old photographs
the way archaeologists
look at ruins.
Evidence
that somebody lived here.
Somebody smiled here.
Somebody celebrated birthdays
and first kisses.
Only…
they weren’t mine.
Those memories belong
to a scared angry man
trying so hard
to become someone
everyone else could love
that he couldn’t see the color all around him.
People tell me
not to mourn the years.
That they’re what made me.
Maybe.
But that doesn’t stop me
from wishing
April had gotten
the easy laughter.
The first “I love you.”
Instead…
she inherited a body
already carrying mileage.
She inherited scars
she didn’t earn.
She inherited a nervous system
that startles
at kindness.
Sometimes I catch myself
looking in the mirror
and she’s beautiful.
She really is.
And that’s the cruel part.
Because every time
I see her,
I also see
the little girl
who never got to skin her knees
or have sleepovers
or borrow her mother’s lipstick.
I miss someone
who never got the chance
to become a memory.
People think transition
is about becoming.
Sometimes…
it’s about mourning.
Not because I wish
I weren’t April.
Never.
If anything,
I finally know
what joy feels like.
I just wish
joy
had met her sooner.
