The Girl I Never Knew

The Girl I Never Knew

-Christen B

It was years long ago
Perhaps when about age five
Someone who I knew I truly was
First knew that she was alive

Others thought she was a girl
It was her curly hair they would say
The comments she remembered well
Visions of an earlier day

Through the early years of school
She had friends with whom she would play
It was always with all of the girls
With whom she confided in each day

Her best friend was the little girl
Who visited from across the street
Imaginative games were our world
Our worlds combined were complete

And as time and life wore on
Our worlds began to be torn away
Aspects of the world I had been living in
Were taken from me each day

The girls in school left me alone
The girl next door, she stopped seeing me too
They were becoming more as women
I was alone and felt nothing I could do

The toys of my sister’s
They were one by one taken away
Each was replaced with another
That I was told I would enjoy anyway

I identified not with the boys
Their aimlessly rough and crude play

Decisively, I created my own world
And spent hours in the library each day

Worlds of science fiction
Worlds of truth and fact
Worlds that could be created
And others that could not be brought back

In this world of self
A wall of safety I thus did build

Learning so many aspects of science and math
And all of my own free will

Hobbies I became immersed in
Creative and thought provoking there were a few
Of model railroad empires that were my domain
And of astronomy and telescopes too

One allowed me to create my world
And to govern its state of being too
The other gave me a portal
To worlds with a different view

Through high school I maintained
An academic prowess gained by few

My personality though was somewhat guarded
And of good friends, I had but just a few

Anxieties asserted themselves strongly
Around and about grade ten
A nervous breakdown I then had
And felt nearly it was the end

It had started back when I was near age 10

When I first found my sister’s clothes
A skirt or a dress, anything that I might find
Some makeup perhaps and some hose

What it was of these things-
These items I discovered on that day
Brought me relief from all my stress
And a sense of loss held at bay

It was a man who felt he was a woman
A film on TV I saw one night
A transsexual she was called
Gave a sudden meaning and fright

I knew at that point in time
I was blind but not a fool
I felt it such a deviant trick
That I had not been born a girl

Of thoughts of why this could come to be
Nights of sleep yet always wide awake
I recall my heart would shake the bed
And my life perhaps to take

A strict house did I thus within grow
Of physicality and anger I do recall
Of a father’s anger and temper
And to the floor my mother would fall

And one day at home I was dressed
A feminine outfit and heels
My parents returned home early
From dining out to eat a meal

My mother was the only one and saw me first
She could not understand it too
Her only response to me was
“Keep this from your father’s view”

“Dispose of this please
Of this I will hear no more.
I will not allow you to stand there
And look as if a whore”

I purged then of all my clothes
All I had accumulated to that day
Thoughts of how disappointed my family was
Again I prayed; take this life away

To admit any of these aberrations in me
I simply could not bear to do
So I buried them in a mental box
And denied that they could be true

Off to college I ultimately went
And a persona of normalcy I did pursue
Of computers and of engineering
And of dating women too

Many women I would date
Interesting they thought of me it’s true
But something about me was but a shell
And by a second date most were through

A few I did come to know
For more than an extended time
But intimacy I could not, to them, always show
The reason was yet hidden, and I simply blind

I finally had the opportunity
To meet the love of my life
The person I would share my essence with
The one who would become my wife

Again, into the relationship
Intimacy I could not easily show
What was wrong, she said one day
She desperately wanted to know

I dress as woman I told her
It is a hidden aspect of me
It brings me satisfaction
And a feeling that I am free

In September of ’93 we wed
Many happy years together we thus spent
Occasional dressing at homeoccurred
Relaxed, the years came and went

But during years now only recently past
Something changed in me inside
Something was different, something was wrong
An anxiety now that I could not hide

I was still dressing at home
This continued, it is true
No longer however was there mental release
The sort I had become accustomed to

The stress began to build up again
I broke down once again and cried
I pulled out albums of photos of myself
And through those aging pages I pried

Photos I saw with eyes anew
Which did not look the same
Photos of a child a million miles away
A child sad and in pain

The pieces I put back together
The same puzzle from years before
The same answer as when I was age ten

Was knocking at my door

I had closed this door before
To contain that beast within
Again it came to my door knocking
And this time I let her in

And in that moment of acceptance
An understanding of what I already knew
A woman inside I had always been
It had been the girl I never knew

And with this new revelation came
A loss of anxieties and stress
Of mental anguish and hidden loss
To myself I thus did confess

With head held high and confident
For it was the woman who knew not fear
She took her first steps out the door
To the public she now did appear

To my own surprises, it was deftly true
That the woman I had held inside
Who was ultimately the keeper of all the confidence
For truly she was the one with all the pride

And so my life is interwoven now
With responsibilities and commitments held dear

As I am no longer age ten

And now there are consequences to fear

The shell of the boy who built this life
Had components necessary it is true
That allowed the girl within her
To manifest and ultimately shine through

The girl's destruction of the boy
With a realization starkly cold
Would bring about the absolute demise
Of all that they both dearly hold

So in the final determination
Of the life built, and the one I now lead
I struggle to hold a middle ground
Voice of girl and of boy I doth heed

Of two persons - but also as one
Both coexist today as the same
The fettered spirit of both exist
As the woman inside my brain

I appease her and occasionally bring her out
For to allow her the world to show
She cannot be fully denied any more
And to this truth I fully know.

The balance is mostly tenuous at best
There are still times of anxiety and of pain
But I know now that the woman inside
Has never existed in vain.