Being Emily (30 page)

I tightened my hold on her. Small as she was, she’d been the most solid part of my life during the last year. I didn’t have the words to tell her what it meant to me that through all of this we still got to be people sitting together and just laughing or crying or kissing each other.

THREE YEARS LATER

Claire and I went off to our separate colleges, not without envy on my part and a lot of loneliness for both of us. We tried to keep dating, but by that first Christmas, it was pretty obviously not going to work. So I put my nose down into my books and pulled a brilliant GPA while saving up as much money as I could. Weekends I got to be myself in the city, and on longer breaks I made some friends I could stay with there, including Elizabeth from the support group. She let me stay at the guest room in her house over spring break and for a few weeks in the summer as I got used to living as a girl for longer periods of time.

I now have a two-year degree and am in the middle of my first year at the University of Minnesota. I enrolled here as Emily Christine
Hesse
and only a couple of people in admissions and the health office know I didn’t grow up as a girl. I had the facial surgery last summer and pretty much look like I did except that my nose is a lot cuter and I don’t have the caveman brow ridge; I now look like I did before I hit puberty and testosterone messed everything up. Claire came with me for the surgery and read me some of her writing while I recovered. She says I look like Jennifer Garner, which is ridiculous. But I do look good.

I have some of the money in the bank for my last surgery and I’m hoping to have it next summer when I have plenty of time to recover so I don’t mess up my schoolwork. I’ll also use that time to edit this account that I’ve written of that crazy year when I came out and set myself to growing into the woman I am. Claire’s helped out by telling me her parts of the story, and I’ve tried to reflect the whole tale as completely and fairly as possible.

Oh, and speaking of fairness, Mom turned out to be okay with her new daughter. She took an entire two years to come around. I think she felt like Chris died, and didn’t know how to grieve that. But she thinks I do look pretty great as a girl.

It’s weird to still be in an in-between place, with one more surgery to go. I’m eager and a little scared.

The waiting and all the trouble has been more than made up for by the fact that the pencil outline of my life has been filled in and I get to walk around campus fully visible and luminous as myself.

Claire actually says it all better than I do, but you’ll have to read her book for that whole story. She says that when she’s around me now she can see that I’m in a state of wonder about life itself; I don’t take any day for granted. I don’t know if I would have done this life any differently if I had a choice. I don’t know anyone who appreciates a hot bath like I do, or the feel of my hair on the back of my neck when I turn, or the way my heart lifts into the back of my eyes when anyone says “Excuse me, miss.”

Claire says she used to think ordinary life was boring before I came out to her, but now she realizes that every ordinary moment has extraordinary worlds contained within it. But then she’s the mystic. I’ll take my ordinary moments and enjoy every one of them.