2011

I met a new person, Terri. They have short, black hair and warm brown skin. We’re both in prep. Miss W is my teacher. Terri is in the classroom next to mine, but people from my class eat with her at snack. I thought she was a boy because the other girls have long hair, and she has a boy’s name. It confused me, but God makes us all differently.

*

2021

I spoke to my mother about my high school friend, Johnny. He’s really cool. He’s an artist and is working on animations. He has some dark facial hair growing in which suits him and his voice is getting deeper all the time. When I met Johnny, he had a different name. It didn’t bother me; I just felt protective of him. Protective in the way I felt with girls, where I was worried that some asshole would try to hurt them. It was a little hard to get the whole pronoun thing right at the start because I tended to hang out with girls, and he made me feel comfortable when most boys didn’t.

I remember proudly calling myself Catholic. After all, it meant I could accept everyone. I wanted him to come over with some other friends to play board games. Mum told me to stay away from him. I found that part weird, because growing up she always told me to love everyone—that Jesus was friends with prostitutes and the sick, and that all people should be welcome in my heart. I asked her why she couldn’t love Johnny like we do everyone else. She told me that those people live to cause chaos. That they are devil worshipers who want to confuse people and mutilate children’s bodies. But Johnny played fantasy games with me and helped me when I told him I got hit at home. It made me question the whole religion thing.

*
2022

My girlfriend, Alice, is the sweetest person I know. I bought her a Nintendo Switch for our anniversary with Animal Crossing on it. It was funny making our characters because we have the same colour hair—but we picked bright colours like greens and pinks to make our characters stand out from each other. She really cares about the aesthetics of the island, but I like making goofy narratives like putting a wheelchair by the edge of a rocky slope, or some tyre seats by the bonfire like a little castaway spot. She isn’t fond of my designs but that’s okay.

I didn’t like the way outfits looked on my character. Alice’s always fit better. So I changed my character’s gender and hairstyle, and instantly all the clothes I wanted to wear looked so much prettier. I didn’t realise but I selected the same hairstyle Alice had on her character. Maybe I was drawn to it because I only knew it was pretty and it would be something she would like. My girlfriend wasn’t too surprised when she got home, she’s done my makeup before and said I looked cuter than her—that's a stretch. She’s worried what her family might say if they realise I have a girl character on the TV. I don’t feel like changing it back though. Who cares what they think? It’s just a game.

*

2015

My coach is mean. A baseball hit me in the face at training. I got a blood nose. Dad was sitting in the car, so he didn’t see. It was dark out. I asked my coach if I could get some tissues and he asked if I was a princess. I didn’t understand why he sounded like he thought that was a bad thing. He told me I’m not a little girl, so I need to suck it up and keep playing. I felt angry. I told him he shouldn’t say things like that because there’s a girl on our team. He made me go back out in the field. The girl kind of smiled at me. Mum had to bleach my shirt.

*

2024

When I came out to my dad, I thought it was all going to end. I sat watching Bargain Hunt on the TV with him until the ad break. I think he made us tea. I hadn’t watched shows like this with him since I was a kid. They always had strange artifacts from long ago, like Elizabethan era brushes and old dolls made with the hair of real children. That always freaked me out, like knowing my mum keeps a lock of my hair from when I was a baby.

I knew I was going to go on HRT but needed my parents’ support. Mum was scarier to talk to, so I started with him. My voice struggled to sound at all, and I hardly remember what I said. I remember he made some comment about nostalgia watching with his boy. I said I had to tell him something important ... I wasn’t his boy; I was trans. I cried and he hugged me, and I tried to explain it to him through sobs. He said it would be okay. He wanted me to tell Mum now. I would have preferred to email her, but thought this was more personal.

They were supportive, surprisingly. I hugged my mum for the first and last time in years. I told them I was scared I would be kicked out. They assured me they would never kick out their own child. They called me the right name for a week or two, supported my decision to go on HRT and talked shit about people in my life who weren’t immediately supportive.

*

2025 

I showed Alice’s mum the new dress I bought today—my very first dress. She complimented my body shape and insisted I tried on her old dresses. I look so pretty in this black glittery one. I think she wore it as a bridesmaid. I wish I could have worn something like this to formal. Maybe then I would have gone. It’s sweet that Alice’s mum still accepts me despite not being with her daughter anymore. We’re closer as friends. Her mum smiles when I grin and tell her my dress has pockets. ‘You really are a woman.’

She told me that anyone who would let go of their male privilege to be a woman must be one. She couldn’t think of any woman who would choose the burden of womanhood. She accepts me as one of them.

My body has changed too. This wasn’t like trying on Alice’s school dress a couple years ago. I used to tell her that the clothes weren’t the problem, it was the body wearing it. Boys and girls can wear the same clothes—I just wanted to look like a girl wearing those clothes, as boyish as the clothes may be. At that stage I didn’t fill the bust of the dresses I tried on. With my best friend and a mother figure, I feel whole.

*

2017

Mum had a conversation with me. It might have been because my class spoke about gay marriage. My teacher told us all people should be allowed to love others. Jesus loved everyone too. Mum told me, sometimes children are born in the wrong bodies. Sometimes God gets confused and puts a little girl’s soul into a little boy’s body. That’s why I might see a little boy wearing the girls’ uniform going into the girls’ toilets. They are really a girl, and I should treat them like one. I asked how they figure out they’re a girl. Mum told me they don’t have to because they’re born knowing. I had to ask ... so I can’t be a girl even if it feels like it would be better to be one.

*

2024 

My parents stopped referring to me in general. In private conversations between themselves I heard them calling me my deadname and acting confused that their son could be so brainwashed. It sounded so much like right-wing political rhetoric that I could have laughed, but they were my parents, and they told me they loved me. I gave them resources to try to understand. They sent me transphobic articles detailing the mental illness and ‘woke mind virus’. Mum decided she knew why I was doing all of this: my girlfriend must have been sexually assaulted by a man, and I was transitioning so she felt safe around me. If not that, it was a rebellious phase—an attempt to cut ties with the family, something hip that the youngsters were doing. I couldn’t be trans because I didn’t wear breast forms and high heels in public to see if I really was a woman. I was doing it only to spite them. It was all a fetish; I had to have sex with a woman to realise I was a man.

*

2025

I bumped into an old friend after work. She was in the year level below me in high school and we used to hang out on calls together every night with some other friends. I always liked her. She’s still incredibly pretty. She cut her hair to a bob back then and dyed it red. Her hair is so dead straight that for a while I disliked having coily hair. Jealousy isn’t the right word, I’m too in awe of her for that. I haven’t spoken to her in like, two years now. Not properly at least. ‘It’s Charlotte now, right?’ It’s like she’s hugging me from the inside out ... and then, she does hug me. ‘That’s really big of you,’ she says genuinely and warmly. She’s seen a couple of my Instagram posts and knows because of my username change. I didn’t even have to tell her myself. She just knew.

She shows me her tattoos, they’re gorgeous and she’s starting a tattoo apprenticeship. She’ll tattoo me when she’s a tattoo artist. She’ll have to—I loved when she’d draw on me at lunchtime. I’d trace the drawings because I didn’t want them to fade. She has a swan on the back of her neck, below the baby hairs that don’t quite reach her bun. It makes me feel better about the baby hairs on my regrowing hairline that fall past my eyes now.

A girl from primary school messaged me recently too and asked about the name thing. She told me she always suspected and was proud of me. I also saw her mum at my work today. She had no clue who I am, even though I slept over at her place all through my childhood. I’m not what she expects to see and that’s pretty cool.

*

2016

Mum told me I can’t sleep over with my friends anymore. If I stay over, we’ll have ‘sex’. In our health night at school, I learnt that was for making kids. I’m a kid though. That’s gross. It really upsets me. I haven't even started puberty. I really don’t want to grow thick body hair like Dad.

Two of my best friends were having a sleepover like we always do. I had to tell them I’m not allowed. They didn’t understand it either. Sleeping over with boys in my class would be weird. They’re mean to me and they always talk about things that gross me out.

*

2025

I’d been on the lookout for a new job. My chronic pain and fatigue were flaring worse than before, and I really wanted a job I could move around less in. A few months ago, my mum suggested I become an assistant in the classrooms at her school. She’s moved from primary teaching to secondary—both in Catholic schools—a couple years ago. I asked her about it again and she told me it wasn’t a good idea. I asked her why not and she told me that due to stereotypes, she couldn’t knowingly let me be around kids.

She told me it was for my own safety too, so that I don’t put myself in the position around mandatory reporters and because teenagers are mean, and they’d know I’m not a real woman. Yet she’s fine with priests being around the children.

*

2025

I met Madi because she’s in Alice’s uni course. Sometimes I sit in on lectures with them and do my work with my headphones in. She talks to me about my transition because her ex transitioned too, so she has experience. She notices subtle changes in me and tells me what she’s seen. She sees me how I see myself. Alice and Madi want to have a sleepover with me. I’ve slept at Alice’s many times since we started dating but this is different. We’re friends now—no longer a couple. All of us are going to have a sleepover just like I used to have as a kid. Three girls hanging out, eating sugar and takeaway and watching dumb movies. Alice teaches me how to put my hair into a loose bun before sleeping so that I don’t get a sore head.

With the lights off we lay on our backs and tell each other our insecurities. We tell each other exactly what we need to hear. Even if things go poorly, we have each other to hold onto. In the morning Alice braids my hair. In primary school my hair was always too short to be braided. I used to cry when Mum would make me get my hair cut every month. Madi sits in front of me a does my makeup. When Alice is done with me, she braids Madi’s hair too. These girls make me feel beautiful and loved. I like to think I help them feel the same way.

* 

2025

Mum and Dad told me I needed to pack my bags and be out by the end of the month. I asked for my birth certificate, and they told me I’d never get it. Changing my name was disrespectful to them, and they wouldn’t allow me to ruin the boy they’d made.

I snuck into the back shed where the old filing cabinet is and found three birth certificates: my mother’s, my father’s and my brother’s. Mine was missing ... removed. I found a workaround. Mum and Dad are confident even if I changed my name, everyone would recognise me as their child. It’s confusing that they want to keep me like a possession when they don’t want me as I am. What happened to come as you are?

*

2025

Madi made me the cutest birthday card. The outside reads ‘BirthdayBitch’... that’s me! Inside it are sweet messages, small drawings, a poem about me and a drawing of me as an elven girl with my same curly, light brown hair. There are handmade stickers and more. It is so girly and cute. She went to so much work and detail for me and makes me feel so special. It reminds me of Alice’s jar of paper stars ‘100 things I love about you’. I shake the jar and pull out a pink or white star at random and a beautiful adoration is found. This kind of love is found in womanhood and friendship born in flowered letters. I think of them as I fall asleep with stuffed animals in their place. I’m always waiting—loving them—for the next time we may fall asleep together.