Saying goodbye

We never really said goodbye, did we? I suppose on my side because I was so glad not to see you any more, and on yours because – well you never really existed, so once I stopped creating you, you couldn’t.

I hated you, but I needed you too, and that’s really difficult to live with, and to be able to say goodbye to properly. You did so much for me, I know. You kept me safe, you kept me alive and provided me the resources to exist for real in the end. And it was hard. I remember how you had to begin every day with that deep breath as you put on the pretence for me. “ I couldn’t possibly be a girl” But I was, all the time. You acted so well, no-one ever knew that I was there; it was almost like you were real, but so sad.

And the things you achieved – despite the pain, the social isolation, the lack of care from parents and peers, you went out and found resources, learnt, got high grades in education – and still let me play a little now and then. I remember particularly when we were in Cyprus – it was me doing the typing class, and me turning into a mermaid under the water on Episkopi beach. I know, I pushed hard at the boundaries, I wanted to have long hair and dresses and and and....and you had to stop me, because if we had done that too early it wouldn’t have worked. So much social resistance.

In the end the price was too high. Every day you kept me alive and kept me safe, and all you took was the life I could have had that day. I realised in the end that it was a fool’s bargain. If the only life I could have was in the comfortable cage, it was no life at all, and I could see that at the end, when we both would surely die, that I would have had nothing, and all you would have had was sadness, and the fact that you had kept me alive – but for nothing.

So I took the keys to the cage back from you, and started to try to live as me. You were still there, of course, someone to run back to if it was all too much, except when I was forced to run back to you I cried, and cried and cried. I so wanted to be free.

Gradually it became possible. You were there through transition – and in a way the tables were turned, except you weren’t being caged, but I was no longer feeding you my life’s blood as the price of existence. Sometimes I looked in the mirror and you were there – but less and less often as time went on. Now – you really have gone. I don’t know exactly when you went, and I expect I will get the odd flashback. But when I looked at your picture on that old work identity pass, and compared it to how I look now, I realised that you truly have gone. Because it’s no longer a picture of me.

So. Goodbye, and thank you for everything.