Dear Aoife
A story about gender identity and discovery.
Dear Aoife,
Ever since I was a child I have dreamed of becoming a flower. I was not sure what that meant for a long time, but I felt it all the same. To grow beautiful, to have the grace of others around me. I felt awkward in my own skin. Gangly and unappealing. Flowers are never unappealing, I would think, and be upset that I never had the petals I wanted.
I always dressed in layers. In the height of summer, when everyone else wore tank tops and shorts, sundresses and crop tops, I wore jeans and a hoodie. It was a worse crime to show my body to the world than to suffer the heat. I was not a flower, but I wanted to be.
I kept cultivating that flower in my mind. I still do. I have stopped hating myself for what I am, and instead being hopeful for what I can grow to be. What I can become. A wonderful flower.
A flower named Aoife.
I have thought of you often in recent months, wishing for you. In your embrace I am made whole, visited by comfort unlike any I’ve felt before. It is captivating. You are captivating. Like an idea floating in the corners of the mind, a word on the tip of the tongue, you are form without form, waiting for the brush or pen stroke that brings us together. You are all I yearn to be. You are self portraiture.
Sometimes I sit in a hot shower, and as the water pools around me from a hair-clogged drain I dream of drowning and breathing you into being. My dearest Aoife. The final hand-off, as the flames of my being flicker out, and I am laid to rest. You will be magnificent, I know it. Not perfect, no flower is perfect, but flawed in every way I wish to be. Having easy issues.
In a cramped apartment, cooking food with good music and good company. At night, smiling at my own thoughts. Whenever I am so preoccupied with living that I forget quite who I am. What I am. That is you, over my shoulder, whispered on my breath, pushing me onward. That is you guiding me. I am very thankful for that.
I often wonder if the reason I feel so lonely is because I lack even your company. I cover myself in hobbies and friends and obligations, layers to hide my unsightliness, all avoidance of your absence. But you are still absent. Without you I am not me. Without me how can anything be worthwhile, how is any friendship not doomed to fray and hobbies left to be ignored.
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I try to look the part sometimes, hoping it brings you forward. Perhaps it’s vain. To obsess over my appearance. To obsess over others’ eyes on me. I wish to look natural, comfortable, in a way that only feels possible through meticulous effort. Perhaps its self-obsession.
Where are you Aoife. I want to scream your name to everyone who will listen in the hopes it makes you appear. I don’t want to be leading us anymore, I am tired. I wish to slip into your embrace, and know that things will be okay now. That I did a good job, a flawed job but a good one.
In truth I want it to be easy. Yet you come with difficult decisions. And loss. It scares me Aoife, and you won’t be here to assure me until I am already gone. Even this, these theatrics, are an avoidance. If I give the responsibility to you then I won’t have to do it myself. I won’t have to become you, I can wait for you to just take my place. No metamorphosis, it’s painfully slow.
I avoid the cocoon with fervor. I don’t want to be melted down, turned to slag, not again not ever. Even if the other side is you. But I can’t have you here without effort, I can’t become you because I’ve decided you are a thing to become and not a thing that I am. I have excised you from myself because it is easier. You are my future, because I cannot be trusted with it.
A sad thing.
So I will keep asking. Where are you Aoife? When are you? My flower. The flower I am meant to be. And one day I will have an answer and the answer will be “me and now.”
My Dear Aoife. I wish to tell you I am making progress. Despite it all. I accept more of me each day. I often feel self absorbed and frustrated, as I dance in ill-fitting clothes and hide my face behind makeup. I often feel repulsive, to myself and to those around me. I wonder if I am repulsed not by me but by my fear of you. When you come, my darling, what if I am not worth your gift? If you arrive to receive the baton and I have left you not progress but a wreckage of man? I’m ashamed to say it haunts me, as many things do.
My confidence is a fickle thing. It waxes and wanes, even now as I write this. I feel joy to have your name in front of me, and shame that I will continue to hide it from the world. I feel hope I can be something wonderful one day, a real flower, yet disappointment that the day feels so far away. I am my undoing, as always, as all people.
But I did not lie. Despite it all, I am making progress. I accept more of myself each day. So thank you, Aoife, and I look forward to seeing you when it is time. Whensoever that may be.
With Love,
Aidan
