The torn thread between child and adult self

 You look at yourself in the mirror. You see a woman who is not a woman. Hermaphrodite. That was the word. Intersex. Neither male nor female. Yet a body that looks female but for some minor details.

Flashes of what could be memories or fragments of nightmares. Cold doctor's offices, soul-less hospital wards and uncaring, emotionless eyes and voices. A feeling of being cast aside and called terrible things that hurt so much.

Memories of a child you. Mostly unaware of existing trauma. Still living a life that is mostly care-free and happy. Scenes of happy family life. You want to reach out, touch the memory, connect to it. But you cannot.

The child is male. You are not. The child never was male? What happened between then and now? Are you the child, now, today?


A flood of memories. Fragmented. Shattered. Incomplete. Just so many loose threads shattered in the winds of time. Memories of terrible things that happened to you. Terrible things that you did. No cause or reason. Each piece of thread, each memory seemingly disconnected from the others.

Looking at yourself in the mirror now, you can look at your hands, flex them. Feel that they are really there. That they are truly a part of you. That this is all real. Everything before was a dream? A nightmare?

Most of it likely really happened. Maybe all of it. As well as the bits of thread that are now lost forever. The emotional agony when you reconnect the pieces of thread, try to trace back the path to childhood. Feeling the pain inflicted on you and by you for the first time. Is this what one wants to remember?

You do not remember being this person, this... thing that inhabits these thread fragments between that memory of the child and the you today. You do not want to be that person. That person frightens you, disgusts and revolts you. Even as you pity it as you would a wild animal that is trying to survive in a world completely foreign to it.


Others do not see the torn thread. Others see your self as an unbroken thread from birth to your final days. Yet you look at yourself in the mirror, and that is not what you see. Your body changing over time in ways that should have been impossible. The harsh response from society at each change and discovery.

You look in frustration at this mirror image which seems to taunt you with your lack of understanding, of knowledge and acceptance. You feel sickened by the realisation of what lies between the child you and adult you. What does life offer you?


You feel anger at this past self, at the world that let things get out of hand so far. But it's futile to be angry at the past. There is only the now and the future that still has to be made.

You can look at the past, force yourself to mend these pieces of thread. Ignoring the pain and suffering that this brings. Or you can let the thread between child and adult mend itself, over time, fed by the energy from a new, unbroken thread that spans into the future.


Looking at your hands again, feeling that strong connection with reality, you realise that you can live your life looking forwards or backwards.

Maybe it's not necessary to piece together this entire thread between child and adult right now and there. Maybe you'll never know exactly why your body turned out like this, or the myriad of ways in which it differs from males and females, but maybe that doesn't matter.

What matters is that you have a future. A future you can shape instead of letting others shape it for you this time around. A future with a healthy body.

All you really want is to see yourself smile in the mirror and feel the smile inside.


Maya