The eternal war

After so many interrogation sessions, they begin to blur together. Sometimes there's one person sitting at the other side of the rickety table. Sometimes two or three. There's always the folder with your files on the table. Sometimes they start off all cheerful and full of promises, other times they try the bad cop, good cop routine. Always there's the knowledge in the back of your mind that they are not your friends and just want you to confess. Spill the beans.

Through the blinds you can somewhat make out the outside world. It feels like such a long time ago since you have last seen the sky. Felt the sun on your skin. Smelled the air after a rainstorm. Instead it's just another sterile room that's still filled with the silenced cries from other unfortunate souls. And the predatory grin at the other side of the table. Just another day spent in eternity.

The theme is always the same. If you cooperate with us, you'll be out of here in a jiffy. Why are you making things so hard for yourself? Who or what are you protecting? It's not worth it. It's not real. This is you here now. In this uncomfortable chair, in a place where you do not want to be. In this prison. We are here to help you, but you must cooperate.

Just tell us the things we want to know, and you'll be out of here, on your way home before you have time to even grab your coat.


Catching my reflection in the standing mirror as I get dressed in the morning, I can still feel how part of my soul is stuck in those interrogation rooms. Hear the alternatingly enticing or accusing voices. About helping me, about me being difficult. About why I cannot simply accept the facts that they put in front of me. Facts which I know to be false.

The claims made by them, about how my body was that of a male, with no indications of an intersex condition. Though they could absolutely help me with the transsexuality which they were convinced that I had.

Looking at my unclad body in the mirror, I can only smile bitterly at those memories. Following with my eyes the contours of my wide hips, narrow waist and still-growing chest that took no medication and no artificial hormones to grow. The years that my body actively resisted responding to hormone therapy for some reason which I still do not understand. The relief when my body decided to continue with puberty and increase its production of female hormones. The cessation of hormone therapy. This body which I see in the mirror is the only fact that I have to accept. This is my body. Not the delusion they tried to make me believe in.

In many ways, my body continuing to develop like this feels like the only way that I could have escaped from those interrogation sessions. It feels like salvation, just when I thought that I was about to lose my sanity, my mind and probably many other parts of myself which I would rather keep.


Though I have had to go back to doctors again recently to catch up on some lingering issues - mostly because getting a gynaecologist to accept you as a true hermaphrodite intersex woman is tougher than nails - I have some hope now that this time it will be different. Nobody can tell me those same lies again. I escaped all of that. This time will not be like before.


Part of me still feels like it'll forever be trapped in those interrogation rooms.


How do you take the war out of a person?


Maya