Well I suppose there’s a lot of thought to organize here, so I’ll just have to start where it seems most logical. Somewhere very early on… I have no idea when the reasons for which will become clear later… In any case, I, like so may of my kind, was in no doubt as to who I was and even a couple of years later with access to the web all it did was make increasingly clear to me that I was not at all normal. Of course I already kew I wasn’t normal, I’d been hiding away my sister’s undies and such and wearing them to bed… they made me feel better , I don’t know. Who knows why children do things, especially gender dysphoric children living in the back of beyond with no access to anything really, not even the most basic of healthcare.

Our parents had to make sure we were vaccinated for us to get into schools there was at least some sort of interaction with the medical establishment and either my sister or my own birth are… well... I think indeterminate would be likely the right word.

There was one thing I vaguely remember, slipping because I was swinging on the washer and dryer on the little alleyway to the kitchen… Being on overconfident 5 year old I managed to put 2 teeth through my lip so needed a couple of stitches. No big deal, especially in a place where beating your kids around is not just accepted but expected.

You’ll have to excuse the lack of detail here, my memory is kinda swiss cheese like that guy from Quantum Leap. Everything before that day I was 8 years old is as though it is locked behind a veil.

So really, I guess you could say that, minus the whole dying and experiencing the totality of the multiverse(which doesn’t really count for much), It wasn’t a big deal. So what, I’d skidded down the highway on my forehead and I’d had the gears of the bikes impaling my legs…
I survived it, my parents even took the stitches out themselves after 2 days and as far as I was aware I healed normally… Except for the dreams.

I was swirling down through an endless vortex, other creatures are falling endlessly and they are all roaring or making whatever noise they can and nothing seems to make sense except it spins eventually into a beautiful ribbon of souls, intertwined and suddenly I realize that in front of my I have the greatest musical instrument ever… The very universe!

I notice a pulsing movement to the music and I suddenly comprehend that what I have done has disastrous consequences for all life….. at least in this universe…

For an eternity I flail myself in my grief, unable to accept that I have already caused the deaths of untold quintillions of beings…

And then, gasping and sweating and stuck to my sheets I awake. Not the superwoman of my dreams, just a 15 year old kid who didn’t’ understand anything about how other people thought. Outcast didn’t even begin to describe me. Even the school pariahs wouldn’t talk to me… the only people that treated me civilly were my instructors and even they had issues…

I could tell they would hold their temper when demanding I “Show my Work”. I could never understand why I had to write the bloody equation 30 times when All I really needed was to write it twice, once as the question, and once as the solution.. I tried to compromise a bit but it didn’t work and next thing I knew I was not only kicked out of algebra but forbidden from any other maths(Or even redoing algebra). Pompous old fart insisted I cheated even when I did the work right in front of him.

It wasn’t just that tough, it was that the parents had already excluded me from the “Gifted and Talented” track(Which basically went to very high end schools, usually with a full ride).

It seemed that every way I went I would be stymied, so I went for computer science. Thank the goddess, we had an awesome teacher who would make us work so hard… he drilled us endlessly on security and all sorts of things…. To this day, I revere the memory of Dr Harper. Even he could only do so much and fate took us to another place where I tried so hard to fit in and rediscovered my marsh roots and even took Marine Biology and… Tried to make out with another girl for the first time. I liked her and thought she was so beautiful but the simple fact that I didn’t and couldn’t ever look anything like her ruined anything… I spent yet another of many nights crying myself to sleep. After that I realized that I had to actually become the person I was supposed to be. I didn’t know if I wanted boys or girls but I knew damn well that I was a girl!

By this time I had totally screwed up school by just not going anymore. We’d moved, my computer science courses were a 20 year old language on graph paper. The marine biology was the only thing that interested me and that was a substitute course… I started cutting school to go to the library because I could at least learn something there…

Anyway, this didn’t last very long, I was brought in, threatened me with expulsion to which I replied “Yes Please”.

In any even, I got expelled… but then to my surprise my parents chose to enroll me in a state run reform school… Basically juvenile prison. My parents wouldn’t come get me but said I could come if I had a ride so I lied and hitchhiked.

I don’t know where things broke down really, was it being friends with the girls when I was supposed to be a boy and chasing them or was it the dark hangover of my parents insistence on their religion even in that horror chamber?

In any case, I ran away for spring Break… Managed to get a ride from a very nice man who at the end of the ride said “I know what you are… but I don’t care. People here won’t care either! Have fun Girl! And so for 3 or maybe 4 days had fun in the sun at Daytona…. I came back with a bikini tan, no way to hide it… I would not have come back had Traveler’s Aid offered food and a bus ticket… an of course the first thing my parents did was send me back to prison. No private showers of course(Which meant I was basically In terror of being raped the whole time). I knew I had to get out because now everyone knew who I was….

So I engineered a fake assault on a dorm counselor(I never even touched her). It was my 3rd strike and got me expelled….

Not an easy thing, getting expelled from a state run reform school..

A couple months later, my parents gave me an ultimatum.

“Conform to our ways and follow our religion or leave. We will be back in 3 days.” And with that they left for a religious convention..

Needless to say, Being who I am in and of itself precludes following their ways… so on the last day before they were due back, I set out, hitchhiking out of town. It was July 3rd… I mark it every year by shooting off a gross of bottle rockets. My own personal independence day. That day I joined the underground of a major city…. I got the drugs needed to make my physical self at least somewhat resemble who I was… I never once whored myself…. Not that I look down on those that do its just that I am… erm… violently reactive… Trust me, If I could have done it I would have…. I was so hungry…

I discovered that Somehow I could sing and it was a sound people would like…. I didn’t have anything of my own so I did covers and a couple of other street kids caught on and we formed a little girl band… And because a lot of our covers were from one band that struck us all so much… we named ourselves “ The Wrecks”

We were standing there on a street corner one day, about to launch into the next tune…

And I see a familiar figure limp past, looking lost in his own world… And looking as miserable as an many I’ve ever seen and I signal the girls, even though its freezing and were all played out…

We launch into a Pretty Reckless tune that I just think sort of fits and I hope will do
Something…. Anything… I don’t know, just make things better if its possible at all…

Lay my head, under the water
Lay my head, under the sea
Excuse me sir, am I your daughter?
Won't you take me back, take me back and see?

There's not a time, for being younger
And all my friends, are enemies
And if I cried unto my mother
No she wasn't there, she wasn't there for me

Don't let the water drag you down (Don't let the water drag you down)
Don't let the water drag you down

Broken lines, across my mirror
Show my face, all red and bruised
And though I screamed and I screamed, well, no one came running
No I wasn't saved, I wasn't safe from you

Don't let the water drag you down (Don't let the water drag you down)
Don't let the water drag you down

Don't let me drown, don't let me drown in the waves, oh
I could be found, I could be what you had saved

Saved, saved, saved

[Musical Break]

Lay my head, under the water
Aloud I pray, for calmer seas
And when I wake from this dream, with chains all around me
No, I've never been, I've never been free

No, I've never been, I've never been free
No, I've never been, I've never been free

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsLvrBwPrA0

The man had been transfixed, the music flowing through his soul like a drink of icewater to a man in the desert.

“Is it you? Really? Are you my child I betrayed so long ago?

She held her arms open in welcome.

“Yes Father, I am your younger daughter the one who you threw away and who by all rights owes me your life. I do not want your life, that would be too kind. I want you to wander the earth for as long as possible. Your hell is your own mind. I will give you the gift of one embrace with your daughter before your wander eternity.”

He came to her, as one eager to embrace a lost love. At the very last moment before they hugged he pulled a dagger from his shirt and plunged it into her heart. She could say nothing as she felt her life leaking away and her body unable to move… but she could still spit, and this spittle was blood borne of vengeance and death. It marked him to any assassin in the city as a legitimate target. He would not escape this Cold Blooded Woman.

As her friends gathered around her, music could still be heard in the air...

You can't trust a cold blooded man
Girl, don't believe in his lies
Can't trust a cold blooded man
He'll love you and leave you alive
There's one thing you must understand
You can't trust a cold blooded man

Can't trust a cold blooded woman
Boy, don't you lie in her bed
You can't trust a cold blooded woman
She'll love you and leave you for dead
There's one thing you must understand
You can't trust a cold blooded woman

And all the times I stayed and wonder why, are to blame, oh
And all the times that I'm reminded by, I'm ashamed, oh yeah

[Musical break]

You can't trust a cold blooded lover
You can't trust a cold blooded slave
You can't trust a cold blooded other
In the end they'll just drive you insane
There's one thing you must understand
You can't trust a cold blooded
Can't trust a cold blooded
Can't trust a cold blooded

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51KnBVw_2Ew

MY thanks to The Pretty Reckless for their inspiration and if they want compensation somehow I’ll totally do it… my story owes itself to their songs.