My discovery of the limitations of magic in my real life at seven years old and how I chose to accept them and live or not as the case may be.

I was seven when I worked out dreams were not meant to be. I then hid my dreams, and got on with enduring real life. My only escape valve to prevent me slitting my wrists, though I fell short of even that a few times, was fantasy fiction; because in those stories all rules could be overwritten. Not like how it is in real life. From that day forward my two lives diverged, never to meet again. Then again born on the twenty-ninth of February, I was a Pisces; the two fishes swimming in different directions. Perhaps I was destined to split my lives so. For sure I was not destined to live my dreams, and I don’t think I could have survived living, without my dreams to escape into, when life got too real.

There are boys that moan that they were born with a weak effeminate frame that eventual led to them realizing they were really girls, on the inside. They describe how they were terrorized and bullied, either before or after realizing whom they were. My story is as similar to that as the chance of finding a coconut tree naturally growing at the South Pole. I was blessed with the rugged hunk of ideal maleness. I was fast, strong, intelligent and handsome. Yes, I’d won the genetic lottery, and was likely the last chosen as a bullies pick to try to terrorize. I didn’t use my power to champion the under trodden though. I guess I never accepted the Spiderman’s uncle speech of, with great power comes great responsibility, as I was, like most kids actually are, a selfish sod.

Nope, I should have had no worries and just got on with my life. The only problem was I desired, no more so coveted, all the cute clothes in my elder sister’s closet. I despised and hated the choices offered as clothes for me to wear. My Mother despaired clothing shopping with me, as I turned down everything offered, unwilling to say what I would really like to wear. She ended up later just measuring me, and shopping without me. Whenever we had the family movie night, when Dad would link his camcorder to the TV and play family movies, the comments about me were always along the lines of, ‘There he is my handsome son, now why weren’t you smiling there. Now there is a serious face, look at that pout,’ or something similar. Not realizing, that to me, everything they said about me, was an insult. It was not the half good and half teasing bad leg-pulling, which they thought themselves to be saying. No, every male pronoun, or positive male trait associated to me, was a dagger strike thrust in to my heart. One I couldn’t even get upset at for fear of being found out.

Looking back, I think my elder sister had reason to be upset too. As a child I didn’t see it then, as I only saw my own jealousy for her, and more so my absolute envy for the baby of our family. My younger brother that stole every movie he was in. ‘How did he escape the play pen?’ ‘Oh, look this is when we finally found the hole in the fence behind the bushes, and we worked out how he was escaping the garden.’ ‘Look how precious and pretty she looks; how did he ever end up in his sister’s old dress?’

Oh, yes, I don’t know why, other than possibly because my big sister was jealous and wanted to make our little brother look silly, but she was often dressing him up in her old clothes. The problem was he often looked prettier than she ever had, when wearing them. He had the luck of the Irish, as nothing bad seemed to ever stick to him. Escape artist extraordinaire, Houdini in training, the perfect androgynous child who could look pretty boy handsome, or drop dead gorgeous dependant on what he wore. Oh, how I hated him.

The house belonged to a friend of my Dad’s from work. It had a beautiful view through the windows of the English Channel, and the youngest girl’s room, had a round window. To me the room must be magical for three reasons. First the girl, whom was between my elder sister’s and my age, was absolutely the prettiest girl I’d even seen. She, as a preteen was developing the curves where usually a gangly ugly duckling became a swan. However, in her case she was transforming from pretty preteen swan into a goddess teenage princess of beauty.

She never paid me a moment’s notice though when we were in her house. She spent most of her time with my sister. Likely she wanted a big sister, as she only had two older brothers. If she wasn’t ensconced somewhere private with my big sister then she was dressing my younger brother up in her old clothes. It was likely due to my sister’s encouragement. I saw it as even her finding my little brother, as well as obviously a girl, my big sister, the only ones of our family worth her time.

The second reason for magic is it was the first person’s bedroom that had a round window that I’d been in. Something different could happen here. I was sure of it. If ever there was a chance of magic in the real world then here is where it would happen. Here I could finally have reason to smile. As she smiled all the time we visited, and seemed so sure of herself, and as she was the youngest of her family was spoiled.

Her family didn’t have the problems ours had. Or so I thought as an observer looking in, and not seeing the problems and issues all families have beneath the smiling veneer. I both wanted her, and wanted to be her. For if I was her then I would live on the cliffside in this magical house. One with a magical round window in my bedroom and with closets filled with gorgeous clothes. Unlike my elder sister who was doted on for being a girl, and my younger brother that was doted on for being the youngest. She got the benefits of both showered upon her.

The third reason for magic is though I knew my Mum and sister had more clothes than I or my brother, and possibly my Dad. Though actually, due to all the different types of officer’s uniforms and shoes, Dad gave my sister a run for her money on clothing, and wasn’t that bad a runner up against his loss to my Mum’s. This girl’s closet had them all beat. I’d never seen so many beautiful dresses, shoes, and outfits in one place that wasn’t a women’s clothing store. Even later, when I joined drama groups she had some of the acting clubs wardrobe rooms beat.

I saw the magic strike when my parent’s called my sister and brother down to be introduced to new friends that had arrived late. I and the goddess’s elder brothers had been pushed out of her magical kingdom, to allow her and my sister and brother to play. The boys humored me with the kiddy side of the scrabble board. We set it up in one corner of the formal room of our hosts’ house, while the adults drank various alcoholic drinks and talked. They refused my request to play the real game side of the board, as I was too young to be any challenge according to the both of them. Though as a prolific reader and writer I still to this day think I could have given them a run for their money.

These late arriving guests that had got lost, I smirked how can you miss the large magical house on the cliffside with a round window, had arrived late with children. Well a baby and a four-year-old, and so after they were introduced to the three of us older boys, the hosts called for their daughter to come down, and my parents called down my siblings.

I was trying to work out where the third girl coming down the stairs had arrived from and why my brother wasn’t coming downstairs, when my brain rebooted. The new girl was wearing boy’s shoes. She was wearing my brother’s boy’s shoes. This pretty princess, in what I later learned was a pale blue sateen German dirndl dress with embroidered border piping, even while wearing clunky boy’s shoes, was obviously now a girl. My little brother was the new girl. There was no other explanation but magic had happened. I had two sisters.

Even the two boys with me knew she was a girl. They didn’t yell sissy or laugh and point, and say there’s a boy in a dress. My own parents introduced their eldest and youngest daughters to the new family that had a baby boy and a girl with pigtails and a pair of pale blue ribbons. This girl was similar in age to my newly female named younger sister. Within minutes the four girls ran upstairs, and as the scrabble game had been messed up during the confusion it was put away, and the elder boys were granted to leave to their room as they had, as requested, played a game of scrabble with me, and done their due diligence as good hosts.

I sat numb in a chair in the corner of the room. I wanted to go upstairs and join the girls, but was too afraid to go. I kept telling myself that I’d seen magic, and if I could just own up to wanting to be a girl too, I could become one. I’d seen it. No one had called my nearly five year old sister, a sissy, or a boy in a dress. He was now a girl. However, I’d been introduced to the new family, as my parent’s only son. It was too late for the magic to work on me.

The evening ended with my mum holding a bag of clothes. Clothes that I’d later learn were my brother’s real clothes. I at the time jealously thought, as was said when the bag was handed over, that my new younger sister had received some of the host’s daughter’s old clothes from the magical closet that makes beautiful girls, from any that wear those clothes. I knew this was so, as I had sneaked into my sister’s bedroom and tried on a couple of her dresses a while ago, but an ugly sight of a definitely male boy in a dress looked back at me in the mirror both times.

We said our farewells to the other families and just before the other little girl with a plaited ponytail and ribbon left, my Mum grabbed the second ribbon, she’d had before when she had pigtails, from a short ponytail the girls had somehow made, in my little sister’s obviously not too short hair. “Oh, I’m glad I noticed that.”My Mum had said. To which the other Mother had replied. “She has plenty of others I was going to let your daughter keep it.”

After that fiasco we got to leave, two parents, one son, with an elder and a younger sister. The younger sister in clunking boys shoes that my parents had explained as hand me downs from me, her brother, and their need to get her new shoes that fit this weekend, as they hadn’t realized she’d grown out of hers before the party. The younger girl’s braided ponytail slowly unraveling, and yet was still obviously there.

It was a few weeks or months later that my parents needed to go to London for the weekend, and that we three would be staying at the magical house on the cliffside, for said weekend. I was filled with nervous excitement, and anxiety. On Friday as we were dropped off we were informed that the elder boys were away ‘till Sunday, and my brother and I with sleeping bags, got to camp out on their beds Friday and Saturday night, while my sister would share their daughter’s magical bedroom.

Saturday morning, the man of the house got started having all four of us cook French toast for a late breakfast. As I’d never seen my Dad helping in the kitchen except on holidays, like Christmas, New Year’s and Easter, it opened my eyes that it was okay for men to teach children how to cook everyday meals. We then went out to the stony beach and caught crabs in the rock pools. We were shown that evening how to prepare the crabs. Which part were the dead man’s fingers, which we must get removed before cooking the crabs for our Saturday evening meal. The meal cooked by the four of us under the direction of the magic house’s master once again.

Sunday came with rain, and board games were got out after we’d made omelets for breakfast with the goddess’s Mother teaching us. I had geared myself up to ensure when the girls started on dressing my brother in girls clothes, I’d let myself get preyed on too somehow, but the weekend was nearly over and it hadn’t happened yet. In desperation, I tried to nudge the conversation over toward what happened before. I then found that both girl’s had got into serious trouble and had been told in no uncertain terms, it was never to happen again.

“But what if she asks to wear it this time?” I asked, at which my younger brother knocked over the board game, and angrily thumped off. “Now you’ve done it!” My sister said. “We never mentioned or brought the subject up. You did.”

“But she actually really looked like a girl, even wearing boy’s shoes that ‘thunked’ as she moved.” I whined. The girls shrugged and got me to help put away the games. Feeling my chance slipping away I found myself saying what I’d never dared to say before. “She looked so pretty in that dress; I was wandering… well I… wantedtotrytowearthedresstoo.”

Both the girl’s were looking at me as if I had a second head. The pause wasn’t likely as long as the minutes I thought passed. However, the time dragged by until my sister was all eagerly saying. “We can do it now. We were only told we couldn’t because he never agreed.”

The other girl wasn’t as comfortable with the idea. “You couldn’t wear it. It is too small. You’re similar if not bigger than me and I won’t have you stretching my real clothes.”

“You must have some old loose clothes that would fit him.” My sister said. “I mean your bedroom is crammed full of so many clothes.”

“Well I guess there’s no harm in looking, but are you really sure?” I tentatively nodded before I could back out. “Well if we do this, then you need to tell my Mum that you want to wear one of my old dresses.” I looked at my goddess, and if it was my sister that had stated the requirement, I’d have chickened out at this point, but she asked me to tell her Mum, and so I somehow found myself doing so.

The woman looked at me oddly, and then sort of smiled or now looking back with an adult’s perspective, more likely she grimaced. “As long as you all are doing what you all are okay with, you can wear the clothes my daughter lets you. However, she will get the clothes from her room and give them to you so that you can change in the boys’ bedroom. While upstairs the girls will only be in the girls’ bedroom and the boys in the boys’ and none of you in the main bedroom.” The girls said they’d be downstairs setting up a board game we could all play, after handing me a dress the goddess thought would fit.

I nervously walked downstairs waiting for the magic in the house to work as I descended in the grey cotton A-line dress that was loose in some places and a bit tight in others. The only other clothing showing was my pair of grey socks that I’d rolled the tops down on, as I’d seen other girls do, to try to make them less boyish. I’d decided to leave off my boy shoes. There were goose-bumps of fear sticking up on my bare to the shoulder arms and probably a few on my unusually barer, even surprisingly when I wore shorts, knobbly kneed legs. For though the skirt of the dress dropped to an inch or two above my knees I found my legs all the way to my underpants seemed bare even though they were covered, especially while walking down the stairs.

The front door swung open as I stepped off the bottom step, and the two boys returned charging into the house, out of the rain. “Whoa, good job we left for the weekend.” Was the comment made by the first and older of the two boys. He was at the mid to late teen age of leaving childhood. “Dude we had nearly girls sleeping in our bedroom.” He then joked.

The younger boy, in his early to mid teens, looked at me, and then said. “Nope, we have never had girls, nearly or otherwise, sleeping in our bedroom. Last time was a toddler in a dress wearing boy’s shoes, and that there is a boy in a dress wearing no shoes.” I flew back up the stairs to the boys’ room and quickly got back into my clothes and put on my shoes. I threw the dress though the door into the girl’s room. The room I’d been denied access to, and then seeing no one at the bottom of the stairs descended, and opened the front door and escaped the house into the rain. I could ignore being drenched and there was no one but me out in the rain, because of it. How I loved the rain. Its coldness soaked in bone deep, and numbed the body to reality. It allowed escape, solitude and camouflage so you weren’t caught out lying when you said you weren’t crying. I ran from the house on the cliffside that had no magic, even if it had a round window.

I mean if it was a magical house then that other family wouldn’t have got lost looking for it. It isn’t possible to not find a magical house as long as you have a valid invitation to visit it. I made a promise to myself that from that day forward, reality, and my fantasy worlds and dreams, would never meet again. I would enjoy my dreams in my books, and suffer reality, as reality is; devoid of dreams and magic. I was glad no one mentioned about the dress. I couldn’t have survived if anyone brought it back up in a conversation. I counted it my blessing for accepting magic, dreams and dresses would not be part of my real life. Magic, dresses and being a girl were all in the dream world of the fantasy books that I could write or read. Reality was there to be endured, to provide for those brief glimmers of near escape and their broken apart chances to momentarily nearly touch the fraying wisps of my dreams.