This Love This Hate

by The_Witch

Rating: teen
Tags: Slice of Life, Human
Length: 2063

I'll fix this later

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2015-12-08 04:51:51 UTC

Open

Chapter One

        I stood by the cliff edge, just… thinking. I didn’t know what else to do. I was terrified, I couldn’t think straight. I was stuck at an impasse in my head. I couldn’t keep living a lie, but I was too scared to tell anyone.

        In my mind I was a beautiful girl, but on the outside I was an obvious half-adult teen male. I was so close to telling my family, but every doubt in my mind was backed by my father’s voice. I had refused to talk to him for over three years, but his voice wouldn’t leave me. He was still alive, so I lived because I had to protect my siblings as much as I could.

        I had never done it before as my own idea, but I took one of my mom’s dresses. I found an isolated place in the woods and put it on, no one would be able to see my shame. I knew I had worn dresses before, but this was different. This was my idea, before it was someone that wanted to do dress up. I had secretly enjoyed it, but I always presented it as a joke.

        So I stood by the cliff, just thinking. I still didn’t know what to do. I didn’t understand any of this. I’d heard about transgender and I mostly understood the different terms, but I could never understand the transition. I had thought about the transition, but it scared me. People always complimented me on my manly looks and how handsome I was. What could’ve change that?

        I tried to make myself look more feminine, but the compliments about me being handsome only became more common. Though it shouldn’t have been a surprise to me. So I grew my hair out, well tried to. My mom wasn’t happy about it, but she just wanted it to look nice. So she let me grow it out, but whenever I was taken to a barber or a guy’s hair salon they said they would listen, they never did. I always came home hiding my tears behind anger, what else could I do. They always shaved my head, like the popular styles.

My mom always said she didn’t care if I came home with a boy or a girl as a date, but identity is something so different than that. Sexual attraction doesn’t change you, identity is who you are even if you can’t show it. My dad. He more than cared, he was on the edge of being an extremist conservative. Whenever I heard him talk about politics it was… difficult. About the Mexicans going back to their own country, the faggots going to hell, that it’s just another criminal that was shot by a cop. It was painful, I couldn’t let him even consider the idea that I wasn’t sexually normal. On the inside though I had crossed that line a thousand times and it scared me.

So I just continued to stand on the edge, thinking. Could I just leave? No, they would’ve looked for me. Could they have gotten past my death? Eventually, maybe, but it would’ve haunted them forever. Especially since my body would have been found in a dress. How would they have taken that? Would they have hated me? Or would they have understood and felt betrayed because I never told them?

I couldn’t handle it. I just broke down in tears and sat on a fallen tree, or branch, or whatever it was! I didn’t even care anymore. I felt like I was full of ice and fire at the same time. It was painful beyond belief, just like every other time I got that emotional. It didn’t matter if I was embarrassed, angry, sad, it always hurt. It was only tears, I never sobbed or really cried anymore at that time.. I had to be strong for my siblings.

My brother Nevin, intelligent, hyper, temperamental, always ready for something new. I never felt felt like I could be enough for him. Always cold emotionally and only barely there in thought. He wanted to be with me regardless. I didn’t deserve his love, I don’t think I ever will.

I don’t think I’ll kill myself today. I still have my family.

Bridget my sister. Nevin’s twin and so much like him, besides looks. I think it’s habit between us siblings to be intelligent. She had been smarter than me. I may have been farther in school, but she’d put my quest for knowledge to hell. Everyday she’d come to me telling me something new. I was the tome of keys and she was the tome of everything. She looked more like me than her twin.

I don’t think I could go with her here.

Sean was the youngest of us. He looked more like Nevin than Bridget. It had always kinda been a joke in the family that Nevin and Sean are the actual twins, it’s what everyone that had met them thought anyways. Sean was smart, but he had to spend a moment to get the words from his brain to his mouth. I don’t know why, but I didn’t care, he was my brother. He was the most emotional out of all of us. It’d been good most of the time because he was outwardly happy. The rest of us mostly smiled on the inside. Sean’s emotions were only bad when he got angry, he got violent sometimes. I blame our abusive father.

He’s the real source of most of these problems.

I couldn’t help but think that. I’m sure my mother and others on that side of the family would have accepted the way I see myself, but my father. He was hateful to the core. If he knew anything about me he’d’ve destroyed me. I’m sure he knew I wasn’t ‘normal’ sexually, but he didn’t know specifics so that saved me some pain. Everything that wasn’t cisgender and heterosexual to him was evil. His vocabulary was platformed on hate speech.

Why did he have to be my father?

It’s not like it mattered. He’d given me my siblings. Maybe I’d’ve existed elsewhere, but that wasn’t for sure, so I could’ve thanked him for my life. No, not my life, my existence. My life was forged by my actual family and the pain I’d endured. He forced me to be strong, but is that a curse or a boon. I barely felt anymore, my emotions were destroyed by him. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually cried.

It could be worse, it could always be worse. Wait… when did it get so dark… Crap, I’m doomed. At least the Moon’s out. Well that covers that, I guess. I need to get back, everyone’s probably really worried. Thank gosh it’s winter, shouldn’t be anyone else out here. Then I heard voices and snapping twigs, this is my luck.

Are you kidding me!? The sun’s been down for at least an hour, it’s probably 40 degrees out, and it rained last night, what would anyone else be out here for. They’re either crazy like me or drunk.

“Hey guys I got- I gotta? What do I gotta do again? Oh yah! I gotta piss. Imma go this away.” He’s wasted, I couldn’t have the luck of having another crazy out here. NOoo I have to deal with the wasted man. I don’t want to deal with a drunk. The crash of plants and the man’s grunts came my way.

Damnit! Of course! Just my fucking luck! I give up, I’m just gonna go hide. It isn’t like I have another choice. So I did, not like it worked, but I tried to hide. I could say that. I saw the man stumbling around in the moonlit undergrowth.

Oh shit he’s going towards the cliff! I kept watching to make sure he didn’t fall. I snuck closer in case he did fall. I didn’t want to deal with a drunk man, but I didn’t want to be there if he fell off. Especially since I was able to try and stop it. He wasn’t too big, so unless he fell all the way off the cliff I could pull him away. He was stumbling back and forth left, right, tilting like a reverse pendulum. He was getting really close to the edge.

Should I stop him now?… I think I’ll wait. I don’t want him to die, but if I can stay away from the situation I will. Being judged in person is different than slurs being yelled at me across the internet. In real life I hadn’t had hate speech used against me as a targeted slang, only as a general insult. Like how people got called ‘fags’ a lot, it wasn’t because they were gay others were just being a-holes.

Then the man had tilted right towards the cliff edge. “fuck,” I cursed under my breath as I leapt forward and grabbed his left wrist. Crap! He’s heavier than he looks. He still wasn’t that heavy, but he was heavier than I expected. I leaned back to spin him back onto solid ground, he fell on the dirt, but it could’ve been worse. He hadn’t fallen off the cliff and that’s what I cared about, however I couldn’t just run away.

I wanted to run away so much because the moon’s mostly full. That meant there was plenty of light, so even drunk he was able to see me almost clearly. If I ran away he’d know something weird was happening and he’d likely yell.

I’m doomed, he’s drunk and- oh no he’s already looking at me!

        “What’s the hells,” he’d slurred out, “Why d’ya look so weirds?”

        Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck

He started to stand up and I was just frozen in place. I didn’t have a single fucking idea on what to do. He’d gotten closer to me getting in my face.

        “I’m talking to you,” he said poking my chest, “why aren’t tcha answering me?”

        “SorryI’mbusyfreakingout,” I didn’t even raise the pitch my voice in the slightest when I told him that. I used my regular deep voice… While dressed as a girl. He was drunk, found a dude dressed as a girl in the woods, and he didn’t react well. I may have startled him because he stopped holding his bladder, that or he was just that drunk.

        “Hey you guys, get over here and check what I found!”

I’m screwed. It was all I could think at the time, so I ran. He caught my wrist and made me stumble… over the cliff.

I fell and kept falling. I knew I was gonna die,… it made me calm. I’d always wanted to fall like this because it’d be like flying, I enjoyed the feeling.Why shouldn’t I, I was gonna die regardless so it didn’t matter how my family took my death because I couldn’t stop it.

I flew, I looked down at the ground as I fell. I tried to spread my wings. I think I had lost my mind because I didn’t mean that metaphorically. A wave of happiness overwhelmed me and everything became clear. There was more colour, things were slower, the light was brighter, and when I flipped to see the sky it was crystalline. Divinely beautiful, like I was seeing it for the first time. It was euphoric.

Then it ended, I was caught in a plush feeling before settling onto the ground. I was a leaf that had drifted into place on the forest floor. My joy was overwhelming, all my thoughts were stuck on the moon and the shadow cast across it. Shaped like a crescent unicorn, the shadow was strange and beautiful.

Life was as amazing as it was moments ago, even though I’d live. I’m alive. That thought should’ve floored me, but I was calm somehow. I didn’t care, I was still in euphoria.

Shhh young one, you have had a long day and must sleep. Bask in my cool light and be calm. You are not innocent, but you deserve the protection I will give you tonight. So sleep little one, you will be safe.I didn’t know the voice, but I believed it. Everything caught up to me in that moment. I was still exhilarated, but I was exhausted. So I slept, I slept under the cool moonlight basking in its pagan glory.