A personal exploration of gender identity and the perception of self. The concepts of gender identity is often linked to the presentation of oneself, and gender dysphoria (a form of body dysphoria, wherein a person is dissatisfied with their own appearance as it does not conform with their personal image of how they wish their gender to be presented) is very common amongst transgender and non-binary people. It’s a very tricky concept to grasp, and so I attempted to somewhat portray the nuances of the experience.
It’s a circus glamoured in the soft cover of our inky-blue solace. A midnight extravaganza, a mythical masquerade. Don your mask and dance the night away in the glows of the night. Delicately glide across the splendours, and examine the fabrics and colours that could become You. You’re tabula rasa. Blank. But you’re that much more ready to find something, to define yourself. Pick the colours that look good on you, make you feel like you, paint you in joy and set you free. But come morning, don more than the outfit you entered in, and you'll be tried for your crimes, where the punishment matches the severity of the crime. The incongruence with the capital-y You. The morning has always been harsh, burning everything it touches.
Have you seen the You that is within the mirror? It's the You that belongs to everyone else but you. Your image is captured by the cold surface. Windows into the soul, gateways to worlds uncharted. Mirrors have long been the hearts of vain, untameable magic. You are only skin-deep. Your reflection is distorted into a pleasant smile, a far cry from the grotesque beauty of the grimace that twists your face and ensnares itself upon your soul. You’d look better if you smiled.
It’s a dance around a broken mirror, the shattered fragments on the ground reflecting light up into my heart and the woman’s heart, rainbow fractals like buds blooming into euphoric gardens of eden. The glass is embedded in my foot. Little knives prick me, slice through me, remind me that freedom is bitter and painful when you take it against the grain. The mirror and the woman are one and the same. Her soul is mine when I reach into her rib cage and pluck her heart from the mess of thorns. I tumble out of the mirror and breathe in life. I cannot look back, only dash forward into freedom. The mirror stares at my figure, coarse, unblinking.
The little mermaid caps the roaring ocean with a dusting of sea foam, I sell my peace to the sea witch for a bottle of joy. I sell complacency for the bottle that will turn me from the You in the mirror to Me. Modern magic that is so very ancient it had to be reinvented. Magic that distorts the you within the mirror, wrings it out and twists it and straightens it until it is the same as the Me that stands before it. But magic that changes You is so very detested by some. Convention is the foe of truth, and I strike it down with my sword. I am me, the You that you decided is irrelevant to me, is irrelevant to my beating heart and short hair and rushing soul and loud voice and boundless depths and blossoming arrogance.
I can take what I deserve. I can take the You within the mirror and make it Me. The princess and the dragon are one and the same.