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Prodigal

2.20

~2.20~

While I would’ve loved nothing more than to lay at the bottom of the pool until I fell asleep and the pain would be over forever…

My body’s instinctual desire to survive took over and blasted me to the surface.

I pulled myself out of the pool and went inside to take a shower. After my shower, I looked at myself in the mirror.

My reflection wasn’t unfamiliar. It was me, naked, short hair, flat chest, and a penis. It was a boy in the mirror.

I was looking at myself, but it wasn’t me.

After putting on a bra to give me a little something in the chest area, a pink crop top and some pink women’s sweat pants, I looked a little bit more like myself. A little bit.

Dad came home, ready to confront me.

“What the hell was that today?” He asked me.

“That was Grandpa treating me like crap and you not doing anything about it!” I answered.

“I did tell him that it’s not okay to talk to you like that.” He responded.

“Well you sure didn’t say that when I was around!”

“Well you did surprise me with the info about the father-daughter dance.”

“You don’t want to go do you?” I asked. “You don’t see me as a girl, do you?”

“Want to know what I see?” He asked, with his eyes turning bloodshot like tears were looming. “I see a part of me, my child, who is confused and is suffering, in pain, and I don’t know how to make it better.”

“Want to know what you could do?” I said. “You could treat me like your daughter. “You can say goodbye to any vision you may have had about having a son, and you can say, hey world, this is Emelia, my daughter. And you could do that by asking me to the father-daughter dance.”

I could tell he was torn, and that he was, more so in that moment than any time before, truly struggling.

Dad turned away from me for a moment as he threw his hands to the back of his neck, walking in a circle as he emotionally struggled, and I began to entertain the possibility that he would never accept me.

“Emelia?” He said to me. “Will you go to the father-daughter dance with me?”