Forever, A Day
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was untamed and shapeless.
It’s my best friend’s 22nd birthday and we are all stumbling towards the local park.
The theme is ‘favourite fictional character’ and I’m dressed as my profile picture.
An hour earlier, one of my friends knocked on my door wearing nothing but brown pants and a tank top. I asked him who he’s dressed as and he just replied with “Grease.” Now he’s telling some stranger he’s Tony Soprano.
He drives me to the party.
My best friend opens the door. Teardrop earrings, handsewn cape, puffy shirt. They’re dressed as Howl.
I walk in and find all the others. Raven, Shaggy, Indiana Jones, Alvin and the Chipmunks, the rats from Flushed Away.
I redo my makeup in the bathroom. Moisturiser, primer, foundation, concealer, blush. I try to put on eyeliner and fail. Whatever. Eye shadow, lipstick, lip gloss. I want to cry and I don’t know why.
When I step out, someone I haven’t spoken to since high school tells me we’re all going down to the local park and that he has ‘the goods.’ Okay. An uncomfortable pause. “I didn’t know you’re trans now.” “Yeah I am, haha.” “Sorry for everything back then.” “No, it's all good.” He walks away.
The streetlights illuminate us as we all march down slowly. A friend comes up to me and says she’s excited for the playground. Yeah, same. I spot someone peeking at us through their blinds before disappearing.
People take turns with the flying fox. I can make out a few silhouettes climbing a pyramid of nets. A few of us are laughing a little too loud. Someone asks me if I want a blunt and I say no, but thanks. I take a seat on the swings.
The playground appears all ghostly to me now. Faraway laughter, lonesome streetlights, the lads climbing up the roof of a shed, my friends walking across an empty footy field, the silence of Northmead’s suburban streets.
I look up at the clouds and know that even behind all the light pollution, stars are burning there.
And on the other side of Sydney, everyone else I know is still awake. Laying on their beds, watching one video become another. Am I in their thoughts? When they think of me, am I there for a moment or for far longer? Am I a resident of their thoughts? A guest? A prisoner? A vagrant? A migrant? When the years pass me by, will I remain in their life? When they pass me by, will life still remain in me?
And across the city, across the continent, across the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, my soulmate is working tables at some diner in Buenos Aires. She is jaw-droppingly beautiful and I will never know it. In thirty years time, we will walk the same street and make eye contact for a brief eternity. Our fingers will accidentally touch. She will never know my name.
And the love of my life is currently stuck in a traffic jam. She will match with me on Hinge and her first words will be “aren’t you the girl from that one Instagram reel?” We will work jobs we hate, have children who don’t love us, and rent until we die. She will ask eternity from me, and I will only be able to return to her a life without years; and years without life.
And there are strangers out there thinking about me. They are reading my name on pages I will never touch. They are taping up and packaging my online purchases. They are deciding which toilet I’m allowed to piss and shit in. They are debating about how much freedom I’m allowed to have. They are wishing upon me every kind of death there is. They walk past me on the street, seeing first my face, then my dress, then my back, then my shadow.
And the Earth still turns its weary body. A woman live-streams herself ingesting an entire smorgasbord of fast food. A landmine shreds a child to pieces. A flamingo searches for a mate through dance. An unmanned drone slaughters an entire village of people in a single minute. A father holds his daughter as they go down a water slide. A polar bear watches a glacier collapse into the sea.
And tomorrow, I will find myself ambling away from the club at 2am, sobering up on my fifth cigarette of the night. Sweat soaking up every part of my blouse. I’ve lost my AirPods and my phone has no battery left, walking alone down King Street looking behind me every other second.
And in a year’s time, I will open my wallet and watch a mosquito fly out. I will have to flake again on a nice dinner with a date to placate my landlord. I will turn on my laptop and try to watch a movie but I will get bored, look at the ceiling, and cry. I will hold a pill of estradiol above me and look at it like it’s a star in the sky.
And in a decade’s time, a gang of plain-clothed policemen will knock on my door. They will ask if I live here, if I am my deadname, if I am truly who I am. They will place the muzzle of their rifle on my cheek, take me by the arm, and throw me inside an unmarked van. They will tell everyone I know that I have disappeared, that I have decided to leave.
And in two decades’ time, I will close my eyes whilst facing the sun. For a few minutes before total blindness, the world is a holy hue of pink. I will try my hardest to remember the walls of my childhood bedroom and the face of a friend I have not spoken to in years. I will fail. I will whisper — like a sutra under shaking breath — death before detransition, death before detransition, death before detransition.
And many years after that, I will watch young people frolick the streets from the balcony of an aged care home. I will learn that the world will never wait for my recognition. The world will always remain a stranger to me. I will wish to walk out onto the earth knowing nothing, knowing no one.
And in some faraway millennia, an archaeologist will excavate my bones under a strata of asphalt, gravel, and some sediment of earth we don’t yet have the name of. She will look at it, categorise it, chuck it to a pyramid of everyone else’s bones, and give me my third name.
And she will wonder about my past. She will return me to flesh and consciousness and cross-examine everything I did before and after my life began so she could reconstruct me and imprison my memory in a museum for bored passersby to gawk at in passing.
And this is all I will have for a reply. My past is a void. I look all around me and find only an endless, grassless prairie where the winds winnow nothing and the clouds witness no one. A land abandoned by the sun, the moon, and every star.
And my bare feet wander all this desolation for perpetuity. Among all this emptiness, unknown structures appear beyond all horizon and periphery like mirages. Pyramids of debris rise from the distance like deformed mountains. Uncaring skyscrapers stand like sundials searching for a sun that has forgotten them, casting no shadow, measuring nothing.
And she will ask, what about your body?
And I will respond, my body has forgotten me. I watched it cross the street from my bedroom window. I watched it drive the car and park at Westmead Station. I watched it board the train. I watched it sleep without me. I watched it change without me. My body was wasted on me.
And yes, I spent all my time impatiently waiting for my life to fall apart and for my new limbs to grow. I dolled up everyday, lipstick and revolver on the desk of my vanity, watching the world’s dust coat the mirror. But much like the heart, your body is only an unmarked mass grave for all the others of your kind. All the dead interred within you, wherever you go.
And she will follow with, well, what about your thoughts? What were you wondering about before your final days?
And I will say, I thought there were psyops everywhere for the eyes to see. I thought that there were too many DJ’s and not enough infantrymen. I thought that the Lord restores the year eaten by the locust and the years restore the locusts eaten by the Lord.
And she will remark, well, now you’re just mocking me.
And I will say, well, I only have so much time. As I leave the interrogation room and stumble out into the city, I find that the future I have depended on so much for hope is all but the same silence.
And from the public housing that the utopia of the future has given me, I hear the giggle and chatter of young people. I peek through my blinds and faintly hear a girl talking to another about a playground. The following night, I go out for a stroll and find a set of swings and take a seat.
And I look at the sky and find that stars are still burning there. My hands grip the chains and I cry. And I cry, and I cry, and I cry. How was I ever expected to make a life out of all this death? To resurrect fire from all this ash? To make song out of all this silence?
And I refuse it all. I refuse the burial. I refuse the prayers. I refuse the tears. I refuse the flowers. I refuse the dirt. I refuse the afterlife. I refuse the darkness. I refuse the silence. I refuse the ghost. I refuse the funeral-goers leaving one by one. I refuse my friends visiting my gravestone every week, then every month, then every year. I refuse my parents eventually forgetting my face. I refuse it all.
And words are words no longer. The costume forgets the character. The flesh forgets the body. The stranger forgets the self. The house forgets the residents. The prison forgets the prisoners. The text forgets the page. The name forgets the person. The afterlife forgets the living. The light forgets the darkness. The sun forgets the day. The moon forgets the night. The stars forget the sky. The bones forget the earth. Eternity forgets the years.
And one of my friends asks if I want a turn on the flying fox.
Yeah. I’ll be there. Just a second.
My friend drives me back home.
I open the door and take off my shoes.
I wipe my makeup off, layer by layer.
My parents are asleep in the adjacent room.
I am excited to do this again for the rest of my life.
To live and die forever, a day at a time