"Annie"
*flash fiction*
I often see Annie in my dreams, or so she calls herself. She’s always dressed in burgundy with touches of gold that accent her neck, and a fragrance of amberwood that calls itself rich. Her almond eyes are laced with seduction that begets attention without asking for it. She parts crowds and emanates confidence in every step she takes. She feels like an extension of myself, a fully realized version of me that I haven’t reached yet. I hate waking up to realize that she was just a fragment of my mind. And just as quickly as she walked in, she fades away into a smoky cloud, retreating back to where she came from; back to a dream.
It’s a Tuesday, and I get up to wash my face, put on a disguise, and count my imperfections. From where I’m standing, I can see the rising sun illuminate our tiny one-bedroom apartment. Joanie’s shadow dances behind me as she scurries in the kitchen, unaware that I’m even awake. Even in the early dawn, her silhouette is so divine that it fills me with envy and later with shame—the ol’ one-two punch that seems to always know the best way to my face. I love her, and I want to be her, but I can’t tell that to her. What would she even say to that?
I promised myself that I was done with those emotions, and yet anxiety fills my body. If this little vial is all I wanted, then why is it so hard? Even in distress, there is an intimacy with depression. I know what it expects of me, and it embraces me like an old friend. I’m so familiar with the everlasting dark cloud over my head.
“Honey! Come over! I know you’re awake!” Joanie yells. The floorboards creak under my feet, and the walls crack with the sound of the heater turning on. In the background, the radio is quietly playing some old rock song that I can’t quite name, and the warm smell of bacon and eggs overwhelm my nose. This made me think of those times that people mention before disaster strikes. That sort of, “it was a regular Tuesday when…” type of story before their life is forever changed. To Joanie, this was just any other Tuesday. We both wouldn’t be entering our respective job shifts until the afternoon, so we had time to kill and a slow morning ahead of us. Joanie locks eyes with me and smiles, motioning to the table with her palms out like a server showcasing dinner.
“So are you ready? I got all the things here ready for you.”
“Oh God, already? It seems like you’re more excited than me.”
“You should be more excited!” she says, grabbing my waist and pulling me in. “It’s something big and grand and exciting and –”, she squeals and walks to the kitchen to turn off the burner. In front of me is a trans girl’s charcuterie board: an alcohol wipe, a band-aid, a packaged needle, and most importantly, a two-inch tall vial of Estradiol Valerate.
“Why are you so excited about this?”
“Why aren’t you?” she asked, doing that squinty eyes thing that my soul melts for.
A million thoughts flooded my mind at once like a cinematic montage, and my brain couldn’t help but grasp at a few things like, “How will my family see me? Will they still love me or will they claim that Satan took me away and that I was a lost cause? A symptom of today’s society where they’d rather see me as their dead son than their happy, fully alive, trans daughter.” Another picture came to mind, and in it, I saw my friends. Question marks hung where their heads should have been. It felt like I couldn’t see them anymore; it was as if their existence in my timeline had begun to blur.
“So why aren’t you?” she repeated, serving breakfast onto our plates and softly nudging us over to the couch.
“I just didn’t realize how the start of my life could hurt so much, you know?” I answered. “Realizing that what you thought was meant for you really isn’t feels like the earth swallowing me up and spitting me out into another universe where I’m alone.”
She looked down at my hands intertwined with hers and then back at me. I realized I didn’t mention that at least I still have her, but she seemed to understand and not say anything. We’ve talked about this so often and every time, it ends the same. She had learned to just be there and to walk into the unknown with me, next to me. She gave me a sad smile, but squeezed my hand. For the rest of the morning, we sunk ourselves into the couch, took an edible, and watched “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”. During slow days like these, I feel like the world stops for a bit. The chaos of our lives grinds to a halt and I have the chance to notice our tree’s branches scraping against the window, and how the light shifts in our living room like a sundial. But today, the world is waiting for me.
As Joanie picked up our plates and cleaned the kitchen, I was left to prepare my injection. I used alcohol wipes to clean the vial that I held and the spot on my left thigh. “Remember, this is an intramuscular injection that should be aimed at the upper outer middle third of your thigh,” my doctor had instructed. I repeated her words in my mind like a prayer, hoping to get everything right. A thick molasses-like liquid seeped into the barrel of my syringe. “It’s always going to be 0.3mL, unless I tell you otherwise”. I got rid of any visible air bubbles and at last, the moment was here. Joanie looked over to me after finishing the dishes and sat on the couch in silence, as if I was on stage and she had come to see me perform. I relax my muscles and exhale a somewhat choppy breath as I push half the needle into my thigh. After slowly plunging the syrup into my leg, I count to five and take it out, covering the injection site with a band-aid. It was over much faster than I thought. The world hadn’t ended.
“Yay!” Joanie exclaimed. She clapped her hands and swung her arms around me once again. “So, so proud of you… you’ve come so far.” She gently embraced me and cupped my face in her hands, kissing me with such love in her eyes that it was impossible to feel anything else. I smiled and nodded in silence as tears filled my eyes. I threw away the wrappers of what was left of my injection and put away the rest in the bottom left drawer of my desk.
Even though it had been only minutes, I felt like it was already working. And over the coming months and years, I knew that the best was yet to come despite my initial hesitancy. Every day more cells in my body would wake up fluent in a language they were always capable of speaking. No longer fighting resistance, but instead listening to what I finally allowed them to hear.
“I know that you see what you could be,” Joanie said. “I’ve seen you change, even before all of this, you’ve changed, and for what it’s worth, you’re so much closer than you think you are. I promise.”
I bashfully sat there, not knowing what to say or how to respond, but instead just listened to her and everything else all at once; the coo of pigeons on the window sill, the honking of impatient drivers on our street.
“We should celebrate! I’ll get us some wine and we can watch a movie tonight after our shift.” She said as she put on her sneakers and pinned her hair up.
“By the way, if you don’t know the answer yet, that’s totally fine, but have you thought of your new name? You’ve been flipping back and forth, and I would kind of love to just call you one from now on.”
I chuckled, reminiscing on all the times I’ve announced to her that I actually don’t want to be called whatever name I had chosen for that week.
I sat for a while, looked out the window, and thought back to my dream. Imagining a world where I didn’t have to think about my validity anymore. I glanced at the pigeons again and noticed a little girl pointing at them, her mom pushing her along the sidewalk as if they were late to an appointment. I saw a couple say goodbye to their friends as their taxi came to pick them up. I saw a woman laugh as she walked with her phone in her hand.
“Yeah, actually. Call me Annie.”
Thank you for reading. ♡ In an attempt to be a better writer, I decided to be brave and start posting fiction. While most of my pieces have been about me and my experiences, this piece and some future ones will be noted as “fiction” to distinguish them from the rest of my work.
victoria !!! this is so insanely good!!!!