This is one of the writing assignments from the writer’s course I am taking. The assignment was to write about a moment or scene that really impacted you. So here is the scene I wrote about…

One morning, I found myself in my cozy antique bed, examining the room I lived in. My muscles were tense, and I groaned. Discomfort gripped my heart. My blood felt like it was rushing through my veins as fast as a shooting star. The eerie glassed eyes of my porcelain dolls made my heart race. My thoughts swirled like a tornado with a melody I could not understand.

I pulled off my covers and stared blankly into space. With a sigh, I slowly got off the bed and went to the closet, my mind still in a daze. I opened my sliding closet door and shuffled through my clothes, looking for something to wear. As I examine every shirt, a new-found realization starts to take root. The sweetness of roses and flowers I imagined, the frills that brought disgust to my throat, and the pinks and purples all repulsed me. I suddenly felt like this wasn’t my room.

 Looking behind me, maddening smiles from the dolls and pictures of waterfalls and mountains on the walls confirmed to me that I felt like I was in another person’s room, a girl’s room. I do not identify as a girl; I identify as a boy. This was the first time in my life that I admitted that to myself. I was immersed in a life of a lie.

However, looking once again through my closet, I did find clothes that reflected who I am. Skulls with thrilling smiles wrapped around an abstract view of rainbow colors and shirts with Freddy Kruger’s evil smile, Chucky’s murderous look, and the hollow image of Michael Myers, who hid behind an ambiguous mask with an eerie calm brought a smile to my face, and I re-examined my room. One shelf had skull decorations, and I saw all the gadgets of technology scattered throughout my room. I knew I couldn’t live without technology.

 My Mac computer sat on a large brown desk with the LGBTQ+ flag flashing on the screen; my iPad was asleep on my white antique nightstand, creating the same disgust I had when gazing at my dolls. Panic flooded my mind when I couldn’t see my iPhone, but a sigh of relief when I found it on the counter of my bathroom. I noticed the laptop on my bed, just waiting for me to write. A throw pillow on my bed has an emotion circle for identifying my feelings, which I am not good at.

When I read about the different emotions, three stood out to me: empty, skeptical, and excluded. The emptiness comes from the lack of most things in my environment that reflect who I am, from the porcelain dolls to most of my girly clothes. I feel sad, depressed, and confused about that emptiness. The reason for the skepticism is because, for the first time, I am admitting to myself the confusion and truth about my identity. I feel excluded because the room depicts another person’s life and, for the most part, is not mine. The exclusion comes from knowing the rejection and disapproval from my family if they were to discover their daughter was transgender. Most people don’t understand that identity, and I feel isolated and alone.