It isn't right for me to externalise Lily and treat her in the 3rd person. My first steps of acceptance of her presence came swiftly - to some degree I think a narrative of inevitability played a part. Whether the global observer (or any pocket of society, or even God Himself) accepts is another story, and I'll certainly play a small part in pushing for it on my part. I worry less about what I should wear - although seeing myself-as-Lily in the mirror is quite reassuring, even as I mature and eventually age. My actual wardrobe is slowly converging, less whatever dresses I have now. However, in public, I for the most part don't show myself-as-Lily. That's probably going to change in a less-than-pretty way. As I have mentioned somewhere earlier, winding up exactly like Betty/Billy of Bitty Boppy Betty is, in all due seriousness, a massive shortchange - even though there will be spheres where that seems a great deal more anticipated than desirable. Dad, Father and Our Father, for three - the last seems to be slightly debatable depending on whom you ask, and one of the last people I want to be dishonest about myself with.
I would like to point out that in 2015, this was the response I got from my family, as an immediate answer to the rhetorical question "Do you want to be a girl?". Before I could respond - like hell I even could at the time. Effectively - and I initially tried to acquiesce - it was as though they passed me a pistol and asked me to kill (what they saw of) Lily... to do so would pretty much also be to turn the same gun on myself. The assumption on their part at first was that it was probably nothing more than mere fetish - out there with a number of common sexual fantasies. I would have thought so as well, when I first discussed it properly with my father at 16.Originally Posted by GretchenM
I really cannot say what life would have been like but for finding out that Lily was me. I don't have any idea how much better or worse it could have been. If it's my cross to bear, I'll just bear it to the end.
