Paralytic States - SCP Foundation

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I am 5 years old.

One of my earliest memories is of me playing baseball with some kids from the neighborhood I grew up in. Because I couldn't really run too fast or throw well, I was assigned to left field, where the balls rarely end up. But as is my luck, a ball just so happens to end up on my side of the field, and I have to run for it. I barely manage to catch up to it, but I can still make the throw.

I throw the ball as hard as I can to third base, but it comes up short. This ends up costing us the game, since in the time it took for me to run to the ball and throw it, and for the kid on third base to run up to where I threw the ball, two other kids have stolen third base and scored runs. As you might imagine, this doesn't earn me any friends. One boy, in particular, says I throw like a girl.

Despite his intentions, this doesn't bother me anywhere near as much as he might have thought it would.

I am 7 years old.

My dad left my mom and me three weeks before my seventh birthday. He moved up north, to Oregon, to 'find himself.' Something I wouldn't come to understand until much later. My mom threw me a birthday party despite having recently become a stereotypically stressed-out single mother. I don't remember much about the party. It was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles themed, something I pretended to like to keep up appearances. My relatives spent the entire time telling me how good a boy I was for not crying that my dad didn't come to my party. How handsome I was. How strong I was going to be when I grew up.

Those words left me with a lingering feeling that something wasn't right with me. This wasn't my birthday party. This was some little boy's birthday party that I had hijacked and falsely become the star of. I felt like crying the entire time I was there, but I stayed strong for my mom's sake. As much as I wanted to cry, I know she wanted to cry more than I did.

But that night, after everyone had left and my mom had gone to bed, I cried alone under my blankets.

I am 9 years old.

It's the summer. I am old enough to stay home alone while my mom goes off to work. Every day I get up early to watch her put her makeup on so that I may do the same when she leaves. Lipstick is easy, I paint my Cupid's bow with the tube and smile so it sets naturally. Mascara is a little trickier; I don't feel comfortable bringing something so close to my eyes but I still apply it all the same. Because my mom is a darker skin tone than I am, her concealer and mascara don't really look good on me. It's my dirty little secret, something I did every day until school came back around.

Everyone always says I look like my father. I want to look like my mom. The ease of her pose, the grace of her silhouette, everything about her is so quintessentially correct to me and something that I could not emulate. At this point, everything about my experience feels like the baseline for every little boy, so I ask my friend Gabriel if he wants to look like his mother. He says no, he wants to grow up to be like his dad and look like him too.

I wonder if maybe there's something wrong with me.

I am 10 years old.

The concept of romantic attraction enters my mindscape through my first crush, my friend Gabriel. He likes dumb boy things, but he's nice to me all the time and he never picks on me when I suck at baseball or Super Mario World. Valentine's Day is coming up and I decide that I want to make him a nice card. My mom catches me making it late one night and asks me what girl I'm making it for. I lie and tell her it's for my friend, Vanessa. She smiles and says it's nice for a boy to make such thoughtful things for a girl. I wonder if that means no one would make nice things for me.

Valentine's Day comes, and I approach Gabriel during lunch with my handmade Valentine. I feel pretty confident in myself as I give it to him, something which quickly fades away as he opens it and reads it. He yells at me, calls me a maricón, and rips up my hand-crafted Valentine. I don't know what maricón means; my mom never taught me Spanish, but deep in my heart, I know it means something bad. Tears well up in my eyes as I stagger backward, desperately trying to escape. His friends all join in, calling me a maricón, a fairy, a faggot.

I run out of the lunchroom and into the nearby janitor's closet, which by some miracle wasn't locked. I cry alone for what feels like hours, until the lunch monitor, Mrs. Nicholson, opens the door and sees me crying. She kneels down beside me and asks me what happened. I foolishly tell her everything, which only leads to her face turning from the kind smile I always knew to a tight grimace. She tells me that what I just did is an affront to God. I wasn't raised religiously, but I knew God was a big deal. The tears flow again.

I wish I could take it all back and never give Gabriel the Valentine.

I am 11 years old.

I have no friends. Gabriel told everyone about the Valentine, so he and I don't play Super Mario World anymore, or baseball, or watch TV together, or bike to each other's houses. His mom told my mom about what happened and my mom had a very weird conversation with me about how no matter what, I would always be her son. It didn't sit well with me. I also don't understand why what I did with Gabriel was so bad, but I realize that adults think it's a big deal so I keep it to myself.

There's a new show I like called Sailor Moon, in which the main character goes through a lengthy transformation sequence to become a magical girl. I find myself dreaming about the transformation sequences, wishing that I could go through one of them and find myself turned into a girl. I don't often have recurring dreams, but this one happens almost nightly. I wake up in a cold sweat each time, crying my eyes out.

For the first time in my life, I feel what it's like to be depressed.

I am 12 years old.

My mom gets a computer and internet connection for the house. I set my AOL name as Serena because it's the name of the main character in Sailor Moon and I like it. I spend my time in rooms for kids and teenagers, talking about Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Sailor Moon. Some nights when my mom isn't home, I enter some more grown-up chats to ask if anyone ever feels like something is not right with them. Through some luck, I manage to talk to someone named Abbie who tells me about "Gender Identity Disorder".

Through Abbie, I find out that I'm not alone in the world. Abbie is very kind and friendly, and she seems to know an awful lot about my situation. I wonder if she was like me. She tells me that's private information, and that if I ever get asked, I shouldn't answer. She tells me I'll be safer like that. She tells me that it's not great, but I'll be safer until I can move somewhere else that is more accepting of people like me.

For the first time in my life, I feel companionship.

I am 13 years old.

Puberty has come in full force and I hate every second of it. There's hair on my legs, my upper lip, my armpits, my arms, everywhere. My voice deepens. I start growing taller. I wish that I could just stay delicate, petite, and other things I never will be again. I spend most of my time in the bathroom desperately shaving all the hair off with a razor, cutting myself over and over and over again. Sometimes intentionally. But mostly accidentally.

Dad has me for the summer. He lives in a tiny town called Boring, which seems appropriate. We go on hikes all the time. He and his new wife, Alice, call me handsome all the time and it makes me feel like something is crawling underneath my skin. Of course, I don't tell this to dad, as it would only make him feel uncomfortable. He was already a little uncomfortable with me coming over because he was so confident that my mom had raised me to hate him (She hadn't.) and things would be weird between us.

What I miss most of all is doing my makeup during the summer when mom wasn't around.

I am 14 years old.

I resent my coach for forcing the boys and girls into separate groups and having the girls do "girl pushups". I wish I could do girl pushups. I am the last to be picked for basketball because no team wants to have a faggot among them. When I am eventually forced to play by the coach, I get balls chucked at the back of my head. I get tripped. I get called a faggot by Gabriel and his friends, and the coach does nothing to stop them.

The showers after gym are a nightmare to traverse. Boys everywhere, all of them naked and bantering. I get pushed against a wall by a football player and he sticks a finger in my ass, and asks me if I like that. I get kicked in the groin by another and am left a weeping mess on the moldy bathroom tile floor.

I know that if I tell on them it will only get worse, so I keep it to myself.

I am 15 years old.

I meet someone named Barbara on AOL and start talking to her. She's my age, and lives the next town over. I finally have a girl friend I can talk to about my crushes and my interests. We spend nights talking about the latest episodes of Roseanne or Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. She thinks Carlton is cute and funny, but I like Will because he's not afraid to live as himself. One night, Barbara asks me if I've had my period yet, to which I don't know how to answer.

I panic and I tell her I don't know what she's talking about but beg her to still be friends with me. She very politely informs me what a period is, and I finally have one thing I do not envy about girls. I don't know if she suspected me of not being who I said I was then, but she didn't say anything and we kept on being friends.

I'm glad she did that.

I am 16 years old.

Halloween is around the corner. This is decidedly the last year I can ever go out trick-or-treating with my cousins, so I have to make it special somehow. I decide I want to dress up as the only thing I can be; a girl. It's not a hard sell for my mom; she easily embraces the idea since it's cheap and nothing too dangerous. She also has some clothes to donate to my efforts. She even offers to help with my makeup, which I graciously accept.

After some fussing with clothes, makeup, a bra, and some tissue paper, my costume is complete. I stand in the mirror for days before the event admiring myself in it. I spend time at school daydreaming about wearing the costume that feels more like myself than I ever could normally. It's even got a skirt that spins. It spins!

For the first time in my life, I feel genuine joy.

This, however, does not last long.

I wait for the sun to come down before I head out to meet my cousins, not wanting to draw more attention to myself. They don't ask questions, which I am grateful for. We head out to hit up the houses for some candy. Everything seems to be going well until we come upon Gabriel's house. I hadn't been there in years and was so caught up in finally being myself that I didn't notice the way we were heading.

Much to my surprise, he answered the door when we rang the button. We locked eyes and I could feel a knot in my stomach as he stared at me. Suddenly, he smiled. He laughed. "Wait till everyone in school hears about this," then I could hear his voice echoing in my ears like all those years before. "Faggot." I could feel my eyes beginning to water. My little cousins, too young to understand what was being said and why I was reacting the way I was, ask me what a faggot is.

"Me. That's what I am," I tell them. But something doesn't feel quite right to me. The sadness I feel is being quickly replaced by something else. The tears streaming down my cheeks start to steam before they reach my chin, ruining my makeup. I feel something I haven't quite felt before in my life.

For the first time in my life, I felt rage.

If that's all I was going to be to the world, I might as well own it. I decided then and there that I was done taking it from everyone. I wasn't Felix any more. I was… I needed a new name. I could think of that later. But for now, I needed to let Gabriel know that I wasn't going to take it anymore. I told my cousins to go, and that I would meet them at the curb. With them gone, I punched him in the face. However, much to my surprise, he recovered quickly and punched me in the nose in return.

I don't remember much of what happened the rest of that night. I went to the hospital, and finally had a talk with my mom.

I am 17 years old.

My new name is Faeowynn. It means 'spirit of the forest.' Mom sometimes has trouble with it, and sometimes still calls me by my deadname, but I don't hold it against her. I know she's trying. I started taking estrogen pills over the summer. They taste sour. Progress is slow, but I can feel it taking effect. Very slowly. But it's happening. Mom pulled me out of public school and started homeschooling me. She has to quit one of her jobs, but she makes up for it by asking dad for more money. He hasn't talked to me in a long time, but he's apparently very busy with his new job so I don't blame him. I miss him. I ask mom to send me up to Portland so I can go on a hike with him.

For the first time in a long time, I don't feel as depressed.

I feel confident enough in my appearance to send Barbara a picture of myself. She says I look pretty. I ask her if she really means it, and she says yes, then adds she likes my makeup. I can't take full credit for that though. Barbara says she knew that I wasn't a normal girl for a while now. I wonder what gave me away but decide not to dwell on it. Instead, I choose to be happy.

I wear the clothes I like, mom teaches me how to do my makeup, and I'm on my way to becoming a real woman. Abbie says I shouldn't talk like that, she says I've always been a real woman. I have a hard time coming to terms with that because deep down I remember that sad, scared little boy I was once upon a time. But she's right.

I am Faeowynn Wilson, and I am a woman.

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