Daruma

I never used to put too much stock in wishing— Talking to god, or whoever else listens to quiet desperate voices in the dead of night. I remember being in grade-school, dreaming before sleep that life was different; that I had a another body to wake to. But the morning would come and so too the cold light of just another day.

Not that I wanted out of the game.

The world was still too beautiful and I was just too strange, stubborn, and loved to leave it behind.

Gamman: we endure.

But in April of 2015, I decided it was time. Time to embrace that small voice that I had carried with me on this strange journey and fulfill the dream that had eluded me all my life. So I took my grandmother’s unused, blank staring daruma off the shelf and made a wish. I was thrilled to feel like a silly child again as I sketched in one of its eyes with sharpie. This past August, after nine months of HRT and over a year of methodically coming out to my family, friends, and community, I drew in the other eye.

Your wish is granted.

I don’t know when the word transgender entered my vocabulary, but once it did, I learned that I wasn’t alone. Just like other helpful labels like hapa or spoonie, this word had the power to affect change thru self-acceptance and acts of radical self-love.

I am the stubborn nail. I am a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’d like to think that my grandmother would be proud of that.

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