The summer of 2007 crashed into my life like a goddamn meteor—hot, blinding, and absolutely world-changing. June brought heat that stuck to your skin like a desperate lover, but I didn't give a shit about the sweat trickling down my back as I held her for the first time. Ylse. My child. A few pounds of raw, screaming life that turned my entire existence upside down and inside out.
The hospital room reeked of antiseptic and that indescribable new-human smell. My hands trembled so badly I thought I might drop her, this tiny creature with fingernails smaller than rice grains and a face screwed up tight against the harshness of the world. The weight of her in my arms was nothing—featherlight—but the responsibility crushed my chest till I could barely breathe.
"She's beautiful," I said to her mother, still dreary of the pain meds. All I could focus on was the rise and fall of her chest, the absolute miracle of her existence, the terrifying thought that I was now responsible for keeping this perfect, fragile being alive. I had never known fear like this before. Not the jump-scare kind that makes your heart race for a few seconds, but the bone-deep terror that settles into your marrow and never fully leaves. What if I fucked this up? What if I wasn't enough? The questions hammered at my skull like angry fists.
Home became a different place with her in it. Our house—once just walls and a roof—transformed into a fortress, a sanctuary that needed to be defended at all costs. Gus, our bristle-furred corgi with eyes too knowing for comfort, appointed himself chief guardian. He'd sleep around her, his head resting on paws, ears perked for any sound that didn't belong.
Poor Emma, our aging beagle-terrier mix, didn't know what to make of the squealing creature that had invaded her domain. She'd skulk around corners, peering suspiciously at Ylse from a safe distance. But Gus would nudge her closer, as if saying, "This tiny human is part of our pack now."
Nights blurred into days, days into weeks. Sleep became a luxury I couldn't afford. Every tiny whimper from the nursery sent me bolting upright, heart pounding like a war drum. The constant vigilance wore me down to raw nerves and caffeine-fueled movements. Mary would rock at night, falling asleep in the room often, in nearly an upright position.
But even in that exhaustion—maybe especially in that exhaustion—I found a purpose so clear it hurt my eyes to look at it directly. I was a father. Her father. The word felt strange in my mouth, heavy with expectations and ghosts of my own childhood.
I threw myself into fatherhood with the desperation of a drowning man clutching at driftwood. I changed diapers with military precision. I learned to heat bottles to the exact right temperature using the inside of my wrist as a thermometer. I held her in my office, as she listened to the dulcid tones of John Fogerty's voice, a vocal sound she grew to love.
Being present became my religion. I'd watch her chest rise and fall while she slept, counting each breath like prayers on a rosary. Id heard the sounds of the fish tank mounted on her crib, with its fake water and fish dancing inside. And the sound of Pacabel's Cannon playing lightly through it. During her wakeful moments, I'd narrate the world to her, describing everything from the weather to the way light filtered through our kitchen window, as if my words could somehow protect her from the harshness waiting outside our door.
"That's the sky," I'd say, holding her against my chest as we stood in the backyard. "One day you'll understand how big it is, how it goes on forever, but for now, just know that no matter how vast it seems, you'll never be lost in it while I'm around."
But beneath the surface of this newfound purpose, something else stirred. A presence I'd been suppressing for years, locked away in the darkest corner of my mind. Wendy. She'd whisper from the shadows when I least expected it, usually in those quiet moments when Ylse and I were alone.
"You're holding her wrong," Wendy would say. "A mother would know better." I'd adjust my grip, shifting Ylse from one arm to another, trying to silence the voice with action.
The first time I changed her, Wendy's presence was so strong I nearly drowned in it. My hands knew exactly how to hold things, and move the diaper around, how to support her head just so, how to do things a mother would do.
"Where did you learn that?" Mary asked, watching from the doorway with a mixture of surprise and something else—something that looked dangerously like understanding.
"Just instinct, I guess," I mumbled, but the lie tasted bitter on my tongue.
Mary was a natural mother, moving through the chaotic early days with a grace I envied to my core. She knew when Ylse was hungry before the first cry even left her lips. She could soothe our child with just the scent of her skin, the sound of her heartbeat. Watching them together—this primal, ancient bond of mother and daughter—sent shards of glass through my heart.
"Want me to take over?" Mary would offer, hands outstretched, face soft with compassion.
"I've got it," I'd snap, then immediately regret the harshness in my voice. But I couldn't explain the jealousy that clawed at my insides, couldn't admit that sometimes, in the darkest hours of night, I wished I were a mother, I wish I had breasts that could hold milk, I wished I could do all those things.
Wendy understood. Wendy felt the same ache, the same desperate yearning. But I couldn't let her speak. Couldn't let her exist. Not then. So I'd push her back into darkness every time she tried to surface, hating myself for the relief I felt when she appeared.
She got stronger every time I pushed her down back into my psyche. Each time Ylse's tiny fingers wrapped around mine, each time her eyes—so fantastically blue they hurt to look at—locked onto my face, Wendy clawed her way closer to the surface. I'd feel her scratching at the walls I'd built, her nails drawing blood from my psyche.
At night, when Mary slept, I'd sometimes lay staring at the ceiling, with Ylse in my head, telling her that I would take care of her, I would also be there for her. But I couldn't let Wendy be her mother, because that would be weakness. So I resigned myself to my role as her father, even though I wanted to kill myself instead. Where was that bridge again? Would it really hurt that bad to jump off of it? I didn't know.
"You're doing it all wrong," Wendy would hiss, and her voice was like gravel in my skull. "She needs to be burped more firmly. She needs the pressure on her belly. Don't you remember how it works? Don’t you remember what Helen taught you? Have you forgotten already?"
And that was the fucking thing that chilled me to my marrow—I did remember. Every goddamn motion etched into my muscles from a life I'd already lived, knowledge burned into my brain. From Mel, my sister. Because when she was just a squalling, red-faced infant, I was the one who cared for her. No one batted an eye that I needed it like oxygen, that it fed the ravenous maternal beast inside me, even as a teenager with childhood dirt still under my fingernails. The perfect fucking angle to hold a bottle, tilting just so against those tiny, seeking lips. The exact rhythm of rocking that would calm colic—a slow, hypnotic pendulum swing that matched my heartbeat. The specific humming pitch that vibrated in my chest and made heavy eyelids surrender to sleep.
Zoe—that selfish bitch—would never lift a finger for her own flesh and blood. I'd be damned to hell before I'd let Ylse suffer the same fucking fate. Every skill I learned from Helen's weathered hands now pulsed through my veins, feeding Wendy's hunger inside me—a hunger that had been there all along, waiting patiently since I'd first cradled Mel against my chest and felt something primal click into place.
At night, as Mary slept soundly beside me, I slipped out to the bathroom and stared at my reflection in the harsh fluorescent light. My eyes were shadowed, skin sallow from months of interrupted sleep, but that wasn't what frightened me.
"Who the hell are you?" I whispered to the mirror.
"You already know. Why do you ask questions for which you already know the answer?" I heard Wendy reply. And for just a split second, my reflection smiled back with a face that wasn't quite mine.
The years rolled by like thunder—loud, unpredictable, leaving echoes that lingered long after they passed. Ylse grew from a helpless infant into a wild-haired, sharp-eyed child who questioned everything and feared nothing. She was everything that I would never be. The torrent of energy that my soul lost the ability to understand or even embrace anymore, was always there.
Our days together became sacred ritual. We'd escape the confines of routine, just the two of us against the world. Easter egg hunts where her mother and I would hide treats in increasingly ridiculous places—inside the freezer, taped beneath chair seats, nestled in the branches of the backyard oak tree. Her laughter when she found an especially clever hiding spot was worth every minute of preparation.
School drop-offs were a special kind of heartbreak. Watching her tiny figure, backpack nearly as big as she was, wade into the chaos of the outer world. Every fiber of my being screamed to grab her back, to shield her from the casual cruelties children inflict on one another. But I forced myself to wave, to smile, to pretend I wasn't leaving a piece of my soul behind those chain-link fences.
The zoo became a place of love. Her mom would map our route with the seriousness of generals planning a campaign, determining which animals deserved our attention first. "The elephants," Ylse would insist, tugging me toward the pachyderm enclosure. "They remember everything, Daddy. Like you!"
Memories fucking hurt. They sink their jagged teeth into my brain and refuse to let go, playing on endless loop like some sick, twisted movie I never asked to watch. And there was Wendy, scratching at the walls I'd built, her fingernails bloody and raw from trying to break through. "Let me out," she'd whisper when I'd catch a glimpse of myself in a store window, when I'd feel the wrongness of my body like a too-tight suit I couldn't shed.
The memories wouldn't fade—My stepfather's constant disappointed face when I didn't look man enough, the copper taste of blood when the kids in the school yard beat me to a pulp for not being like them, the burning in my stomach when a girls gaze at me felt... wrong. Wendy saw it all, remembered it all, used it all as ammunition. "This isn't you," she'd hiss through the cracks, her voice a mixture of honey and gravel. "You know it. I know it. Your fucking perfect memory knows it. Why do you keep denying me?"
And standing there, watching Ylse's tiny hand stroke an elephant's weathered trunk, I felt Wendy smile inside me—because this time, the memory being formed wasn't one that cut. It was one that healed.
And Ylse did remember everything—every promise made, every bedtime story detail, every offhand comment I thought had disappeared into the ether. Her mind was a steel trap wrapped in wild hair and glitter, relentless in its precision, merciless in its recall. The way she'd cock her head and remind me of some throwaway line from three months back would send chills down my spine. Ylse saw things that I would never see. Details that even at my age, my addled brain would look past and ignore, tiny fragments of reality that slipped through the cracks of my perception like water through cupped hands. She'd spot a hummingbird's nest no bigger than a walnut or notice when a shopkeeper changed the color of their door, her eyes cataloging the world with frightening clarity.
Our den transformed into a gaming sanctuary as she grew older. Video game controllers replaced stuffed animals as her treasures of choice. We'd sit shoulder to shoulder, battling digital monsters while the real-world faded to background noise. Years of platinum rankings in PUBG royale's that would only work because Ylse could see 2 pixels moving on a screen before I could, to find an unwitting foe in the distance. Jackbox games brought out her competitive streak, her face flushed with triumph when she outsmarted me, which happened with increasing frequency as years passed.
Food was its own war zone. Pasta, but only with butter and "pramesan cheese"— but no sauce. Apples, but peeled and sliced into precisely equal pieces. Chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs, never any other form.
"You'll eat what's put in front of you," I'd growl when my patience frayed like an old rope.
"I don't like it," she'd counter, arms crossed, jaw set in a stubborn line that mirrored my own.
"Eat it or I swear, I will order an anchovy pizza right now. "
"You wouldn't dare!"
"Try me."
The standoffs could last longer than they needed, but underneath our stubbornness lay a bedrock of absolute, unshakable love. We both knew it, felt it, even in our angriest moments. Her mom would just laugh in the background. The safety of that knowledge allowed us our battles, our thunder and lightning, secure in the knowledge that the storm would always pass.
Some storms change the fucking landscape forever.
But then……
The truth had been crawling under my skin for years, burning like acid in my veins. Wendy's voice—my true voice—had been screaming inside my skull, getting louder until the echo chamber of my ribs couldn't contain it anymore. By the time Ylse was barely a teenager, the pressure was crushing my lungs, squeezing the air from my body every goddamn day.
Things had come to a goddamn breaking point for me. I couldn't keep Wendy shoved down any longer—her fingernails were clawing at my insides, scratching bloody tracks across my soul. All my previous attempts to bury her had crashed and burned, each failure more catastrophic than the last, leaving nothing but smoking wreckage and collateral damage. Those half-measures poisoned everything they touched—relationships fractured, trust evaporated, and acidic hatred seeped into every corner of my life.
No. This time would be different. This time, I'd throw open the cage and let Wendy step into the harsh light, consequences be damned. What was left to lose anyway? Ylse. I could lose Ylse. Every morning tasted like metal and ashes, my skin crawling with the wrongness of it all. The mirror reflected a stranger wearing a mask made of rotting flesh. I'd mapped out my final exit—that steel bridge with its concrete promise waiting patiently in the darkness. I'd calculated the perfect time to jump, when the impact would shatter not just bones but yield maximum damage.
But before that terminal velocity solution, one last chance remained. Let Wendy out—fully, completely, defiantly—or die trying. The choice wasn't really a choice anymore. It was survival in its rawest form, the desperate gasp of someone who'd been drowning for decades.
“Thank you,” Wendy whispered inside my head that morning. Her voice was different now—not desperate or clawing, but gentle, almost reverent. “Thank you for finally letting me breathe.”
“I'm going to lose everything,” I thought back, panic rising like bile in my throat.
“I know,” she answered, a sad smile in her voice. “But I'll protect you. I've always been the strong one. Let me carry this weight now.”
For the first time in decades, I felt peace wash over me—cool water on a third-degree burn. The war inside my skull finally quieted, the battlefield falling silent as the armies laid down their weapons. Wendy wasn't my enemy. She was me. And I was finally coming home to myself.
It happened during Yule season. The house reeked of pine needles and cinnamon, Christmas lights casting sickly rainbows across the walls. I'd been carrying that book—The Queeriodic Table—around secretly in my bag for weeks, its edges worn from my sweaty grip, the corners bent from being shoved hastily into drawers whenever footsteps approached.
"Ylse," I called out, my voice cracking like thin ice. "Come here a sec." We were alone in the house that day.
She shuffled into the living room, eyes glued to her ipad, that teenage irritation radiating off her in waves. "What?"
My mouth tasted like copper pennies. My hands trembled so hard I had to press the book against my thigh to keep the pages from rattling.
"I need to show you something," I managed, patting the couch beside me.
"Look at this," I said, flipping to the dog-eared page marked with a '21'. The orange page burned like a warning signal as I thrust it into her hands. "Read it. Out loud."
Her eyebrows knitted together in confusion, but she started reading anyway. "'Someone whose true gender identity is different to the gender they were assigned at birth...'" Her voice trailed off as her eyes scanned ahead.
"Keep going," I urged, my heart hammering so hard I was sure she could hear it.
She read the whole thing, the words hanging in the air between us like smoke. When she finished, she looked up, eyes wide and uncertain.
"I don't—"
"Again," I said, my voice a desperate rasp. "Read it again."
She did. This time, halfway through, her eyes flicked up to my face, then back to the page. I watched understanding crash into her like a fucking freight train, her pupils dilating with the impact.
"Dad?" The word hung there, suddenly as fragile as spun glass. "Is this you? Are you?"
"That's me," I said, pointing to the page with a finger that wouldn't stop shaking. "I'm trans-feminine, Ylse. I'm... I'm a woman. I always have been. Wendy's been the real me since before you were born."
The silence that followed was deafening. I could hear the blood rushing in my ears, feel sweat trickling down my spine like icy fingers.
"Does Mom know?" Her voice was small, distant.
I shook my head. "Not yet. I wanted to tell you first. But—" I swallowed hard, the words like razor-blades. "I need you to keep this between us until after the holidays. Just until Yule's over."
Her face changed then, hardened in a way I'd never seen before. "You want me to lie to Mom?"
"Not lie, just... wait. Please, Ylse." I reached for her hand but she pulled away. "It's complicated with your mother."
"Fine," she spat, the curse word sharp and unfamiliar on her tongue. "But not one day longer, OK!?!?!?!" The words stung like a slap. She was right.
That fucking decision festered between us like an infected wound, poisoning everything it touched. What should have been our warm Yule season turned into a goddamn nightmare of tense silences and averted eyes. Ylse walked around our home like a ghost, haunting the edges of rooms, disappearing whenever I entered. I'd made her complicit in something she never asked for – forced her to shoulder the crushing weight of a secret that wasn't hers to carry. I'd put her in an impossible position: betray her mother by silence or betray me by speaking. No fucking wonder she looked at me with those hollow eyes. What kind of parent makes their child choose sides? The burden I'd placed on her narrow shoulders was bending her beneath its mass – not because of who I was becoming, but because of how selfishly I'd handled it.
It all came crashing down 12 days after Yule. My Tranniverary, Jan 6th. I never knew what pushed Ylse to her breaking point—a text from Mary, a question that cut too close to the bone—but suddenly she was sobbing into the phone, words tumbling out between hiccupping breaths. By the time I realized what was happening, it was too fucking late.
You coward,' Mary hissed, her face contorted with rage. 'You selfish, manipulative coward. How dare you put our daughter in the middle of this?' She was right of course. I refused to deny it.
Ylse stood behind her, eyes red-rimmed and hollow. I'll never forget the look on her face—not anger at my identity, not confusion about who I was becoming, but something far worse: the raw betrayal of a child who'd been made to keep secrets from someone she loved, who'd been forced to choose sides in a battle she never signed up for. The disappointment in her eyes cut me to the fucking marrow. This wasn't about me being Wendy—this was about me being selfish enough to weaponize my own child's loyalty.
Mary took her away, and I didn't see either of them for 3 days. The house emptied of Ylse's presence, leaving behind the kind of silence that has weight and substance.
What remained of our relationship crumbled to dust in the aftermath. I moved out a month later. Mary’s rage had crystallized into something cold and unforgiving. She guarded our child fiercly, keeping her just out of reach, a punishment that never ended. But it was a punishment I deserved. I knew that already.
I'd finally become Wendy to the world, but the victory tasted like ashes in my mouth. Every night I'd stare at a blank unforgiving ceiling, wondering if authenticity was worth the cost of losing the person I loved most in this godforsaken world.
The world didn't stop turning because my heart was breaking. Seasons changed. Ylse grew taller, her face losing the last traces of childhood. I started hormone therapy, watching my own body slowly transform, becoming more aligned with the truth I'd kept hidden for so long.
We existed in parallel, transiently sharing space only occasionally. I tried to respect her boundaries while leaving doors open, hoping one day she might walk through them.
It was Gus who finally broke the stalemate. Our loyal guardian, now gray around the muzzle and slow to rise from his bed, collapsed one autumn afternoon. He was wearing diapers, his hip dysplasia had immobilized him, and he was getting fluids intraveneously every other day, because he refused to drink water. The prognosis was grim—it was time. His old sister, Emma, had passed 5 years prior, but this one was hard. Hard for all of us.
Mary called me.
"It's time to put Gus to rest, he's in too much pain," she said when I answered.
So I came. Down from my self imposed exile. On a warm July day in 2020.
Gus thumped his little nub weakly, his eyes—still alert despite his failing body. I knelt beside him, careful to leave space between us. "The vet says it could be days or weeks," Mary explained softly. "We need to let him rest." Leo, the cat, was there next to him, giving him comfort. Leo was like that, always gentle to a far too old corgi, who only loved the people he called family.
We watched over him that night. I sat next to him, petting him slowly.
"I've made such a mess of everything," I whispered to him, stroking his velvet ears. "I was trying to protect all of them, but all I did was hurt all of them more."
Gus sighed, a deep, rattling sound, and rested his head on my lap. The weight of it, familiar and comforting, unleashed tears I'd been holding back for months.
The Ylse asked the question......
"You didn't want to be my dad?" Her voice was soft, wounded, stripped of the anger that had been its protective coating for so long.
"No," I looked up, vision blurred. "Being your parent is the single greatest gift of my life. I never, ever regretted that, not for a single second."
The question cut to the heart of everything. I took a shaky breath, knowing I owed her nothing less than absolute truth.
"I regretted living a lie," I said finally. "I regretted the cost of that lie to myself and, eventually, to you and everyone else. But Ylse, the moments themselves—teaching you to read, bandaging your scrapes, watching you grow into this incredible person—I treasured every single one. I still do. I hold onto those memories. Some nights they are the only things that keep me warm inside."
“I don't know how to do this,” she admitted. “I don't know what to call you or how to explain it to my friends or—anything.”
“I don't know either,” I confessed. “We're both figuring it out as we go. But I'd rather figure it out together than apart.”
“You asked me to lie to Mom,” she said suddenly, the words bursting from her like they'd been bottled up too long. 'That's what hurt the most. Not who you are—but that you made me choose between you two. I felt like a fucking chess piece being moved around.'
I swallowed hard, the truth of it hitting me like a physical blow. “You're right. In my own pain and fear, I put you in an impossible position. I was so focused on my own trauma that I created new trauma for you. That was selfish, and wrong, and I'm so goddamn sorry for that part. Not for being Wendy—that's who I've always been—but for how I handled telling you, for making you keep my secret. You deserved better from me.”
Gus chose that moment to let out a contented groan, as if approving of the fragile truce taking shape above him.
A ghost of a smile touched Ylse's lips. "He always did try to keep the peace between the three of us."
"The peacekeeper," I agreed. "Remember how he used to get between you and Emma when you tried to play with her?"
"She hated that," Ylse said, a real smile breaking through now. "But she never snapped at me, even when she could have."
"Gus wouldn't have allowed it," I said. "You were his person from day one. I think Gus loved you more than the rest of us."
We sat in silence for a while, the three of us connected by touch and shared memories. It wasn't resolution—the hurt was too deep, the changes too profound for that—but it was a beginning, a tiny bridge across the chasm.
"I miss you," Ylse said eventually, the words barely audible. "I miss how things were."
"I miss you too," I replied, honesty burning my throat. "Every single day."
"I'm still angry," she warned.
"You have every right to be."
"And I don't know how long it will take me to—to understand all this."
"Take all the time you need. I'm not going anywhere."
She nodded, eyes fixed on Gus, who had drifted to sleep between us. "Can I ask you something?"
"Anything."
"When you—when you were just Dad to me—was any of it real?"
The question pierced me like an arrow, straight and true. "All of it was real," I said without hesitation. "Every laugh, every tear, every moment of love—completely real. The only lie was the box I tried to stuff myself into. But my love for you? That's the truest thing I've ever known."
Ylse absorbed this, her face thoughtful in the dim light. "Okay," she said finally. It wasn't forgiveness or acceptance—not yet—but it was acknowledgment. For now, that would have to be enough.
We had a long road ahead—full of awkward conversations, painful adjustments, and moments of doubt—but for the first time in months, that road no longer seemed completely impassable. Side by side, we watched the sunrise, two people irrevocably changed yet still connected by blood, by history, by a love too stubborn to die.
And in that quiet moment, with Gus's heartbeat keeping time beneath our hands, I allowed myself to hope that maybe, just maybe, we would find our way back to each other.