By Maz Murray – 10/09/19 I swing frantically between wanting to die and being terrified that I will. And not even right away but at some point, which as far as I’ve heard happens to everybody. ‘Is there a box between Never and Sometimes for making plans to end my life?’ ‘No’ says my therapist What do I expect, I’m not paying her. Make plans sounds too elaborate, or maybe it’s my idea of a plan that’s too elaborate. I am, after all, a Virgo. I make plans to stay alive everyday. I ordered 2 houseplants, epsom salt, lavender oil, st johns wort, Shea butter, almond oil, a binder, a table to carry the aforementioned plants as well as my collection of vitamins and: gotu kola tea, rosewater, a poster of the 1995 film Showgirls all from Amazon, which my friend said was bad but when you might die tomorrow you start to appreciate your parent’s prime account. I hadn’t cried in a while since my last therapist qualified and went off to talk to rich men about erectile dysfunction for £80 an hour. I had a month’s wait for another LGBTQI service, which was much faster than the 6-9 month wait for NHS CBT. The queers get everything these days, especially mental illnesses. The World Health Organisation recently declared that being trans is not a mental illness, but then what is wrong with me? I wake up in the early hours of the morning from a nightmare that takes the form of a movie trailer for a film where Michelle Pfeifer turns in to a tree: The Tree Woman. I google for any evidence of this film, but it does not exist. I wonder how I contact Michelle’s agent. This was before I watched that horrible episode of Sabrina where her trans friend uses magic to transition and starts to turn in to a tree. I’ve never personally felt like a tree but sometimes I do feel like the proverbial boy trapped inside a woman’s body, which is not such a bad place to be trapped if you like women Like a boy in a tasteless body swap movie I woke up one day with real tits and hips. I grabbed my boobs - whoa dude - and then reached down my underwear in mock horror. In year 6 our headteacher told all the girls to go home and look at their vaginas with a mirror. Quite progressive advice, considering. I bent over and examined mine and came to the solid conclusion that there Was No Hole There. He of course didn’t tell us about the clitoris. I remained convinced but weirdly unbothered that my vagina or body or something was broken right up to nearly 15 when my period finally arrived - a pile of black goop in my pants like an alien contagion. The body swap became a body horror and then at the 40 minute mark I did what any of those boys do. I shrugged, put on a trashy outfit and went out in to the world in my best girl mode. The arrival of my sexy woman body was like getting a new barbie doll. I dressed her up in the top shop changing room with clothes that I couldn’t afford but which always looked good on her. I like barbies, the same way those little girls trapped in little boys bodies are supposed to. Bodies that are so nearly the same but for those things that barbies do not have. I made my barbies fuck eachother, I tell a dyke friend. I made my Ken doll kidnap all my barbies, I tell my therapist. I once confided this to a mentor of sorts, an artsy middle aged straight woman, who said ‘Oh! That’s a rape fantasy’ and shrugged. She thought, inevitably, that I’d been messed with, but she was only partially correct. I thought, Fuck - am I a rapist? I comfort myself with the fact that rapists never consider themselves rapists - none of the ones I’ve met anyway. ...