Unless

"I don't think she ever will," I say, "Not because of some flaw in her personality and not because she's not the one, but because she never could be. Because I can like being with her. Because I can like the way she feels against me and the way she excites my body but..."

"She'll never excite your heart," she intones, low and morose."

And I nod, knowing that it's true. And knowing that it really doesn't matter whether this is true, whether it's real or just a dream and just me talking to myself.

"I don't love her and I never will," I say, "Because she's not a man. Because I could only ever love a man."

I don't know why. I don't but I understand that. I don't even know if there is a word for that, being drawn romantically to the masculine gender, but I know that it is what I am.

And with that revelation so many things click into place. The awkward pauses I've had in relationships and the way I always seem to be holding back and the simple fact that it was never enough for me because it never could be enough for me.

I could never love and I never had believed that in my heart. I was always holding back because I knew that no one I would ever allow to love me, would ever be someone that I could love.

A lifetime I spent being so absolutely terrified that I was gay. That's the truth. I was raised by parents who would never accept that, in a small town where it was the worst thing in the world to be. In a time when being gay was the punchline of a joke. Surrounded by people who would use that as a knife to cut me to the quick.

I never let myself open up to the possibility. Everytime I even so much as glanced at that corner of myself I shut down, I slammed the door and placed my whole body against it to make sure that it wouldn't budge.

I would never be gay because I would never allow myself the chance to be gay. And now, almost ironically and by virtue of the body I was in, I wasn't gay after all.

Now here I was a woman, be in temporarily or permanently, and only now was I finally able to accept this truth.

"You see it," she says, reaching a hand over the table and squeezing mine in support, "You start to, at least. You begin to understand that you are multitudes, that you are layers. That you are beginning to peel them back one by one and come face to face with your truth."

"Unless," I intone.

"Unless the next question is answered incorrectly," she agrees, finishing my thought for me and then clarifying it, "Unless you're not doing any of this. Unless I'm the one in control."

I swallow hard, almost ready to face this. It's terrifying not because I'm scared of the answer so much as I'm scared that it will be one thing and not the other.

"You know me," I tell her, "You know so much about me and you know how to twist me up and make it so that I see things one way. So that I fail to see things another way.

"So I have to acknowledge the possibility that you're in control here and that I'm not. I have to acknowledge the possibility that I'm just being tricked, that you're pulling the strings behind the scenes. Because sometimes..."

"Sometimes you feel out of control?" she asks, but I shake my head.

"More than that. Sometimes I feel like I don't really understand how I got here. Sometimes I don't really understand why I'm doing what I'm doing, why I've made the choices that I made.

"Before I was her, before I became Emily, I never had that happen. If I fucked up there was a clear and logical path for me. I knew why I was doing it and so I could be sure that I was the one doing it.

"But now?"

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