bile rising in my throat as I stare at the words.

"if you were meant to be a boy, you wouldn't have to fight so hard to prove it."

it's just a sentence in paragraph on a page in a book, one not even meant for me. 

that doesn't make it hurt any less, because I know it's true.

if I was really meant to be a boy, then shouldn't I have been born as one?

born without the chest of a woman, 

without the organs,

the voice,

the body.

I fear I have stolen this body from the girl it belongs to,

because I have a fatal flaw.

I lack the mind that I should have,

a mind that accepts it's body.

I lack the will, the capability, to bear my birthright of femininity,

in it's place I have revulsion, disgust;

disgust for my own(?) body, my own(?) soul.

mismatched, switched, crisscrossed and wrong.

i don't know what I am, what I should be,

what to keep, what to change.

bind my chest, or my thoughts?

cover my form, or my opinion?

gag, choke, cry, at my body, or at my mind.

or both?

neither is particularly easily to mold at will;

and both will bear constant reminders of what they once were.

there's only so much I can do to keep myself at bay; from giving up every time I see myself in the mirror, or remember how unnatural I am, how unnatural I am believed to be.

I never asked to hate my body,

to cry at it,

to feel the stares of people as I try to pass as something i'm not

to know that no matter how hard I try, I'll always be

a little girl, playing dress up in her daddy's clothes, convinced that she's a boy.

a constant game of make-believe, of pretend.

no matter what I change, something will always be off. mismatched, switched, crisscrossed, wrong.

I do not want this, I never did. I want something I will never have, not in this life.

because after all,

if I was meant to be a boy, I shouldn't have to fight so hard to prove it, right?

I could only wish it was that easy.

- a boy