I woke up to the sound I hate most, the name of the boy I was pretending to be, "AARON, get out here, breakfast is ready!" My mom pounded on my door.

I grumbled something In reply, just enough to satisfy her until I was ready to get out of bed.

Sitting up, I checked my body just in case I had been gifted that night. No such luck.

I pulled myself out of bed and into the living room where the rest of my family was sitting and already eating my mom's fresh homemade cinnamon rolls.

They were good cinnamon rolls, in fact, they were one of my favorite meals, but it was still hard to enjoy them over the crushing disappointment of having to spend yet another day in this horrible body.

After breakfast, it was time to get ready for school. I threw on my normal clothes, denim jeans, a yellow t-shirt, and my black dysphoria hoodie as the cherry on top.

My dysphoria wasn't always this bad, but for some reason, in the past year it's become nearly unbearable, so I started doing what little I could to quell it. I had been training my voice in private and I thought it actually sounded pretty good, but not perfect, and considering that I only ever practiced in the dead of night when I was absolutely sure that nobody else was awake, I was pretty proud of myself.

I was going to brush my teeth, but one look in the mirror immediately ended that possibility, I prefer brushing my teeth in the dark of night when my reflection wasn't there to betray me.

I eventually made it out the door and onto the bus to school. The bus was noisy and cramped like always, so I had to cram into a seat next to some random girl. I felt bad for her. From her perspective, some random shady-looking guy just sat down next to her and trapped her in her seat. If I were her I might have freaked out a little bit internally, but she probably doesn't overthink things as much as I do.

Once I got to school I searched around for my one actual friend, but my hopes were shattered when she texted me that she was out sick today and couldn't make it to school. Great, another thing to add to this perfect day.

School was slow, like always. Except for the one class that I actually enjoyed, Physics.

Physics was fun, or at least I thought so. The collective groan from the rest of the class when Ms. Fogg announced a new unit about gravity told me that I was not in the majority in my opinion. Ms. Fogg was the best teacher I'd ever had. She made it clear that she loved her job. She treated her students like people and not children that she had to babysit. She made her lessons fun and enjoyable, she was also probably the only reason that I liked her class as much as I did, but I guess that the actual content was interesting, but the great teacher just added to my enjoyment.

Sadly, we didn't get into much about the actual unit and gravity, we spent most of the time going over the time frame of the unit.

After Ms. Fogg's class, things went back to normal, mind-numbing classes that sucked the life out of all who enter their forsaken walls, until the worst of all the classes: PE.

Obviously, I hated gym. It's the standard for closeted trans girls like me, being grouped in "boys" and "girls" for locker rooms and teams or whatnot was living hell. Whenever I went into the boy's locker room to get changed I felt so out of place.

The boys all around me were doing typical high-school boy stuff, which is to say, being idiots. As they shedded their casual clothes in favor of their gym clothes, they threw things at each other and screamed as they messed around which gave me a bit of a headache.

Changing by myself is stressful for me, so you can imagine how little I wanted to change in front of anyone else.

I stalled for time by fiddling with the lock on my locker, pretending like I was having trouble opening it. Once most of the boys had left, I actually started to get changed into my gym clothes. Gym had a strict shorts and t-shirt policy for some reason, probably meant to torture poor trans kids like me. I got away with the longest shorts that still classified as shorts. My shirt wasn't anything special either, just a plain gray tee that was, once again, way too big. A benefit of having a shirt that big was that it was kind of flowy- almost like a skirt. Shirt go spinny.

As I exited the locker room I saw a line of rubber balls spanning across the middle of the room, which meant one thing, Dodgeball.

I don't know why PE teachers love to force children to pelt each other with rubber balls, but here we are. But the worst thing about dodgeball was that the teams were always-

"Boys VS Girls!" Mr. Harris shouted from his position in the middle of the court, "Line up on the walls, you know the drill."

I dejectedly made my way over to the wall next to the boy's locker room and leaned up against the walls.

Mr. Harris waited until everyone was up against a wall and began running through the rules that everyone knew. Once Mr. Harris had finished going through the rules he began what I could only describe as an attempt at an inspirational speech.

He referenced our last dodgeball game from a few weeks prior, where the girls won. So his speech this time around was telling "us" boys how much we need to step up our game and that we can't let "a couple of girls" beat us like that. You know, typical toxic masculinity and sexism that you'd expect from some meathead gym teacher.

I wouldn't say that I'm good at dodgeball. I can dodge pretty well, years of trying to stand out as little as possible make you pretty good at making yourself small and getting out of the way. The "ball" part of dodgeball was my true weakness. I couldn't catch or throw a ball for shit.

This unfortunate combination plus my general lack of courage in situations like that led to a fairly common outcome. Me ending up all alone on the boy's side of the court while all my teammates yell at me to "be a man" and just catch the ball, which, if you can imagine, was not the best type of encouragement for me.

That was exactly the situation I ended up in today.

I stood alone on the boy's side of the court, with Julie Cath, Anna Woods, and Leah Shoemaker on the girls' side. The three of them were the biggest reason that the girls won dodgeball so often, being my grade's best softball players made them especially terrifying when playing dodgeball.

Julie, arguably the most dangerous of the three, advanced towards the halfway mark, ball in hand, evil grin on her face. She chucked the ball towards me, but I was just fast enough to get out of the way, narrowly avoiding the ball by less than an inch.

The three girls searched their side of the court for a ball, but all of them were on my side of the court, not good. No matter what, I never got anyone out by throwing. Either they caught it and got me out, or I just fed them ammunition to pelt me with.

I hesitantly picked up a ball from the back of the room. I had a choice to make. I was doomed either way, the choice was if I wanted to get hit with a high-velocity rubber ball or not.

It wasn't much of a choice, so instead of putting any effort into my throw I just sort of tossed the ball in Julie's direction, giving her an easy catch and winning the game for the girls.

One boy shouted from the bleachers, "You throw like a girl!" It was clearly meant to be an insult, but considering the circumstances, it didn't really feel like it.

I pointed to the girls on the other side of the court, who were now celebrating their victory, "If I did, we would have done better!" I shouted back. The boy sat down without another word.

Gym ended shortly after, but not before another one of Mr. Harris's "encouraging" speeches.

Once school was over I made my way onto the bus for the evening, which was somehow even more packed than it was in the morning. There wasn't even a seat for me. I had to duck into the back of the bus and awkwardly cling to the seats around me so that I didn't fly forward whenever the bus stopped.

Eventually, I made it home, semi-intact.

I was always the first one home, both of my parents worked late most nights and my younger siblings' school lasted an hour longer than mine, which meant that I had roughly an hour to myself almost every day.

It was the perfect time for girlmode. I didn't have much in terms of girl clothes, the few things that I had picked up, were from either the clothes that my mom or younger sister had to donate, or that I had ordered online and sneakily transferred to my room.

My clothes were stashed behind the drawers to my nightstand. On the bottom drawer, there was a chunk of wood missing from the back panel, which was the perfect size for my arm to fit in, allowing me access to my sacred goods.

I closed the door behind me as I entered my room, locking the door behind me. I know that I was home all alone but I wasn't taking any risks. I tucked my backpack away underneath my desk and retrieved my go-to girl clothes. An actual skirt that can go full spinny, and a simple women's cut tee with some floral designs. They weren't much, but when you're this euphoria-deprived you take what you can get.

I spent my free hour practicing my voice, just like any other day. Once I heard the front door open and slam shut, I returned to boymode, solemnly stuffing my girl clothes back into their hiding place.

I had three siblings; Lisa, Jacob, and Maddie. Lisa was only a year and a half younger than me but she was already a few inches taller than me. She tried to tease me about it but I was actually glad that I was shorter than her, being tall sucks. Lisa was actually the most athletic out of all of us, she had gotten into soccer when she was ten and switched between sports once she got bored of one. After soccer she went to basketball, then volleyball, softball, and, finally, tennis.

Lisa was a freshman at Jackson high, the more athletically inclined of the two choices for high schools that we had, opposed to my high school, Willow High, the more academic school for people not planning to be career athletes or something similar. Lisa's choice of high schools surprised absolutely nobody. We were only a month into the school year so far, but there was no question that Lisa was going to love it there.

Jacob was three years younger than me, going through his annoying middle-schooler phase (Or at least I hope it's a phase). He is that one kid who so desperately tries to look cool around his friends. He is great a home when nobody else is at home, sweet, kind, all the good stuff, but once anyone else enters the equation he switches from caring brother to apathetic little turd. He also insists that he isn't a little kid anymore, to which I say, enjoy it while it lasts. I am utterly terrified of being an adult, I'm still a solid two years away from being eighteen, but that doesn't make it any less scary.

Maddie is six years younger than me and the most adorable yet infuriating person that I know. She is the baby of our family, which means that rules are but a mere suggestion to her. When I was her age, I had to be so responsible. I did all the chores and took care of all my siblings. I was ten, but it seemed reasonable at the time. I thought I was basically an adult at that point. But looking at Maddie makes me worry about the truth about my time as a babysitter. She still asks for help with the microwave sometimes, and I distinctly remember using the stove at her age. I think I just choose to not think about that most of the time, the image of ten-year-old Maddie using the stove is not a pleasant one.

The three of them had crowded around the dining room table each enjoying a bowl of ice cream. They greeted me with various forms of "hey Aaron" It would have been sweet, but the wrong name grated against my ears and ripped any affection from their words. Lisa never had much ice cream, something about it ruining her "peak athletic body" but I didn't care, more for me. Finished with her small amount of frozen chocolaty goodness, Lisa picked up her backpack and escaped to her room, completely avoiding our sibling snack time.

Jacob, Maddie, and I chatted about our collective day at school before I sent them off to do their homework. Our parents got frustrated when us kids haven't finished our homework by the time they came home, so I had taken the role of interim parent. I made sure that they got their work done as soon as they could so that Mom and Dad didn't get after them. That didn't make me very popular after school, but it was a sacrifice I was willing to make for those ungrateful little assholes.

Eventually, I got them to finish their homework and I retreated back into my room until our parents got home.

My parents worked together in some office building, it was actually where they met. I know they've told me a million times what exactly they do there, but for the life of me, I can never remember what. Regardless, they made a fair chunk of money, enough for a pretty big house and four cars and a motorcycle, even though only two people in the house could drive (the motorcycle was dad's, nobody else was allowed to touch it).

Mom and Dad usually got home around 5:30; today was no exception. shortly after 5:30 I heard the garage door creak and groan as it opened up, making way for my parents' car.

A few minutes later my Mom knocked on my bedroom door to let me know that they had gotten pizza.

After eating pizza and a long conversation with my parents about what school was like, I went to bed. Once again hoping that I would wake up in the morning miraculously transformed into a girl.

Thus ended my last "normal" day.