A few days later and suddenly it was time for another check up and psych appointment. It was hard to believe, but it was already May 3rd, now with an entire third of the experiment behind me things were really starting to slip into a routine.

This time I decided to wear a little bit of pale pink eyeshadow to this appointment, though I almost hoped that no one would notice it at all. Just like normal my appointment with Doc went just the same as always, my levels were good and the lack of adverse symptoms meant that everything was perfectly on track.

“Have you had any more unexpected changes happen Ms. Davis?” he asked while looking at my charts

“No, none since last time, did you ever figure out what caused it?” I wasn’t overly concerned with it, so long as my levels were all good

“No, nothing at the moment, if we had to guess it had something to do with the original delay you had in changes… but even for that we’re not completely certain of the causes” he rubbed his chin in contemplation

“I see…”

“There’s no need to worry Ms. Davis, we’ll figure this all out, and so long as you keep coming in for your monthly check ups we’ll be on top of any unexpected developments” he reassured me

“Thanks”

“Now, Dr. Samantha has time for an appointment with you today, so you can head over there as soon as you’re ready” he smiled, “I’ll see you next month Ms. Davis”

“Y-yeah, see you” I smiled back at him and slowly walked out of the office and towards the Psych offices.

 

Once again I found myself sitting in Dr. Samantha’s office, sitting across from her and fidgeting nervously as our appointment began.

“My apologies for not being able to meet with you last month, our number of patients has had me stretched just a bit thin these days” she laughed, “but do know that if you do ever need to get in touch with me, all you have to do is call”

“R-right…” I wasn’t looking in her direction, but I could hear her fiddling with her pen like always

“So, it’s been two months, how have you been adapting to life as Robyn?” the faint scribbling of her note taking had already begun, before I even said anything

“Um… sort of a…a…. Mixed bag?” I awkwardly motioned to myself, wearing a black pleated skirt and white blouse, “B-but I’ve been trying it out… like we talked about”

“Indeed, it’s a very cute outfit by the way” just hearing that made me blush already, “How has that felt for you? Dressing and presenting more fem”

“Uh… kinda weird I guess… I c-care a lot more about how I look? Li-like I have actual outfits planned out rather than just…. Throwing on whatever?” my nerves made it hard to speak entirely clearly

She was nodding her head and writing but didn’t say anything

“And uh… I d-definitely feel like I like how the clothes feel?.... Like the fabric feels better I mean” leaning back in my seat, I slowly began to play with my hair, “it feels… nice I guess”

“So would you say that you feel more comfortable in women’s clothing right now than you did in men’s clothing in your old body?” she looked up, idly biting the end of her pen

“Uh… y-yeah I think so?” I cocked my head, not really sure what the intention of that question was

“It feels freeing in a way, right? To finally accomplish what you wanted to do back in your childhood” she asked, finally my brain connecting the dots to our last session when I told her that story

“Oh… yeah, definitely!” I smiled, “I really wish I could wear this stuff when I turn back”

“Who says you can’t?” she asked, “Clothes are clothes, the gender of the person wearing it doesn’t matter”

“W-well wouldn’t people think I’m sort of… weird?”

“Some will, sure, but so long as you're safe does it really matter what they think?” she asked while writing even more notes on that clipboard of hers

“I uh… guess not…” I hadn’t really considered keeping my fem wardrobe once I turn back but… I guess I could at least wear them when I’m all alone.

 

“Now, have you had people to help you with everything? In terms of getting situated with feminine clothing and all of that”

“Oh, definitely… m-my sister and my friend Isabella have been extremely helpful” I smiled at her before blushing intensely, “I-Isa e-e-even uh…. W-w-well she…”

She didn’t say anything but she did look up from her notes at me

“She m-m-m-might ha-ha-have asked m-me on aa d-date…” I crossed my arms tight and felt like I was shrinking in on myself out of sheer embarrassment

Dr. Samantha smiled at me, “That’s wonderful! Are you planning on going with her?”

I just nodded, knowing that it would take another full minute get a single word out

“I’m happy for you Robyn, would you like to tell me a bit about her?”

I nodded and took a few deep breaths to regain a bit of my composure, “Sh-she’s been my sister’s friend fo-for pretty much our whole lives… we grew up as neighbors, h-her and I were never close but I… uh… always had a pretty huge crush on her” my eyes were looking all over the room, anywhere other than meeting Dr. Samantha’s eyes, “I told her a-about this experiment and she w-was happy to help me g-get used to all of this stuff…”

“She sounds like a great girl” she smiled

“Sh-she’s the best” I smiled and finally looked at her

“Well, I hope your date goes well, and I hope she can continue to help you explore the realm of femininity” she said with a sweet inflection.

 

She wrote down some more notes before changing the subject, “Anything else of importance happen?”

“I saw my guy friends again… L and Kevin” I continued to idly pay with my hair, for some reason it was pretty soothing

“And how did that go?”

“It went well! It just felt like old times… they didn’t treat me weirdly or anything, L was super interested in the experiment too” I couldn’t help but giggle a bit

“Oh? I don’t believe you’ve told me about him” she took more notes, about what I had no idea

“He was just asking a lot of questions, he kinda hates his job so I think he was a bit jealous” I thought about it for a moment and remembered something else, “He also seemed super surprised that your working on a permanent version of the shot”

“Do you think he’s perhaps interested in taking the shot?” her question completely caught me off guard, L? A girl?

“Uh… I don’t really know, I guess he has been super interested in the experiment this whole time… but I doubt it” I looked up towards the ceiling in deep thought, but my brain just couldn’t connect the idea of L wanting this

“Well, you would know better than me” she shrugged, “I would hope that he if he ever asks you directly about it that you can point him in the right direction”

“What like… signing up for the experiment? I-I guess, but aren’t I a part of the last trial?” I looked at her, confused

“That depends, though I believe we certainly have the budget for a few more tests” she smiled back at me, “Just something to think about if he asks you about it”

“Right…”

“Well, putting that aside, how about Kevin? You said last time that he made you feel rather strange when he complimented you, how did it go with him this time?” she asked while flipping through a few of her pages of notes

“He… still makes me sort of nervous… it’s hard to describe” I put a hand over my chest, “it’s kind of like how I feel when I’m around Isabella… I think?”

“Oh?”

“It’s a bit different… but I-I…” my blush returned in full force once I realized what I was saying, “........I-I m-m-might n-not j-just be i-into girls…”

Dr. Samantha smiled and nodded, “Well in that case I’m happy for you”

“Wh-wha?”

“You figured out something big about yourself, I’m happy that you could discover it” she fidgeted with her pen slightly, “There are plenty of people that are unwilling to admit their sexuality to themselves, let alone to others”

I felt myself calming down a bit, not that I suspected her to react poorly to my sexuality of course, but it was still a bit of a relief to get such a supportive answer.

 

She looked up at me and smiled, “Now, you said that you’ve been having mixed feelings about it all, can you clarify on that a bit?”

“Oh, well…” I thought about it for a minute, my voice turning more somber and low, “I had a… not great interaction”

I took a deep breath before beginning to explain more

“A little while ago I was over at my parent’s house… I didn’t realize it beforehand but my aunt was also there” I met her eyes, “and she was… not a fan of this experiment”

“I see” she sighed, “she had an overall negative reaction to finding out?”

“She mostly just made snide remarks but…”

“But?”

“Something she said really… really hurt…” I took another deep breath, “she said ‘a shot doesn’t make a man into a woman’ and… I don’t know… when she said that I just felt…”

“A lot of different emotions?” She asked when I paused for a few moments trying to find the right words

“Y-yeah… I was angry, annoyed and upset sure but… more than that I was…” I looked away again, “sad”

“That makes sense, hearing that makes me sad and upset” she said in her calm and soothing voice, “I don’t know if you remember our discussion last time where I explained the difference between sex and gender, these two things being separate is very well documented and understood”

“Yeah… I remember that”

“But even with it being incredibly well understood, there are many who choose to ignore the facts in favor of perpetuating an outdated world view” she sighed, “and even if we were to ignore the factual inaccuracies of conflating sex and gender into one thing, the shot we gave you did in fact change your sex”

“Mhm… it just made me so… pissed off” I grimaced with clenched fists

“Did it feel like she was invalidating you? Like she wasn’t respecting you as a person?” she asked

“Y-yeah… I mean, I went through all of this effort to dress like a girl a-and act like a girl and… she just said I was a man still” I looked down at my hands, loosening my fists, “I wanted to yell at her… I wanted to know what would be good enough for her”

“That’s just the thing, for some people in the world? Nothing will ever be enough” Dr. Samantha sighed, “There’s nothing we can do about that, but don’t get discouraged”

“H-how can I not be discouraged by that?”

“Make no mistake that the number of people like your aunt is a shrinking group, every day more and more people understand the truth” she smiled warmly at me, “Think about it this way, she was the only one there that was invalidating you, right?”

I looked at her with a bit of a look of surprise and tears in my eyes, “Y-yeah… mom, my sister, my uncle and my dad a-all were on my side”

“There you have it” she handed a box of tissues just in case, “Now I’m of course not saying it’s easy, certainly not, it’s incredibly hard to have to deal with those people”

I gently wiped my eyes while taking care to avoid the eyeshadow on my upper eyelids.

“But all we can do is look forward and confide in those who understand, those who know that you are a woman no matter what anyone else says” when she said that I looked back at her in surprise again

“W-wait I… uh… I’m not… I mean…” I couldn’t really muster up any arguments back though

Dr. Samantha smiled and sat back in her chair, writing down a whole bunch more notes. Why couldn’t I argue back? I know I’m not Robyn… I know I’m not a woman… but… I just couldn’t argue with her on it.

 

There was a short awkward pause while she was writing and I was processing everything. Meanwhile I looked down at myself, at my body, Robyn’s body.

“Th-there was another thing…” my voice was practically a whisper, “Before I told mom that I was going by Robyn she called me Dillan…”

“How did that feel for you?”

“It… stung, I wanted to tell her that wasn’t my name… even though it is” I kept my eyes down, not looking up at her

“It sounds to me like that made you uncomfortable, being called by that name” she scribbled more notes, “in which case, is it really your name?”

“O-of course it is… in January I’ll go back to normal” my voice cracked a bit when I said that, a bit of a lump present in my throat

“Is that what you want?”

“H-huh?” I looked up at her

“To go back, do you want to return to being that name?” she started fidgeting with her pen again

“Well I-I… I will go back to that”

“That wasn’t my question, I’m asking you Robyn, do you want to return to your old body?” in spite of the firmness of her words her soothing voice helped me not be intimidated by her

“I… why does that matter?”

“Between these last two sessions we’ve been talking about you, who you are as a person and whether you are really a man or a woman” she explained calmly, “You’ve been trying out life as Robyn for awhile now, so I’m asking if you truly want to return to your old self”

“I…I mean…. I c-can’t stay as Robyn forever… she’s different f-from me”

“What do you mean?” this time she sounded actually a little confused by what I was saying

“Robyn is-isn’t me… she c-can’t be… she’s just an… alter ego f-f-for this experiment” I slowly clasped my sweaty sweaty hands together

“Is that how you’ve been viewing this?”

“It’s the truth… sh-she can’t be me…. She’s so happy a-and excited…. S-she’s someone th-that people would want to be around… but me? I-I’m just a loser, a-and eventually I have to return to being Dillan Davis…” I sighed deeply

Dr. Samantha also took a deep sigh, “It’s ok, I understand how difficult it can be… can I let you in on a little secret?”

“Wh-what?” I looked at her with more tears slowly forming in my eyes

“I used to be just like you, I denied myself the reality of who I was because I was terrified, terrified that if I admitted it that it would make me lesser” she set down her clipboard and pen, clasping her hands together, “I thought to myself ‘there’s no way I can be a woman, I’m not a real woman, so I need to suck it up and live life as a man’”

I looked at her with complete bewilderment clear in my expression

“I tortured myself over it because I didn’t think I deserved to be happy, I didn’t think that I had any right to call myself a woman, day in and day out I came up with excuse after excuse for why it had to be this way” a slight smile appeared in the corner of her mouth, “I kept telling myself that I couldn’t be Samantha, she was someone else, she was someone different from me because she was a real woman while I was just a fake”

I opened my mouth to say something but couldn’t muster a single word in response

“But do you know what I realized? I was Samantha the whole time, the man that I thought I was was nothing more than a shield I created to protect myself, an identity that I hid behind to stay safe and avoid being looked at as a freak” she shook her head slightly, closing her eyes as if she was remembering an old memory, “You know, a big part of adulthood for queer people is dissecting the person you think you are, so you can discover what parts of you are actually genuine and what parts you created to blend in with everyone else”

“I… I….”

“Once I realized the man I believed to be me wasn’t real? I let him rest, he protected me for so many years, he kept me safe until I was wise and strong enough to be myself without worry” she opened her eyes again and smiled at me, “and now? I can live as the woman I’ve always been deep inside”

I could feel a few tears rolling down my cheeks, I was completely dumbfounded, I had no idea what in the world to say after that.

 

The silence filled the room once again, Dr. Samantha sat back in her chair and picked up her clipboard and pen again without saying another word. She… she was… it didn’t make sense, I knew she was without a doubt a woman, but if that’s the case then why can’t I…

“I think a part of you knows” she broke the silence, “Am I correct in saying you didn’t sign up for this experiment just for the money? Look deep inside of yourself Robyn”

“I…I…” it felt like my brain was melting, it was running too fast for me to really gather any of my thoughts

“You don’t have to answer right now, but I would urge you, please spend some time genuinely thinking about who you are” she said calmly, “figure out who you are, do it while you’re young… don’t wait like I did”

“S-so you’re… part of the experiment?” I looked at her with tears still streaming down my cheeks

“Hm? Oh no, I transitioned the old fashioned way years ago, of course once the permanent version is released I’m planning on taking it” she twirled her pen, “though I don’t think it’ll make me look all that different”

I just sat in silence for a few more moments, it was hard to get a full grasp on everything I was thinking and feeling.

 

Before I knew it our session had come to an end, not that I could really focus much on the regular goodbye pleasantries. My mind was still racing a mile a minute trying to figure everything out.

My entire drive home it felt like I was in a dream, but I did my best to push those thoughts out of mind while I was on the road. But of course by the time I got back to my apartment complex it was as if my entire brain was completely fried. I meandered my way up the stairs and collapsed into my bed the instant I entered my room.

Who am I?... Could I really be Robyn? Was Dillan just a shield I hid behind all these years?.... Could that really be true… I couldn’t deny that I’d be happy as Robyn, way happier than I was as Dillan. But was it right for me to stay like this? Was that ok?

My head was splitting in pain though, and I was getting nowhere figuring this all out for myself. I suppose I could try and be more open minded? Just keep living as Robyn without having to question everything… at least for now… yeah, that sounds good.

 

That night I slowly slipped into a strange dream, everything felt… unreal, hazy and covered in a thick blur that made it hard to tell what was going on.

“Come on!” a voice echoed loudly in my ears, I felt a small hand grab mine and drag me along, “We’ve gotta let mom and dad know!”

“L-let them know?” my childish voice echoed back

“All we have to do is tell them” a blurry child’s figure looked back at me, it looked… familiar to me

“N-no… I can’t… I’m too scared…” I pulled my arm away from the other child, turning and immediately running away

“Wait! Don’t run off by yourself!” the voice called back but it was already growing distant.

 

I could feel myself getting older as I ran, I ran and ran and ran as far as I could through the strange landscape that looked so blurry and unreal it may as well have been a painting. My perspective had grown higher into the air, presumably because my body was bigger than it was before.

“What are you talking about dude?!” the unfamiliar voice of a teenage boy called back, I suddenly saw his blurred and warped figure standing right in front of me, “Hah! You’re a little freak! You know that?!” 

A strong hand slammed into my chest, sending me collapsing back onto the ground. But I never hit the ground, I just kept falling and falling deeper into the hazy painted landscape.

 

“You what?! Ew… Yeah, nevermind” a teenage girl’s voice echoed in my brain, I saw the hazy figure of presumably that girl walking away from me as I fell past her

What was going on? I couldn’t follow any of this! I had no idea what was happening or what these voices were talking about! I fell deeper and deeper, going further into the hazy mist until nothing but pitch black darkness remained…

But even then I kept falling! How could I make this stop? I wanted this to stop! I started to kick and flail around, yelling into the void that filled my vision but no one else responded. No matter what I did I couldn’t make it stop! I closed my eyes tight and started to plead, just let me stop falling please!

Suddenly I snapped awake with a jolt and a yell in the middle of the night, I clutched desperately at my chest with heavy breathing and sweat covering my entire body.

“Wh…what….” I looked around my room, wide eyed and trembling.