If only it were that easy. He kept tossing and turning around in his bed, his sheets slowly becoming a mess. All he wanted was to black out and just take whatever was going to happen. But his own consciousness wasn’t as merciful. Sure, he enjoyed short bursts of unconsciousness, but whenever he checked his phone after getting dragged away from the promise of sleep, they never lasted longer than an hour. Whenever he tried to get rest, his thoughts started assaulting him with self-doubts and all the things he felt insecure about. What if people would forever think he was weird? How was he gonna explain any of this to Jeanine?

What if he was gonna turn back the next morning?

It was now past 2 in the night, and he hadn’t changed back yet. So the change wasn’t some end-of-day midnight thing, at least. His body was getting really tired and just kept asking for sleep, but… he couldn’t. He didn’t wanna be left alone with himself. He just… needed someone to talk to. He swiftly unlocked his phone and booted up Discord.

More often than not, time zones just limited the times when he could interact with other people. But now that it was ass in the morning for him, at least some people around the world were bound to be up.

One look at his friend list confirmed his suspicion; his friend Katie, also known as xXKatieCatXx (she said it was ironic but he had a hunch it was nostalgia), had a little green circle next to her name and a status message reading “real girl loving hours,” followed by an emoji of two women embracing. Girl loving hours at 2 AM? Well, for her in New York it was more like 8 PM so that was pretty reasonable.

“hi katie, you there?” Here goes nothing.

“Wow hi it must be like 1 AM or something for you why the heck are you up?”

“well theres just been ummm a lot of things on my mind and i just need someone to talk to rn tbh”

“Wanna call?”

He almost immediately wanted to agree, but then stopped himself. Did he wanna call? It’d be great to hear her voice, but she’d also hear his voice and he really didn’t wanna have to explain that to her right out of the gate.

“id LOVE to but i dont rly feel up to talk, is it cool if you talk and i just keep typing?”

“Yeah, sure, gimme just one sec!”

In that one second he got his earbuds from beside the bed and inserted them into his ears, noticing how his longer hair now covered them. Almost as if on cue, in that very moment the familiar Discord ringtone started and he picked up before it got past the first few notes.

“Hiya, Sudo, nice to talk to you!” Her voice immediately slowed down his heartbeat by over a dozen BPM. It felt so nice, and calming, and comforting. And being called Sudo, short for Sudonym, his internet handle, also felt refreshing after a day of being called nothing but Jack.

“yeah hi thanks for talking to me, i love hearing your vo-” nope, not gonna type that!
“yeah hi thanks for talking to me, i really needed to hear someones voice” okay good, that’s better. Send.

“Heh, of course! I can’t let any of my friends be sad on my watch!” That felt nice, to see people… caring about you.

“So, wanna tell me what’s on your mind? If not that’s totally valid of course!”

Did he want to talk about it? He knew he could trust her, but… she’s trans herself and he really didn’t wanna make her mad with his selfish wish, just appropriating being trans for a day. But then again not talking about this was really messing with his thoughts and maybe getting this out of his system would help a bit?

“Sudo? You still there?”

“okay hi yeah sorry i was thinkin” Was this really the right thing to do?

“okay so” Shouldn’t he just wait to turn back? Or track down Tabitha to get her to change him back if it doesn’t happen automatically?

“this is a wild story but please please please believe me because i literally dont know who else to talk to about this” Here goes nothing, no turning back now.

“i wished to a wishing well to be able to participate for my universitys genderswap day but then it actually transformed me into a girl and everyone else thought i was just playing the part for the event”

Katie went silent for a few seconds. “Okay this is a lot to take in buuuut I trust you.”

“thank you sm”

“Oh no no no don’t worry! You must be feeling terrible dysphoria right now I’m so sorry for you please tell me if there’s anything I can do to help!”

Wait… was he… feeling dysphoria? Of course, he’s never felt it before so he couldn’t tell, but it must be like a bad feeling regarding to your body? Or at least neutral? But as hard as he tried, he couldn’t find any feelings like that.

“Okay listen I know this is a lot and IDK if or how you can change back, but even if you can’t you could always get on T and turn back like this and…”

He knew Katie was just trying to help. Offering advice to the best of her knowledge, even going beyond options that he would have thought of. But he just couldn’t bear to listen to that. He had to tune it out, for his own sake. She was so concerned for him, but all these options, they were just…

He hated this.

He..? hated this. No, this wasn’t right. They..? hated this? Getting warmer.
She? She. She! She? Yeah, she. She!

She hated this. She hated this!

Unmute.

“... so yeah don’t worry I know a lot of trans guys and I’m sure you do too, so I guarantee no matter what you’ll be able to–”

She couldn’t take this anymore.

“Stop.” It still felt weird hearing this voice come from her mouth, but… it felt right. Now more than ever. This was her voice, and she never wanted to lose it.

“I appreciate you trying to help, but… stop.”

“Sudo, is that… your voice? What’s wrong, isn’t the dysphoria why you didn’t wanna talk and stuff?”

Huh, that was… a reasonable conclusion from Katie’s point of view, actually.

“Wow yeah no wonder you were concerned, you must’ve thought I got dysphoria’d out of my voice.” It was almost funny, Katie worrying about dysphoria when this is the most comfortable she’s ever felt. God, in comparison to this she really hadn’t been comfy in her old body at all. So that apathy towards her body had been dysphoria all along?

“So it’s… not that bad? I’m so so sorry for jumping to conclusions!” One could almost hear the tears forming, and she wanted anything but that.

“Oh yeah, thanks. It’s definitely not bad, but I can see how you thought that. Please don’t worry, alright? But yeah it’s… kind of the opposite of bad? Actually?”

A muted sniffle came through the earbuds. “So… you like this?”

“Yeah.”

“Wanna go by she/her pronouns or something else?”

She/her… yeah, that felt natural. That felt right. Infinitely better than what she was going with before.

“Yeah, thanks, I’d like that a lot. She/her, that is.” Tears started to form around her eyes. Was this… it? Could she just be a girl like this? Wasn’t she cheating this whole thing with the wishing well and whatnot? Could it be this easy?

“So, found a name yet?” This couldn’t be truly happening… right? She just had to make sure.

“Okay, hold on hold on hold on. You’re not mad or anything?”

The voice on the other end sounded puzzled. “Mad? Why?”

Was she really oblivious to this? “Because I… I…” Tears started streaming down her face. “I just got this amazing body and all it costed me was, like, a quarter? And I got it immediately and didn’t have to wait or anything?” 

She was talking herself into a frenzy, just letting all her self-doubts flow out of her mouth and into the microphone. At this point her face was wet with tears, again.

“And like you or so many other people just deserve this so much mo–”

“Alright, I’m gonna stop you right there.” Katie sounded stern, but caring. “Like, I get a lot has happened and sure you skipped some steps, but… you having this opportunity doesn’t make me any less happier with where I’m at. It only makes me happier for you.”

She really needed those words. Just… some affirmation, someone telling her it’s okay to be liking these changes. Someone telling her it’s okay to be a woman.

“Thank you. Thank you so, so much.” She started crying again, but this time the tears were warm and full of gratitude. “I really needed to hear this.”

“Hey, of course! So, about your name…”

 Oh yeah. That. “Lemme think for a sec.”

She’s been going by Sudo online for a while now, and that was an alright name. But it only ever really shone in comparison to ‘Jack’, and now that she had free reign? That she could be herself? She wanted to make it really clear to the world that she was who she was.

“Okay I’ve been thinking and that thinking has led me to Susie? I know it’s similar to Sudo, but I like it for that. Sudo’s been a kind of safe haven for a long time, but now it’s time to retire it, I think.”

She could practically feel the beaming smile on Katie’s face radiating through her earbuds. “Oh, Susie, that’s an amazing name! I’m so glad! I’m so glad I can be with you right now!”

Okay, being called Susie by Katie felt even better than just calling herself Susie. Susie it is! She just squirmed around in bed for a while and hugged her pillow, it having to stand in for a person right now. Just… wow. She felt so good in her body and could take on the world and is this what gender euphoria felt like? She couldn’t help but giggle to herself.

“Aww, you sound adorable right now, Susie!” It just felt so good. Every time she got called Jack it was like a microscopic needle pricked her, not enough to notice on its own but just this mass of discomfort slowly building up until you were a porcupine. But this? These two syllables meant the world to her, and being called by them felt like a warm shower dousing the needles off her body.

“Thank you so much. It feels so nice being called Susie.” She could stay like this forever. Just getting complimented by a cute girl while being a cute girl herself.

“Hey, Susie, it’s fine if you don’t wanna, but… could I see you?” Katie inquired. Susie had never shown herself to any of her friends before, but now? She wanted to be seen more than anything else!

She turned on the inside camera and transmitted… darkness. Oh yeah, she’d been trying to sleep a while back and it was 3 AM now. She turned on the lights, and after getting used to the change in brightness, she could see herself in the upper left corner of her screen. She really was rather cute, wasn’t she? Not soon after, Katie’s face appeared, taking center stage on her phone’s screen. She was cute as always, long purple hair with an undercut at her side, glasses that made her look incredibly adorkable, topped off by a pretty smile and kind eyes that made all of Susie’s worries melt away.

“Oh my gosh you’re so cute! Oh my god! Susie you’re so pretty! Look at you! Look at you blushing! Look at you covering your face in your blanket oh my god I’m gonna faint!” And with that, Katie’s face disappeared off the screen. Susie couldn’t help but giggle again. ‘Adorkable’ really was a fitting description. “Nooo, Katie, please come back on-screen I miss your pretty smile you dork!”

In a burst of laughter, Katie reappeared. The both of them just giggled and blushed and threw compliments at each other and Susie had the time of her life. This felt amazing.

Soon enough, it was 4 AM and as if on cue, Susie let out a long yawn. She had to say, even that was cute now, and she had her own videofeed in the corner to prove it. In response, Katie gasped. “Oh gosh, it’s gotta be so late for you! I loved this call but you really gotta get some sleep!”

Susie stretched her arms behind her back, having to force her eyes to stay open. All the euphoria made her forget how tired she was. “Yeah, I really gotta, thanks for reminding me. Have a good night!”

Katie smiled into her camera, and as a result at Susie, too. “Yeah, thanks. I’m glad you enjoyed this enough to make you ignore your lack of sleep, but you gotta get some z’s in now. And don’t forget, no matter what happens when you wake up, me and your other friends will always see you as who you are and support you however you can. Get you HRT, the right type this time, all that good stuff. Alright?”

This felt so nice. Just… having someone caring about her. Having someone reassuring her.

“Thank you so much. Sleep tight, Katie!”

“Good night, Susie! Sleep tight, and don’t let the TERFs bite!”

And with that, the call ended after almost 2 hours, though it felt like she has become an entirely different person in that timespan, and there certainly was some truth to that line of thought. But then again, she’s always been Susie. She just didn’t know it.

Before heading off to sleep, she messaged Jeanine, telling her that she definitely couldn’t make the 10 AM appointment, but that she’d love to meet her at 2 because she had something she needed to tell her.

The very last thing she did was changing her Discord name to “Susienym” and her status to a simple sequence of two emojis: “??”.

And with that, she knew that no matter how she’d be waking up in the morning, which was probably going to be closer to midday than morning, she’d wake up as Susie no matter what. And with that, she could finally fall asleep without any lingering doubts.

underFlorence

And that’s the end of this little story! Hope you enjoyed reading it. It’s been finished for a while so I really don’t have any excuse for not having posted it earlier.