Four Puberties One Baby

I stormed out of the room, mid-crescendo, knocking over a chair and leaving Joanne to pay the tab. Outside, hundreds of people passed me on the streets, like salmon swimming upstream. I pushed through them with no destination in mind.

After several blocks, I heard a group of men behind me making fun of my ambiguous gender presentation. I turned around to confront them and realized that Joanne had been following me. I brushed past her, screaming profanities, ready to fight.

"LARA! STOP!" Joanne grabbed my arms and pinned me against a wall. For a moment, the world seemed to vanish, and I could see only her eyes. Joanne's expression transported me back to a moment during our first date when she was talking to someone else, eyebrows furrowed and nostrils flared, in the middle of a joke. That moment is when I fell in love with her, and I keep the image in my mind like a photo in an old wallet.

We walked home embracing, with my head leaning on Joanne's shoulder. I was losing control. I wanted to die. I wanted to hurt and be hurt. These were feelings I thought I had overcome when I transitioned. Instead, it seemed, they had been put on hold, waiting to resurface.

Our life had become an endless cycle of arguments and hormonal imbalances. We'd put our relationship in danger without any guarantee of an eventual pregnancy. After a little over a year, we realized that my part of our fertility journey would have to end, or our family would be torn apart before it began.

I booked an immediate appointment to have my sperm levels checked. Although the clinic was set up to serve mostly cisgender male clients, its staff was sympathetic to our situation. I ignored the selection of pornography and, as quickly as possible, left my specimen on a metal tray. After a week, the clinic revealed I had marginal levels of sperm, enough to store a vial. I'd thought I would cry tears of joy. Instead, I sat silent, emotionally overwhelmed.

I restarted estrogen injections immediately after storing sperm and, as I entered puberty for the fourth time, I could again feel the same sparks I'd felt when I first transitioned. I booked a flight to London on a whim and there, walking along the Thames, I began to feel like myself again. A gaggle of geese floated by and I noticed an old wooden sign near a collapsing pier. The sign, painted pink, white and blue — the trans flag colors — read "Promises Becoming."

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