Rabbit Hole

Fantasy does nothing anymore. I’ve seen what’s real.

So let’s start at the beginning, before the fall.

Closing out on English, I head home. The day’s not been the best, but that’s typical at this point. It’s hard enough living one life, but I have to live two.

One of them, Adam. The one everyone knows by default. The one others created without knowing anything beyond one image. The one that I’d do anything to ditch.

The other one, Amanda. The real one. The one that people who really care about me know me as. The one I actually want to live as.

So, why don’t I just be Amanda? It’s my life, right? I wish it was that simple. Turns out you lose control of your life when others decide who you are. My parents aren’t exactly the most accepting of it. They don’t know about me, of course, but I’ve seen how they react to others. Yeah, they can’t know, and that holds me back from a LOT.

Hell, there’s only two people that do know: Nick and Jade. They found out completely by accident, I was trying to show them something online and it opened on a video about transitioning, and I couldn’t lie my way out of that one. Only slip up I’ve ever made, and it should stay that way.

Ok, backstory over, now we can begin.

Monday 20th November, 2022. On the way back from school, I walk as I normally do, with Nick and Jade. Usually the conversations aren’t anthing special, this wasn’t an exception, but I remember every part of this one.

“So, are we on for Crimson Lake this weekend?” Nick’s talking about a film night we had planned.

“What’s that one about?” Jade replies, having never heard of this movie before.

“How can you now know about it yet? It’s one of the all time great mystery films. This girl-”

“No spoilers, please.” Jade’s used to him going overboard with explainations. “If it’s such a good mystery, I don’t want you to spoil it.”

“Alright, fine. But it’s got everything: manipulation, twists, and a ton of violence.”

“I thought you didn’t like blood?” I add to the conversation. He’d previously walked out of a slasher movie we watched to throw up, and we’ve tried to avoid horror ever since.

“Yeah, but this one’s so good I can look past it.”

“Well, if it’s so good it stops you throwing up, then that must mean it’s worth watching.” I reply.

“It is.” Nick affirms. “So, we can all make this Saturday?”

“Nick, you know I can’t.” Jade answers. She was going to be in a performance that weekend, Beauty and the Beast. She was dreading it because she got cast as one of the women, and that meant she had to spend the play acting like she was in love with the bad guy, who is one of the most masculine characters ever, while Jade’s a lesbian.

“Oh yeah, sorry. So Sunday?” Nick really wanted to make this work.

“Yeah, that’s good.” Jade replies.

“What about you Amanda?” Nick turns to me.

“I can do that. I’m not doing anything this weekend.“. If only I knew what was about to happen.

“That’s great!”

At that moment, we turn to my house.

“Hopefully it’ll be as good as... you say... it... is.” my sentence fades off as I notice my parents standing outside. They look dissapointed and furious, a mixture you never want to see from your parents, especially in my situation.

“We need to talk. Now!” I hear them shout from the other side of the road. This is serious.

“Amanda, if anything goes wrong, tell us.” Jade whispers quietly in my ear.

“We’ll help however we can.” Nick adds.

“I will.” I whisper back, before switching back to conversation.

“Ok, I gotta go now, see you tomorrow, hopefully.” I say as I head across the road, and I head through the doors inside with my parents to accept my fate.

“What do you want to talk about?” I ask, fearing that I already know the answer.

“Adam, we found something in your room.”

They show me a blue dress. shit.

I’d found other ways to experiment, I do live near a clothes shop, so I got some stuff from there (with some help from the others, there’s no way I’d have gone to the counter myself). I hid them in my room, and I thought that it’d be fine. Damn it.

I knew I’d have to face this eventually, but I thought I had more time to prepare. Arguing would be almost impossible, as I know how this always goes: they have an outcome in mind, try to twist the conversation to make it fit their view, and at the end, they win. I haven’t fought back against that until now because I feared what would happen, but I have to try that now.

“Would you mind explaining why you have this?”

“It’s for a friend”, I lie. Jade’s birthday is nearby, so maybe I could pass it off as-

“Then why did you try it on?”

Wait, how do they know about that?

“Huh?”

“Your computer’s camera roll. We saw you try it on.”

oh god no.

“Oh, uh, we’re similar sizes, so it was just to test if it would fit-”

“Then who’s Amanda?”

Oh god. Probably should have known. If they’ve seen the pictures on my computer, there’s no way they’d have stopped there. The Social Media accounts, the art, the vents, they know EVERYTHING.

“Adam, are you...”

“Am I what?”

“You know what we’re talking about.”

They can’t even say it. They want ME to say it.

“Yes, I’m transgender.”

My Mum has a shocked look on her face, and my Dad a disappointed one, which shows their priorities in this conversation clearly. You get dissapointed about something like disobedience or fights, not being a girl.

“Oh god, we knew it.”

“This is that Jade girl and Nick, isn’t it?”

What?

“No! First off, they’re both cis, so-”

“What the hell does cis mean?”

“Not trans, it just means they’re not trans, so they can’t have influenced me.”

“Well, it can’t have been you, can it? You’ve never shown any signs of, well, this.”

“Maybe you thought there were no signs because you weren’t looking for them.”

“We didn’t need to look for them, because we knew that you were and always will be a boy.”

Of course they didn’t see any of the signs. Any of the times I was uncomfortable playing sports, when I was on the verge of breaking down the whole time at any formal event for the last two years because of what I was wearing. Any of the times I smiled when people called me a girl by accident. It’s not that they didn’t notice, it’s that they didn’t want to confront it.

“Well you were wrong, I’m not a boy, I’m a girl.”

“No you aren’t, Adam. You are our son, and that won’t change.”

“I’m not Adam.”

“Well you’re not Amanda, or whatever the hell you say you’re called.”

“You are our son. You are Adam. You are a boy.”

“NO I’M NOT!”

The room goes silent. My parents look too stunned to speak, and the realisation slowly sets in of what I just did. I just pissed off the two people who have the most power to make my life a living hell.

“We were scared that you were gonna be like this. You’re too far gone now.”

“Adam, you need professional help.”

What kind of professional help are they talking about? It can’t be therapy, because they know if they send me to therapy, they’ll pick up on the dysphoria and support me.

“Listen, we found this dress weeks ago. We had time to react to this, and in that time, we searched for solutions, and one came straight to us. We found a place that can help people like you. People who are confused, people who lose sense of who they really are, people who claim they’re something else, and they snap them right back to reality.

At that moment, a terrifying thought hits of what I think they’re talking about. Unfortunately, it’s the right one.

“It’s a camp. You’ll be away from here for a while, but you’ll be better when you get back.”

“are you fucking kidding me?”

“Don’t swear at us, young man.”

“I’M NOT- you’d send me to conversion therapy? You’d let people TORTURE ME instead of just letting me be your daughter?”

“It’s gonna be beneficial in the long run. Whatever they do to you, it’s for good reason.”

They really fucking think they’re helping me?

“How could sending your daughter away to be abused be beneficial?”

“You’re not our daughter, and never will be.”

“Well, you’re clearly not acting like my parents. You’re acting like two people too controlled by their own biases to help their own daughter, THEIR CHILD.”

“You set off tomorrow, we’ve already packed. And it’s safe to say you’re not getting any of this back.”

They’re just ignoring me. Does the reality of what they’re doing mean nothing to them?

“The computer’s unplugged too.”

“You know we’re doing this because we love you, right?”

It’s always for love, isn’t it?

“this isn’t love.”

That’s what I leave them with as I head upstairs. If they think I’m gonna take this lying down, they’re wrong.

I give it a few hours until they’re both downstairs too busy watching TV to pay attention. I head into their room and I grab the blue dress. If they want to keep this out of sight, I’ll make sure it’s as unignorable as possible. I get changed, and before I put my plan into action, I quickly fire off a message to Nick and Jade:

“so, my parents found out and they’re trying to send me to conversion therapy. If what I’ve planned goes right, I’ll let you know. If not, don’t let them ruin me.”

With that done, I go to my window and try to escape. The opening door is a pain to get working, so it gets stuck. I slam my hand against it once, it moves slightly. Again. A few more centimetres, but nowhere near enough. Again. Slightly more. Again-

CRASH. The window shatters.

Fuck! I forgot that window chipped a week ago!

“Adam, what are you doing up there?”

Well shit, they’ve noticed the plan now.

I need to get out of here, fast.

“Adam, get down here!”

They’re heading up the stairs.

I only have one shot at this.

I get ready to make the jump-

and they walk in and see everything.

they both look horrified.

well shit, now they’re gonna think they’re justified.

“Adam, what do you think you’re doing?”

there’s no way back now, but there was only one way forward.

i can’t go to that fucking camp.

“it’s Amanda.”

with that, I jump for the neighbour’s caravan. I land perfectly on the roof. I hear my parents shouting and realise where they’re going: the car. I slide down the front of the caravan and start to run.

They’re outside.

I go into overdrive.

I’m running faster than what I thought I was capable of.

The streets I’ve known my whole life turn into the setting for my personal hell.

The car’s started.

I head straight for the forest.

I’m at least 50 metres from the nearest road in seconds.

At that moment, I hit a wall of trees.

What now?

In the corner of my eye, I spot a white rabbit.

It darts through the path as I-

A PATH.

I head straight down it.

Is anyone following me anymore?

I don’t know.

But I’m not risking stopping to check.

I dodge every tree branch, every overhang, every stuck up root, as I try to escape.

A fallen tree.

I think I can jump it.

I go to jump.

I clear it.

But it hid a deep hole on the other side.

I fall towards the hole-

And that’s all I remember before Wonderland.