Sylvia Winters

Life as I know it began its existence before I formally accepted the challenge. It is a massive multiplayer game called reality, and I was thrown into the game regardless of my will. Before grade school, I began to question the merit of playing. I observed dramas of the adult life. Diminishing words cast against one another, judgements tacitly passed by a gesture and grimace or a sound. In one instance punches were thrown, and the one that missed the target landed on the closet door. In the aftermath, I watched strewn books on the floor, pages torn, that my parents have used as projectiles against each other. When my parents took the incident to the downstairs, I sat and cried and found the pieces of a torn cover of a Bible and tried to stitch the pieces together. After the incident, the relationship was mended, leaving no trace of brokenness; a united front was again formed to continue the facade. Nothing really reminded any one of the trauma that except the hole in the closet. Twenty

It began with a dental appointment on Tuesday. I saw my X-ray photos on the screen: I have over 12 crowns in my mouth, three bridges, and almost all teeth have had a root canal; my front teeth are not my natural teeth but are three crowns forming a bridge. I am scared daily of accidentally cracking one of the roots so I would have to replace them with implants. These are X-ray photos that would alarm a seasoned dentist. If it were in the US and such an outcome were to happen to a teenager or young adult, someone needs to be in jail. My first dentist once asked me how did I come to this stage, I did not know what to answer; there are only so many things I can blame my parents for, and I am way beyond the phase for that. I know people with much greater difficulties or ailments, and what I am facing is only a fraction of theirs. But I could not take it. I am 31, and in a few years, I will have to replace many teeth with implants. It’s January, and I have already maxed out the insurance al

When I was a child, I took notice of the bras in the closet and asked, “What are they?” In one of the few interactions I had with my father, he answered, “They are helmet for a fighter pilot.” It didn’t take me long to figure out there were no pilots in the family, much less for a fighter jet, but the memory stuck. Two decades later, two years into my male-to-female transition, I found myself at a crossroads: My body did not respond well to estrogen; my breast development stopped after a very brief period of growth. I had very little breast tissue that fell short of filling an A-cup. After reaching out to my health insurance provider for breast augmentation surgery, I was soon given a surgery date. I went to the consultation, felt the silicone implants myself, and decided on the size. I was ready to go. And I canceled the surgery, two weeks before the date. It was not an action out of my own willingness (as I perceived at the time), and I blamed it on my phone call with my