Dysmorphia

Where I used to survive (“live” doesn’t seem a fitting term), the houses were modestly quaint and unassumingly unaffordable. All bore a blue sign or a red sign at the time: “Harris for President” or “Make America Great Again.” Walk a mile, you’d be surprised by how many yellow ribbons and blue ribbons tied around picket or wrought-iron fences you could find. There were so many churches—Jewish, Christian, Catholic, Adventist, Mormon, the works—which once may have been packed every week, though I doubt they were at the time of my tale. The city of El Paso used to house a very broad, very religious diaspora of folk through the decades since its inception. It’s just so many of those people had either died or run off to a place with better chances of survival.

Most of the people that remained were as modest in their lifestyle and appearance as the houses they inhabited. But they weren’t very quaint. I’d walk by, and they’d switch lanes, telling their children to walk faster and not look at me—me, who bore the only face they could plaster onto the boogeyman they chanted about on Fox News. They’d never met a transsexual so close to home as I was, and I think they hated me double for it. Before that whole mess with the transgenderism speech, they’d never really liked me, so it wasn’t like my days had changed that much. Their hatred only felt more targeted.

I had no friends in town I could rely on, trans or otherwise. They’d all left as close as New Mexico and as far as New York, searching for better salaries or a place where stalkers and death threats—dead cats suddenly appearing on their doorstep every other day—weren’t so common. I had family, here and there. But one day, when an uncle of mine found my grandma, dead and alone at her place on the East Side, we’d gathered there. The place smelled of withering roses. No sooner than we all got there had they started talking of who they planned on putting their vote up for in the upcoming ballot, and I then knew better than to open my tranny mouth.

Think about this: Hispanic conservatives. Sounds oxymoronic, but then the election stats come and turns out we’re the most self-deprecating sector of the American populace. “Want ‘im to clear off this damn border. Too many immigrants coming in of late,” said my naturalized Auntie B. Before that, when I came out, she’d also said she supported me but would forever see me as her nephew, not her niece.

I chose that day I might as well have no family.

I wished my friends hadn’t left. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy for them, for their having the resources to leave or the courage to ask for help—both of which I severely lacked. I just found myself so lonesome and loathsome and sickeningly bored all the time, kept going like a machine left turned on in an abandoned factory, striving for nothing but my next few paychecks so I could save enough for The Cure’s new record.

Poor me. Poor me.

Not.

I never liked being pitied. I tell you all of this only so you know the state of my sun-cooked brain when I stumbled upon The Ants.

I’d walk every day through Ochoa Street when I got back from work. I’d take a right on Arizona Avenue and keep on straight for my apartment. I never looked down, couldn’t afford to get distracted and mugged—or worse. This one time, though, I somehow became entranced by the cracked marble sidewalk in front of a cream-colored church and all the dirt and the broken glass, like amber flowers in bloom. I noticed, as if called by them, the shiny bodies traversing through the open space between each shard, hourglass shapes coalescing with the pale yellow streetlight’s shine. My foot was an inch or two from having grinded one to a pulp. Don’t know if I stepped on any, but I hope not. It seemed so strange not to have noticed them before. Even if distracted, I’d walked that curb hundreds, if not thousands, of times.

I was careful the rest of the way, got onto higher ground, which meant the street; the whole neighborhood had been built over slopes of varying heights, so at times the street would go higher than the sidewalks. I let them do their thing, hard at work in tandem as they were, and I unconsciously dropped my guard for the first time in forever (relaxing, I have to say). I counted at least seventy-four, but it was getting dark, and I was tired. To be one of them, I thought, a fleeting machination I paid little to no attention to at the moment. Always at work but at ease, never wondering where your next meal will come from, never feeling like you’re less loved or cared for than your next of kin.

Did they notice me? I wondered also. What did they think about the odd giant, staring at them, so spellbound? Whatever they did or did not think, I knew it could not be half as worse as what my neighbor, Ms. Peterson, very vocally expressed so I would move out of her Jeep’s damn way!

I got nervous again. I let Ms. Peterson through, still not hopping onto the sidewalk, while she honked away her anger. She was gone, and I kept walking through the dusty street, staring at The Ants.

I got home a couple minutes after, and, at risk of sounding cliché, ain’t the internet a most beautiful thing? So much stuff you can learn if you dedicate enough time into each rabbit hole. And for as little a price as having your info gathered by a couple dozen companies at a time. I learned so much about ants that night: how they work, what they eat, how they see. Don’t let the president know their lifestyle is the definition of socialism, or he may just bomb them and make the remaining few pay taxes.

I learned so much that my dreams started the same night—exciting stuff. Me, seeing the world only through my thin antennae, eight-legged walk supporting my glistening, blood-red carcass. My fellow ants walked here and there, caring only for the good of the community—same as me.

Most times, my dreams felt so real I’d wake up, drenched in sweat, feeling like I was missing something, like I’d lost a limb—or four. Sometimes the feelings lasted through my waking life, long enough for the next dream to come and rekindle my feeling of incompleteness ad infinitum. I hadn’t felt that way since I got to about eight months on estrogen injections and started on spironolactone. This time, it was worse. I couldn’t hope to find a miracle cure for my newfound dysmorphia; much as I wished I was, I wasn’t in one of those old movies where some old Mexican witch could come in clutch to transform me and drive the plot forward. I was utterly lost and felt my mind growing heavy with stress and unrest.

I spoke to my therapist about it (obviously in riddles—I couldn’t have Mark thinking I needed some “time away”). I just told him my dysmorphia was coming back worse than ever (not much of a lie), and I knew not the cause of it (little white lie). He couldn’t help me much beyond the usual reminders that my perception of myself and those closest to me mattered more than what strangers perceived. But I couldn’t transition into an ant, personally, socially, or otherwise, could I? And it wasn’t like I had anyone to tell this stuff. Texting my old friends was an option, but it’s not the same as telling them to their face, seeing the little ways their expression changes, for better or for worse.

I’d never felt so empty in my life.

The only times I didn’t feel so was when I met my tiny friends over by the cream-colored church. It also helped whenever I found another colony, here and there; it was a little warm most days, even though we were nearing winter, so they were common enough I found myself smiling at least three, sometimes four or five, times a day. I carried sugar cubes in Ziploc bags. I would leave one for each colony I found. The one by the church was getting bigger and bigger. I wished one day it would get big enough for me. For them, I would leave two cubes, and I would sit on the step-eroded stairs nearby and watch them work the cube down to crystalline dust while chewing one myself. Sometimes, they’d climb up on my legs—surely they’d already noticed I was the sugar fairy—and sometimes they’d get into my skinny jeans and leave terrible eruptions on my skin. But that was okay with me; it helped me feel less lonely. I always checked my jeans once I took them off at home so as to not kill any stragglers. Whenever I found them, I would keep them in a downturned red Solo cup with needlepoint holes in it and bring them back to their home come morning.

I loved those times. Whenever I got home and found none on my jeans, I had the worst nights of my life—and I’d been put in a male cell for falling asleep drunk on the street (thanks, Governor Abbott.) I’d wake up so sweaty no amount of water could quench my thirst or the blazing heat throughout my body. And I would think: “Please, let this be a sign of metamorphosis.” But then it would start to go down (the heat, not the thirst—never the thirst), and I would cry my dry eyes drier. I had to drink wine coolers like juice packs every night so I wouldn’t wake up at 3 a.m. That would get me to sleep all the way to my alarm at 7 a.m., only to wake up soaked in acidic piss. And, despite my deep slumber, I would find myself even more miserable.

Iwanttobeanant iwannabeanant iwannant iwantantantant.

Every day.

Community. Strength. Love.

All day.

No worries but ensuring my community is loved and cared for, just as I am.

I had to give up. I was still in pain, but it wasn’t like I hadn’t lived this way before, seeing others living the life I craved for myself. Living like that during good days is usually enough.

I kept watching them, my dearests. I wanted to give them names, but from where I stood they would blend into each other. A few nights I slept outside, close to them as I could. I had to jump into an empty lot that neighbored the church, to hide in its overgrown yellow grass for no cops to see me. The mornings after, I would get reprimanded at work for smelling of yesterday’s grease and dirt, but I couldn’t make myself care anymore. I was no longer like them, my coworkers and managers. I never truly was. But now I couldn’t even pretend. Just spend more time with The Ants.

So I did. I missed work once, then twice, both without calling ahead. Got a few calls from my workplace’s phone number, but I never answered; it would have been a waste of time just for a confirmation of something I was already expecting, even hoping for. Same with my landlord once a month had passed from my last thousand-dollar check; I didn’t keep count of days anymore, but he only called when I’d miss rent. I barely ate, not because I had no money (I had a couple hundred on my card from my final paycheck) but because I didn’t have the will to leave my friends if I didn’t absolutely need to. I got skinnier. My skin started to look put on, which made my bones seem sharper, which I liked because . . . I don’t know why I liked it. Those days started quickly feeling like a dream. The quaintest dream I’d ever had.

It was a thing most terrible when the cold came over. It wasn’t fair. It never snows in this fucking town, I swear. It never does when it’s supposed to. Still, in the middle of the night I woke up to the feel of a plume melting across my unshaven face, filthy water trickling into my lips. I was so thirsty the taste was worthy of a meal in heaven. Yet, I couldn’t revel in it. My friends. They were in danger. I felt too weak. I could do nothing. I couldn’t protect them. I started to cry as more and more plumes dropped. I saw my friends scatter about, confused. For the first time since I started watching them, they worried about something other than their loving community’s survival: self-preservation. I pinched some of them, the ones closest, put them inside my grimy jacket’s pocket. But it was pointless. My arms were dropping. I was dying that night, I knew. But worse yet: they were dying. Once I had taken all the nearest, I tried rolling toward the farthest. I almost rushed my death, but I got there. I felt myself drifting. I couldn’t save them. The only ones I’d ever wholeheartedly loved, dying, and I was powerless. Not completely, I thought. Maybe . . . maybe my body would help. Maybe if I died above them, the snow wouldn’t smother them. Some of them might die by my limp weight, but it’d be worse if they all died. I rolled once more, and I was above them, leaning on my right elbow for as long as I could to keep me from crushing them. And I drifted. And drifted. Until I wasn’t flesh. Until I was a powerless specter, able to see but not to help.

I saw my body as it became blanketed by white snow. I also saw a few ants crawling into its mouth and ears and nostrils, even the Queens despite their predilection for staying inside the colony. That made me happy. Those that made it would maybe survive long enough for the snow to thaw. Snow rarely lasts more than a day or so in this town, anyway.

They would make it, something told me. My gut, you could say, even though I was without one at that point. But it was enough for me to drift away, completely and at peace.

And so, I went to Heaven. And so I met God. He was bare and had a vulva and curved scars under His nipples. And He told me I was good. And I asked Him if they would be okay. And He asked me if I would like to go back and make sure myself. And I said I did. But I also asked for something else.

So I went back.

I was born inside my old self. I was tinier than my other friends were, so they took special care of me. My birth was tortuous, and our attempts at finding a way out doubly so. I wished I remembered anything from those biology classes I’d taken in my past life during high school. But it didn’t matter. I was now part of a new collective, one that cared not for scholarships and debts and taxes for bombs. I was part of a collective that cared only for love and survival, one where I had not to worry about anything other than those two things. And I remember thinking, however cloudy it was to think with my baby ant brain, that even if I died trying to get out, at least I’d already come far enough to a state of actual joy. I was an ant.

I could have seriously died there and died happy. But as we traversed a tender and hairy cavern, we spotted the dimmest trace of daylight.