Chapter 23: Epilogue ~ I Can’t Stop Smiling

And that’s it. The end of my story -- or at least the start of a different one. 

It’s not like things stopped happening. If anything, things changed more than ever. Sometimes instantly, sometimes slowly, sometimes painfully... but change, and for the better.

Maybe that seems like it still leaves too much unresolved? Maybe I was missing some final moment of clarity as it came to gender or identity? Well. Yeah. I thought so, too. I totally expected somewhere along the way to have a huge, momentous realization where I’d know that I was a girl, and then my perspective and identity would be forever shifted. 

But that never really happened. Or if it did, I guess I missed it.

Most days I’d wake up and feel just as much like a fraud and impostor as always. It didn’t matter what anyone else thought, I knew the mess of contradictions in my own head. I had so many reasons to doubt myself and continue to question and push aside my feelings. 

But not every day was like that. Some days I’d wake up and not really think about it at all. I’d be worrying about some stupid chemistry test, or wondering if we had any poptarts left in the kitchen, or just be too busy with that early-morning angst about having to get out of a warm bed. You know, more pressing matters to obsess over than gender. 

Eventually, somewhere along the line, I realized it had been like a week since I had fallen into a panicked spiral of thoughts about my identity. I was just Gwen. I was more comfortable and happy being her than I ever had been when I was someone else. I could just be who I wanted, and people -- at least the important ones -- would love me for that.

That was it. Simple.

It was nice.

It's not that I had pulled off ‘fake it ‘til you make it,’ I think. It was more like with enough time and space, enough enthusiastic support from people in my life, I could actually take a breath and relax and put less pressure on myself.

Because even if my identity wound up being something that changed even further over time, I feel more at peace about that, too. 

Recently I’ve been doing some thinking and unpacking some feelings and… well, it’s hard to tell if the fact that I don’t feel like a girl sometimes is due to not feeling like I deserve it, whether it’s some kind of internalized fear or shame to work through, or whether that’s actually something that's fine and fundamental to who I am. Maybe it’s more anxieties I’ll grow past and leave behind. On the other hand, maybe I’m only sometimes a girl, or maybe I’m somewhere more in the middle. I do know for sure that I like wearing skirts and looking feminine. The rest I'm still figuring out.

I guess sometimes I feel like I’ll never nail everything down precisely, but that’s okay. It helps that I feel free to grow and change, not scared or worried about having to get it ‘right’ anymore. No matter what I decide or where I go in the future, I'll just take it one step at a time and do what feels right for me.

Which is something I’ve been discussing with Tracy now and then— Yeah, Tracy’s my therapist now. After fighting with the shitty insurance website for a while, I gave up and asked Mark for help, and he recommended Tracy, who turned out to be perfect. She's this delightful old lesbian with an office not too far away, who always has hot water ready and waiting for tea. Best of all, she has Albert, her ‘junior therapy assistant,’ who is this delightful fluffy cat who curls up on your lap at the start of a session and immediately falls asleep. 

It took a while for me to feel comfortable really opening up, but Jenn was right: it's very helpful to speak my thoughts out loud to someone else. Particularly someone who can push back when I'm being particularly overwrought or catastrophizing or otherwise distorting reality. For instance: I didn’t even realize until someone pointed it out that I have a tendency to be oblivious to obvious things sometimes. Who could possibly have guessed?

Amusingly, Becca must have had the same idea to ask Mark, because she wound up going to see Tracy too. We didn’t even realize until the second or third time we ran into each other in the neighborhood that we had appointments with the same person, practically one after another.

Oh yeah, and it was Becca now. Rebecca Hayes. Because she liked ‘Bex’ and wanted to preserve something close to that, even though she also decided to change her last name to her mother’s maiden name. 

And that was a whole saga in and of itself, involving another complicated plan put into place by Hannah that I was only mildly complicit in. But she succeeded in getting the two of them to sit down in the same room together, and after a particularly fraught and tearful reunion, they wound up dramatically reconciling. Now they were closer than ever. I kind of envied it. Not enough to actually try and mend fences with my own mother, but… Well. It was nice. I was glad that Becca had at least one parent who didn’t suck.

Of course, when she changed her name, she also took Cerise as her middle name, because she’s a hopelessly sentimental dork. ...In a way I find irresistibly charming. Just don’t let her hear that. I’m currently threatening to go through with legally changing my own name to Gwenn Trouble Ricketts -- so then I could accurately claim that ‘trouble’ is my middle name. But that's mainly just because every time that I talk about it, Jenn does this theatrically pained groan that’s really endearing.

As for all three of us together… I can’t say it hasn’t had its own setbacks and difficult stretches. It feels a little bit ironic that despite how our relationship started, I was the first one to catch serious feelings of jealousy, after getting in late one evening and finding Jenn and Becca watching an old episode of Twinkle Witch Academy, all snuggled up on the couch without me. They didn’t mean to hurt my feelings or anything, but... something about it feeling like that particular show was my thing to be involved in had me feeling left out. And I, like an idiot, bottled up those feelings and tried to press onwards, which only led to a spectacularly weird and awkward week and then it all kind of exploded and— 

Look, I realize that my life is sometimes overdramatic, but that’s the way things are. And, well… We survived that, too. It was rough for a bit, but then we did a lot of talking and hugging and crying and worked it out. And you know what they say about heightened emotions and cathartic moments also leading to really really good— 

Um. Maybe I shouldn’t say any more there, actually. I'll just note that our relationship on the whole is going great. In all aspects. Including the bedroom-adjacent ones.

The point is, the three of us were really good together. Becca was effortlessly kind, going out of her way to make things better for everyone. Jenn was direct and straightforward, cutting through the bullshit to see to the heart of things. And supposedly, I was the one who’d take risks and take action, even if usually via “stupendously stupid decisions that the rest of us have to clean up,” according to Jenn. We balanced each other out. Over time we started to rub off on each other in positive ways too.

You are reading story Trolls and Tribulations at novel35.com

Once we worked out what made everyone comfortable, it seemed like things only got better and better. Even though sometimes that meant establishing boundaries and space. Becca spent probably the majority of her time over at our apartment, but she got her own place along with her sister, an apartment a few blocks away. As more of an introvert than either of the other two of us, it helped her to have a private space that she could retreat to when she needed. For similar reasons, Jenn and I kept our separate rooms. Once we got over the initial phase of overcompensating and feeling like we needed to spend all of our time together, we could recalibrate and find what really worked for us. 

Though, spoilers: it was still an awful lot of close contact. In every sense of that phrase.

Of course, other life problems came up too. Go figure, even when you do have dramatic changes in your identity or relationship status, if you skip most of your classes you still risk failing out of college entirely. I had to learn that the hard way, but at least I had some patient girlfriends who helped teach me how to study and stayed on my case enough to keep me afloat.

Becca had her own problems too. She had to pick up a part-time job, at least until the financial aid office was able to put together some scholarships to keep her enrolled. Because of course her asshole father had immediately stopped paying for anything. But we weathered the storm, with Jenn being a total angel who went out of her way to be there for both of us.

There’s so much more that I could talk about, but from this point on it feels like less of my story to tell, and more of all of ours. 

There was the day when Becca and I both started hormones, and that whole trip to the clinic where I almost got in a fist fight with a doctor. There was the one exam week that sent me into an existential crisis, getting so bad that I was considering dropping out until Jenn and Becca helped me realize that I wanted to change my major. There was that time when Becca and I hypothesized that with our powers combined, we could actually turn the tables on Jenn and give her a night she’d never forget. Even though that last one had backfired and almost ended all three of us (in a very very good way).

But no. Instead I’ll end with a perfectly normal Thursday night, just about a full year to the day that I made my original trolling attempt that had started everything.

The three of us all were on the couch in our living room. Becca sat at the end, in charge of the remote and bowl of popcorn. Jenn was squeezed up close to her, her head resting on Becca’s shoulder. And me? I lay across both of their laps, with Becca’s fingers entangled in my hair, gently scratching, and Jenn’s hand resting on my stomach. I don’t even remember what we were watching. It wasn’t important.

What I remember is being truly, deeply happy. Not the heart-racing rush of emotion that accompanied a crush -- no, instead it was something warm and secure, sitting at the very core of my being. Like: I had found my place in the universe. I had found my people. 

This was it. It just didn’t get any better than this.

And that's where I would have ended, but then, of course, Jenn slipped an icy hand underneath my shirt and onto the soft target of my stomach and I shrieked and started thrashing, knocking the bowl over and sending popcorn flying everywhere, which made Becca scream in turn. But then she realized what had happened, and burst into giggles. Meanwhile I had started wrestling with Jenn to try and get my revenge, and I was holding my own, up until Becca joined in too, and then all three of us were on the couch and—

The point is, that's when I knew my previous realization had been wrong. Things can always get better. I couldn’t wait to find out how.

I waited until we had a brief moment of truce, panting for breath, faces flushed, arms and legs still all tangled up together.

"What if," I said, "I told you two that I love you so fucking much, and that I sincerely hope that I get to spend the rest of my life with you."

I paused, watching a blush spread across the face of my two beautiful girlfriends. My surprise attack had been super effective.

My lips twitched into a smirk. "You know, what if I said that, just as a joke."

And then Jenn made a choked noise and started mercilessly tickling me and Becca joined in to help hold me down and you know what?

Everything was absolutely perfect.