Under My Skin

by A. E. Dooland

  I took a slow, steadying breath and turned to grab my laptop off my...

  ...my empty dining table? I frowned at it. Well, maybe Bree had been playing with my laptop again. I went into the bedroom to see if she'd left it there, but the bed was neatly made and there was nothing in it. The only three things on the bedside table were an empty glass, the painkillers and the phone charger. No laptop, and no tablet.

  No, I thought, my heart thumping. No, no... this can't be happening. I went all over my apartment, out on the balcony, feeling a sinking, grinding feeling in my stomach and a tightness in my chest and, god, I couldn't breathe and I couldn't think and this couldn't be happening and in the end I just had to accept that it was, it was happening, this was happening and, oh, god...

  My laptop was missing. The case with my tablet in it was missing. They were gone and Bree was gone.

  Time stopped still for a second while everything converged on me. It was gone, my tablet was gone. The item I needed for the one last chance Diane gave me was gone. My ears began to ring and my head spun and I had to brace myself against the wall and try and make sense of this. I can't breathe, I thought, I can't fucking breathe and I have five fucking minutes to get back to work and be in Oslo or Diane will kill me and I'm not going to make it and the slides aren't going to get finished because my tablet is gone and the pitch is going to fail and fuck this can't be happening this can't be happening this can't be happening!

  My chest ached and clenched and I pawed at it, trying to get enough oxygen into my lungs. I couldn't think straight with the pain of it and the room was spinning and everything was starting to feel far away and through a tunnel so far away... and fuck, no, Min, take some deep breaths you're not going to pass out...

  What I needed were some fucking painkillers and I half-staggered and half-jogged into the bedroom to grab the bottle from the bedside table but as soon as I lifted it I could tell there was nothing left in that one and I just threw it somewhere as I tried to breath and tried to remember where I'd left the other bottle.

  While I was hunched there and trying to recall the last time I'd had any codeine I caught sight of my reflection in my wardrobe mirror and it was just so shrunken and slumped and pathetic and female and I hated it and I couldn't deal with anything right now and fuck everything and before I knew it I had the empty glass in my hand and I'd hurled it at the wardrobe.

  The mirror didn't even give me the satisfaction of shattering into a million pieces on impact; the empty glass I'd thrown just bounced off the door and rolled across the carpet, leaving a long crack through the mirror. I could still see that woman in it and I hated her, I hated those breasts and that long, beautifully curled hair, those hips and that dress and I just hated everything god fucking damnit why was this happening why did this shit always happen to me it wasn't fucking fair and why the fuck did I look like this? Why did I have to look like this? Why me? Half the fucking world was born with the angles and lines that I wanted and through some fucking mistake of nature I was that, that female person in the mirror.

  I shook. I shook so much I could barely stand up. No wonder Diane didn't believe I was transgender and thought the complaint was vexatious when she first read it if that pathetic woman in the mirror was what she saw.

  I couldn't look at the mirror. I couldn't look at that thing that people thought I was, and within two steps I'd wrenched the wardrobe door off its runners and hurled it across the room and this time, this time, the mirror smashed. It smashed everywhere, all over my bed and my carpet and my wall and my room but it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough for how much I hated this. I hated this. I hated this. I hated everything about myself and this and everything and my wardrobe was open and I wrenched each of my fucking stupid dresses and blouses and belts and skirts and frilly jackets and lacy shirts and tights and fuck everything and stockings and underwear out of their drawers and off their hangers and out of their covers and scattered them with the glass on the floor and then I... my chest... my chest... I clutched at it as it hurt... I needed those fucking painkillers.

  I staggered into the bathroom and the first thing I saw was my red face and pearls and earrings and long hair in the mirror and all of my makeup on the vanity and fuck it all and in one clean movement I'd swept it all onto the floor and listened to things smash and clatter across the tiles.

  As I looked around my stockinged feet at the debris, I realised how many thousands of fucking dollars I'd spent on everything, and those clothes in my other room, thousands and thousands and thousands spent on them and it was all for nothing because it was thirty-one minutes and Diane was going to fire me and I was going to be homeless and everything that I'd fucking worked at my whole fucking life was about to fall apart and Mum was going to kill me and all those kids in high school were right and I... just couldn't ever seem to fucking breathe.

  I could never seem to catch my breath. Never, and all of this was never going to end, was it? This was never going to end. I was always going to feel fucking crushed under the weight of everything, and everyone wanted a piece of me.

  Henry thought I was this tortured genius who he'd liberate and make a fulfilled wife and a great mother. Mum had all these elaborate fantasies about me having a brief, successful career before settling down with a nice man like Henry and having babies. Sarah wanted me to be this fun prankster at Frost with her. Even Bree, even Bree saw me as her saviour, but I just wasn't. I was the one who needed rescuing and even with all these people desperately trying to, I still couldn't succeed, and I was beginning to drag them all down with me. Henry. He used to be so funny and so cheeky, and now... fuck, I'd turned him into the long-suffering apologist for me. Sarah was getting sucked into my bullshit at work. I was about to get fired and that meant Mum would have to go back to work and hire a nurse for Grandma. And Bree... she had such a beautiful girl with a beautiful heart and she deserved a proper first love. Someone to be giddy with. Someone to hug and kiss and make love to and feel like the sky had opened up and sun was finally shining and, god... I just couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't be that for her. Not like this.

  “I can't do this,” I realised aloud, and watched my lips move. “I can't do this. I can't, I can't...” I repeated it to myself like a mantra, clutching myself and slipping against the wall until I was curled on the floor surrounded by my makeup and cosmetics and tweezers and shavers and tiny bottles of crème and moisturiser and toner.

  So much fucking effort. So much effort, so much care, so much time and so much money just to ultimately fail. And there was no way out. There was nothing I could do.

  I was a failure. I was a fucking failure. I was nothing, and there was nothing left of me. Five whole years of my life working my guts out to just fail when at last I had the opportunity to shine. God, I'd been so happy, hadn't I? A few weeks ago when Diane had smiled at me, it had made my day. And then, then when I'd first sat in Oslo and looked out across all of Sydney, promoted to lead of a top secret project, I'd been so elated and so on top of the world and I'd wanted to dance and skip and smile ear to ear. I'd been getting somewhere. All my hard work and suffering had paid off. The universe worked, Karma was finally delivering me the reward I deserved. After all the shit in my life, something great had finally happened to me, and Diane Frost had smiled at me, had promoted me, and was so impressed by me that she wanted to move me into management and everything looked so bright.

  And now...?

  My throat tightened.

  Now I was nothing. I was ruined, and I was about to be jobless and homeless and broke, and I was about to fail all the people I loved. And I couldn't stop myself. No matter how I tried, I couldn't stop myself.

  Curled up in the corner of my bathroom with my knees to my chest and my hands over my head, I sobbed. I clutched at my hair and my face and wrenched out my beautiful pearl earrings until there was blood on my fingertips and I sobbed. My chest ached and I couldn't breathe, but I didn't care. I didn't care if I couldn't breathe because it didn't matter. What was t
he point in me breathing? There was no point. There was just no point to anything anymore. I ached and ached and everything just hurt.

  I'd been lying there for a few minutes, feeling hot tears on my cheers and gazing helplessly at the bathroom floor, when I noticed something tiny and oval-shaped on the dark tiles. One of my painkillers; that's where they were. I must have knocked the bottle off when I'd thrashed the vanity.

  I leant forward to pick it up, and noticed another one beside it, and another one beside that, and pretty soon I had a palm full of them. Kneeling on the floor, I looked down at them, my hand shaking as I remembered Sarah's comment about how strong they were. She'd only had two; I had at least 15 right here.

  I counted them: 17.

  I could just do it.

  Just one move and all these little pills would be in my mouth, and there was a tap right there for water to swallow them with. They kicked in quickly, very quickly. It was one of the reasons I bought this brand. It wouldn't be long before I wouldn't have to deal with any of this.

  I was so tired. I was so tired and my chest ached and I was so, so sick of being suffocated. But I didn't have to be, did I? There was another option here, in my palm.

  Shaking, I pushed myself up and went and sat on the edge of the bathtub. I counted the pills again. Was seventeen enough, I wondered? I didn't want to not finish the job. The worst thing I could imagine was waking up in hospital with Henry and Mum bent over me.

  The bottle had to be around here somewhere, so I crawled around on the floor and found it, turning the label to the light. Daily total dose should not exceed six tablets, it read. I had nearly three times that, but was that really a lethal dose? I wasn't sure, so I kept reading. It was when I got to the DO NOT USE IN CONJUNCTION WITH ALCOHOL in bold text and capital letters that I had a way forward, because I had plenty of alcohol.

  Standing, I walked mechanically into the kitchen with my fistful of codeine and opened the cupboard in my pantry where I kept it all. I took out a fresh bottle, reasoning that a whole bottle of wine mixed with anything would be pretty dangerous.

  I put it on the counter and stared at it. The label had a little wine glass with the number of standard drinks printed inside it: 9.1. I'd drunk a whole bottle of wine in an hour once and literally passed out, so this plus the codeine was probably going to be enough to kill me.

  Okay. Where should I do it, though? I surveyed my apartment. My bed was covered in glass and women's clothes. I supposed there was always the couch, but someone walking around my apartment might not actually see me lying there. Realistically I should probably just do it in the hallway to make sure that my body was found before it started to decompose.

  I wondered who would find it, and for one panicky second I thought it might be Bree. She had a keycard, but if she'd only just left she'd probably spend a day or two at her parents' house before coming back here. No, tomorrow was the pitch and if I wasn't at that, Sarah would worry. I wasn't sure whether she'd come straight here if I didn't show up, though. She could be pushy, but she generally knew when to give me space so she'd probably leave it a day or two.

  It would be Henry, wouldn't it? We had plans tomorrow night. He'd never let himself in before without me giving him permission to, but I'd answered my phone or answered the door before. If I didn't do that, he'd worry, and in his worrying, he'd probably let himself in. Well, at least he'd probably tell Mum it was an accident.

  That was if it even worked, I thought, counting the pills again and then looking between them and the wine. No. No, I couldn't take any chances. I should just do something that would definitely kill me, and preferably something that actually looked like a real accident.

  Maybe I could have a few pills and drink a bit of wine and just climb over the balcony? I could put something slippery on the surface and make it look like I'd just toppled over. I was tall, it was probably possible.

  I slid the balcony door open and went and stood out there, leaning over the railing and trying to decide if the fall would kill me outright. 26 floors, how many metres was that? And what if I fell on one of those buildings down there? They were.... seventeen or eighteen stories, I thought. Eight or nine floors might not kill me. I'd probably be seriously injured, though, and at that height I'd probably die before help got to me. That was enough. I could spill some sunscreen out here on the floor or something and pretend I slipped in it.

  Well, I'd better take some of the pills now so that if that happened I wouldn't be in excruciating pain before I ultimately died. I went back into the bathroom with them.

  I don't know how long I stood over the bathroom sink, looking down at the pills in my palm and arguing with myself over whether I should jump off the balcony or whether I should try and overdose and what the exact chance of both of those working was.

  Additionally, the logistics of who was going to clean out my apartment was stalling me. I had that packer in my wardrobe, and my binder and my boy clothes in my bedroom. Henry was going to find those, wasn't he? I had the idea that maybe I could just put my binder on before I did it. I could put on all my boy clothes, and dying in them would be my way of coming out to him. It would be such a shock for him, though, on top of finding me dead. He loved me, did I really want to do that to him?

  While I was watching the mirror, the absolute absurdity of that statement hit me.

  I was about to kill myself. As if Henry was going to give a fuck about my binder.

  Henry was going to rush into the hallway and see my lifeless body on the carpet, and his first thought was definitely not going to be, 'Oh no, my girlfriend is transgender!', it was going to be about the fact the person he was in love with had taken her own life. He wasn't going to give a fuck about the fucking binder as he scooped my body into his arms, desperately shouting for help and cradling me in his lap. All he was going to do was whisper to me and cry for me and beg me to wake up and then spend the rest of his life blaming himself and wishing he'd done something differently. He wouldn’t give a flying fuck about the fact I was trans, except to blame himself for not noticing and blame himself for everything.

  Shit. This was going to really hurt him, wasn't it? More than the fact I'd been cheating on him.

  And fuck, who was I kidding about Sarah? I'd seen cracks in that easy-going exterior before. I knew there were emotions in there, regardless of how she presented herself, and if I thought me doing this wasn't going to impact her, I was fucking dreaming.

  And Bree, god, Bree... Sarah was right, she loved me. She wanted so much to take care of me and be taken care of by me. The joy she got out of making me smile and cheering me up… she’d spend her whole life wondering what she’d done wrong.

  In the mirror, I saw my eyes were swimming. I'd been fine a second ago; calm, collected, ready to do what needed to be done and I didn't want to have to feel any of this again. I didn't want to. I didn't want to hurt and ache and deal with this, I couldn't deal with this again! I didn't want to think about all the people who cared about me and how this would affect them and how their lives would be ruined and, fuck, I couldn't go through this again and why, why did I have to think about everyone? I loved them all and I didn't want to do this to them but there just wasn't any other way. I couldn't live like this. I couldn't live like this. I couldn't live like this.

  “Why do people even love you?” I asked my reflection. Why did people love her? How could anyone love that? She was pathetic, and stupid, and useless and pretty soon she'd be dead.

  I had a sudden, surreal realisation that I was about to kill that woman I was looking at, and because I felt so completely divorced from my reflection, that made the hair stand up on my neck.

  It was a shocking reality check to really see her.

  The woman I was staring at was shaking. She was shaking like a leaf, and she was crying. Her eyes were sunken. Her skin was sallow. She was so weak because she hadn't eaten in days, and her whole life was unravelling while she tried desperately to grab at the frayed ends of it. She was lost, and
hurting, and so, so trapped and instead of loving her, instead of caring for her and forgiving her and being gentle with her, I was hating her. I was insulting her. I was mechanically plotting all these violent things and violent ways I could kill her.

  But none of this was her fault. She couldn't help it. She wasn't me, I thought. She wasn't me, but it wasn't her fault.

  She was doing the best she could, wasn't she? In a loveless relationship, in an organisation where employees were just assets to be used and milked and bled dry until the last ounce of productivity was taken from them. Played like a tennis ball between two CEOs who would hardly notice and definitely not care if she did die. She'd just be more collateral damage in the civil war they were waging on each other.

  She was trying to make the best of a mother who cared more about her own dreams for her daughter than anything about the person her daughter wanted to become.

  She was trying to make the best of a body she didn't connect with and didn't understand.

  She was doing the best she could in every area of her life. She was trying, trying so, so hard to be everything she was supposed to and everything people wanted her to be until she couldn't breathe and couldn't move and instead of loving her, instead of forgiving her, I wanted to kill her.

  I wanted to kill her for things that weren’t her fault, for goals and wishes and dreams that had been set for her because they interfered with my wishes and my dreams. But they weren’t mine. It was like we were two separate people. It was like I was looking at a stranger in the mirror and punishing myself for not being her.

  And that’s when I realised it. I wasn’t failing at living my life, I was failing at living hers. And was it any wonder? Look at her. No part of her was really me. And not being able to be me, not being able to not be her was killing me. She was killing me, and I was killing myself.