The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3027 by Angharad Copyright© 2016 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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The children were all in bed and Stephanie and I were indulging in a glass or two of a rather fine Rioja. I was cogitating on the conversation I’d had with Trish earlier because it worried me for two reasons. The first should be obvious by now—I just don’t believe all this goddess stuff—the universe is all run on mathematics; which is probably why I don’t understand it but I watch Brian Cox on telly every now and again and he says it’s so, so who am I to disagree? The second, is simply that by not being a bio-female, how can the essence be that strong in me? None of it makes sense, but it never did and is one of the reasons I’m a scientist but apparently I deal in soft science—ha ha. Yeah it’s really soft at two in the morning because you’re studying a bat colony and all those self respecting, big brained physicists and mathematicians are wrapped up in bed making love to their calculators—scientific variety of course—and I’m freezing my arse off.

When did Einstein ever risk his neck climbing trees for science? Yeah right, so don’t tell me biology is soft science just because we get to play with cuddly furry things, you’re just jealous.

“A penny for them,” said Stephanie.

“Eh?” I’m so articulate when interrupted in my cogitations.

“I’ve been watching you for several minutes. You’re obviously having an internal dialogue of some sort by the faces you’re pulling. If you want to share I’m happy to listen.”

“I’m not one of your patients, Steph, for which you’re probably very grateful.”

She chuckled. “No you aren’t one of my patients you’re one of my friends and therefore valuable to me.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, so what’s concerning you?”
“You really want to know?”

“I don’t want to see you looking fraught.”

“When I tell you, you’ll probably think I’m barking—more than usual.”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”

“Okay, be it upon your own head...” I then told her what was worrying me.

She sat quietly for a few moments before saying anything. “So you’re worried because this thing keeps contacting you, tells you she’s a goddess and that you’re special because the female essence is so strong in you. It disturbs your map of the universe and overturns your view of yourself and all your flaws. Is that about right.”

“I suppose it is, so you were listening.”

“Look here, Lady Muck, I’m a professional, so of course I was listening.”

“So where was the snoring coming from?”

“What snoring?”

“I thought you were listening?”

“I am and I can’t hear anything.”

“Only special people can hear it, along with the voices...”

“Cathy, stop being silly.”

“But it’s my normal state...”

“I thought that was torpor.”

“When I’m not being torpid.”

“Look, getting defensive or trying to act the fool isn’t helping things.”

“How can you help reconcile irreconcilable things?”

“What if they’re not irreconcilable?”

“What if they are?”

“Okay, if they are irreconcilable, you simply have to find a way in which you can live with both parts without them interposing in your everyday life.”

“Which I thought I was doing.”

“So why was it troubling you so much then?”

“Who says it was?”

“I did.”

“So why d’you think they’re reconcilable?”

“Because they are.”

“I’m waiting...”

“Fine. What you told me both related to beliefs. You don’t believe in fairy stories however well intended they are and you don’t believe you’re female, no matter how often people tell you that you are.

“You told me that so far you’ve coped with the goddess stuff by telling yourself that it’s your higher self forcing you to confront issues by making them appear to be manifest. You’ve also tied this into the second part of your belief that because you were identified as a boy when born, you can’t really be female and that’s confirmed because you can’t have children.

“You may well be right about the goddess thing, she may just be a part of your mind which gets your attention by appearing to be real. That’s fine, you’re integrating what you experience in a way which is suitable and acceptable to you. However, the blue energy thing is something else and I can’t explain it other than you appear to have some special ability to organise electromagnetic energies within the tissues to heal things. Healers have been saying that since the Stone Age, neither they nor anyone since understands quite how it works, if indeed it actually does. But it does work and how or why is unimportant, it does and as long as it does providing you appear to be using it positively, does it matter?

“As for being or not being female—I can see why you feel you have an issue but it’s one which has been resolved some while ago and enabled you to become legally female and even marry as one. You have a dozen kids who see you as their mother, even the big ones. If they don’t have a problem, I’m not sure why you should. You fulfil the role beautifully and as a role model for any aspiring mother.”

“So that’s where the problem actually lies, between my stupid ears.”

“Just as well because that’s what I’m licensed to treat.”

“But I’m not a patient of yours, am I?”

“No, you’re a friend, possibly my best one at present, so that makes you more important.”

“That does my ego a power of good.”

“Does it now? So how come I see you have problems of self esteem?”

“Who me? Ego the size of Australia.”

“Sure, so why can’t you accept you’re a very attractive woman with loads of lovely children who love her dearly, and a husband who dotes on her?”

I shrugged. “I thought self esteem issues afflicted loads of modern women,” I said trying to deflect her probing.

“When you were a girl, how did you feel about yourself then?”

“I didn’t. My parents discouraged any sort of pride.”

“Even though you were quite a talented and pretty young woman.”

“But I wasn’t was I? I was a boy.”

“Cathy, you can’t have been a boy, even though you dressed as one. I also saw the pictures of Lady Macbeth, you were quite pretty—must have driven your dad nuts.”

“It gave him a stroke.”

“You sure you’re not Catholic—you sure do guilt like one.”

“No, but let’s face it my mother died just after I started to transition and then within months he has a bad stroke.”

“Perhaps all that hatred of the real you brought it on.”

“Be ironic if it had.”

“Cathy, this is real life, ironies abound here. His anger and hatred brought about his own demise like a cancer inside him, except instead of blocking a vital organ, it blocked a blood vessel to his brain.”

“When you say it like that, it seems quite plausible.”

“Cathy, I’ve seen quite a few gender dysphorics as adults before I concentrated on children. None were anything like as female as you.”

“Perhaps being AIS helped that illusion.”

“It’s got nothing to do with physique or even your female body shape. It’s to do with who you are and what you are. You are essentially female, it’s not something you’ve become, it’s who and what you are. Your goddess is quite right, the female essence in you is so strong it’s almost palpable.”

“Like playing with bikes or kick boxing, very female.”

“Cathy, you’re not listening. You are still female whatever you do and because of that the girls you are raising are also very female. It isn’t the same as feminine. You could be a man and be feminine. You can do feminine but you can also do tomboy, playing with bikes and so forth. But you still come across as female. So think on that, I’m off to my bed. Night.” With that she rose from her seat and went towards her bedroom.

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