I want to title this one “I believe”. I’m going to just take a minute to say some things.

I’m laying in my bed, thinking about my date last night, and what my life has been like for the last couple of weeks. Yeah, I’ve been a girl for a less than a month, and in that time I’ve gone from a depressed Junior Varsity quarterback with a broken heart to a fairly happy witch, dating (and maybe even in love with) the Varsity quarterback.

Wow, when you think about it that way, it really sounds like I’m some kind of a slut.

Personally, I’m amazed at how fast things have been happening, but there are a couple of things to help explain this. First, and most importantly to my mind, I’m not a whiner.

I mean, yeah, suddenly becoming a girl is a major deal. It’s traumatic, it’s disorienting and I still get very angry about it. But whining won’t change anything. I’ve never understood people who have a major event happen in their life that turns them into complete idiots, totally unable to function.

My (or should I say Gabe’s) friend Mark lost his Dad to cancer over a year ago. He’s still moping about it, and says he’s “too depressed” to do anything but sit in his room and watch videos. His family says he needs “space”. Bullshit, he needs help!

Because of my father’s job, he wasn’t around as often as either of us would have liked, so my primary male role model was my Grandpa Andy, Mom’s dad. He was a very practical man and my hero. In Grandpa’s mind, things just were, and you dealt with it. Some things just can’t be changed, so you’ve just got to get used to it. Maybe it seems unfair at times. Well ya know what? No one said that life was fair.

In the classic movie, Bambi’s Mom got killed, and his Dad took him in. That’s bullshit. It’s a fantasy. Bambi’s a cartoon. In real life, Bambi would either have learned to survive on his own, or most likely, he’d have died. That’s reality, sorry.

Reality sucks. Things happen in an instant. Time and tide wait for no man. Shit happens. We’ve all heard these sayings, and we recognize their truths. So why do people waste their time in some kind of a fantasy, thinking that they are somehow entitled to anything? Life is. Deal with it.

Yeah, my changes affected me deeply. The changes go deep, they hurt and worse, they’re permanent, but if I sit and cry about it for too long, the world will, without a doubt, run over me. Grief is allowed, and expected by most of our society, but come on, it gets old quickly.

This may sound like I don’t have faith. Wrong. Think about it, Jesus had to die on the cross. Yeah, God’s Son Had To Die. He wasn’t crazy about it, but He knew it had to happen. If things work like that for the Almighty Creator Of The Universe, then why do we think we don’t have to follow the same rules?

I guess what I’m saying is this. I am a girl. Next?

And that, folks, is how life works.

Where does magic fit into this? It’s said that any sufficiently advanced science will appear to be magic. Somewhere, somewhen, a mutation gave some of the female members of a certain group the ability to cause certain reactions in a certain way. Maybe it was an advanced psychic phenomenon, who knows?

Yes, psychic abilities are real, they’re just hard to prove, and until a scientist can categorically prove it and reproduce it, it doesn’t exist. In the meantime, while we wait, psychics locate bodies without the help of clues. Successful business men make millions on a “hunch”, and more. It’s real.

And so are witches.

Okay, even I have problems believing in UFOs and honest politicians, but hey, I could be wrong. It has happened. Once. Okay, maybe twice.

The world is a far more wondrous place than most people believe, especially if you’re willing to believe that we don’t really know everything.

Now the second reason I’ve accepted things so quickly? Quite simply, I want to. As I said before, I am a girl now. I have very female feelings and desires. At first, I thought it would be a very long time before I would ever be interested in dating a boy.

When I met Tim, though, something inside of me jumped. He touches me, and it makes me shiver in a very nice way. I’m familiar with these feelings, even if I’ve felt them differently in the past. I can recognize a definite attraction there.

Tim is a nice guy. I knew that, even before my change. Unlike with some of the perverts around here, I’ve never felt threatened by him at all. I know that when he holds me, I feel warm, and secure. He’s never been known as a fighter, but I do know he works out and uses martial arts of some kind to keep in shape. Besides, he is very easy on the eyes.

I’ll admit, I’ve worried that my feelings might not have been real, but when I put on Grandma’s amulet, I could feel peace settle over me, and I’m confident that my thoughts were my own. Most importantly, I could tell that I still had very real feelings for Tim. It was wonderful to know that these were truly my own feelings.

This brings me to my next major concern. Don’t get me wrong, I have truly forgiven Debbie for casting the spells that manipulated my emotions and eventually led to my transformation. Old news, moving on...

Try to imagine how I feel. My manhood was ripped away from me, and now, I’m just doing my best to adjust to my new situation. Then someone decides to mess with my very thoughts! This, to my mind is even worse than what Deb did initially. She just pushed my emotions to make me fall in love with her. Yes, it was selfish, blah blah blah. She honestly apologized to me, and I know she was sincerely remorseful, even though my transformation was genuinely an accident. It’s over and dealt with, okay?

This is an ongoing attack on both Debbie and I, and if it wasn’t for Grandma’s amulets, we would have little real defense against it. I’m royally ticked off, and worried because while I am very sure of my emotions, how can I be sure of Tim’s? There are very few people I know that have the ability to protect themselves.

I am a serious believer in the idea that the best defense is a good offense, I am itching to go on the offensive. When I find out who is responsible for this attack on me and my friends...

Trust me. I’m fixin’ ta get serious, and it won’t be pretty. Even if I have to be.