March 12
There was a shootout three blocks from home today. It was almost eleven at night. I was walking back from the store with a bag of bread and sodas when I heard the first shots. I didn’t think. I just ran.
One of the bullets caught me in the left side, right under the ribs. I expected the white pain, the blood, the hole. None of that happened. The impact was dull, like being hit by a stone wrapped in cloth. I fell to my knees, checked the area with a trembling hand and only found a discolored spot, almost white, the size of a large coin. It wasn’t bleeding. The skin hadn’t even broken.
I got home shaking. Mom was awake. I told her it had been a scare, that a car had backfired. I didn’t show her the mark.
March 17
The mark won’t go away. It’s colder than the rest of the skin and a little sensitive, like it was burned with ice. I went to the neighborhood clinic. The doctor looked at it for three seconds, pressed around it and said it was probably a strange bruise or an allergic reaction. He prescribed a cream that isn’t doing anything.
Yesterday I shaved. Today I almost have no shadow. Before, in two days it was already noticeable.
April 2
I’ve gone more than two weeks without shaving and the beard simply doesn’t appear. The hair on my arms is falling out in small clumps that I find on the pillow. My chest hurts from the inside, a dull, deep pain that sometimes becomes sharp when I bend over.
Laura (my girlfriend) noticed that something strange was happening. She asked if I was sick, if I was using some new medicine. I told her I was just tired. She looked at me in that way that shows she doesn’t fully believe you.
April 19
My voice cracked today at work. I ordered a coffee and a coworker laughed and said “what’s wrong, are you hoarse or are you turning into a lady?” I laughed with him, but my stomach went cold.
My chest is no longer flat. They’re not breasts yet, but there’s a firm, sensitive swelling that brushes the T-shirt every time I move. Between my legs the sensitivity changed. I don’t know how to explain it. I only know that when I touch myself it feels different, more electric, more… external.
May 3
Laura broke up with me.
She came to the house, sat on the edge of the bed and told me she no longer recognized me. That I smelled different, that my voice sounded different, that even the way I looked at her had changed. I tried to tell her about the mark, the fatigue, the doctors. She cut me off. She said she didn’t want to hear excuses. That she felt like she was dating another person and that scared her.
She left. I stayed sitting on the bed, arms around my chest, feeling the new weight and the hole she left.
May 22
T-shirts fit me strangely. They tighten on my chest and are too big on the shoulders. The jeans slip from my waist and are short on the hips. My hair is also growing faster than normal. Today I threw several pieces of clothing into a bag. Not because I didn’t like them anymore. Because they no longer seemed made for this body.
June 8
Mom walked in without knocking. She saw me from behind, shirtless, in front of the mirror. She stayed silent for so long that I could hear my own breathing. Then she only said, with a strange calm:
“Tomorrow I’m taking you to a specialist.”
Dad, at dinner, barely lifted his eyes from the plate.
June 15
The endocrinologist was named Rivera. He checked the tests twice. Then he used the phrase that stuck in me: “second puberty.”
He said my testosterone levels had plummeted and that the estrogens were rising aggressively and without apparent cause. That the body was reorganizing itself as if it had received a new signal. The mark on my side is still there, white, almost translucent. They took more blood. More samples. They sent me home with a folder and the feeling that no one was going to be able to reverse this.
July 3
Mom started leaving clothes on the bed.
First it was smaller sweatshirts, soft fabric. Then pants that clearly weren’t men’s. Yesterday I found a blouse folded on top of the pillow. I stared at it for twenty minutes. Then I put it on.
It fit me better than I was prepared to admit.
July 28
I no longer call myself the same in my head.
I start thinking “she” when I refer to myself in thoughts. The first time I realized it I got so scared I had to sit on the bathroom floor. The second time I just closed my eyes and let it happen. Now it happens all the time.
August 14
A guy at the supermarket held my gaze. When I was heading toward the exit he caught up to me and said that blouse looked really good on me. His name was Diego. I smiled like an idiot. My face and chest heated up.
I got home, locked myself in the room and touched myself with the new body. It was longer, more intense, more confusing. When I finished I cried a little. Then I fell asleep on top of the towel.
September 9
Dad called me “daughter” at dinner.
He let it slip without thinking, asking me to pass the salt. He froze for half a second. Mom did too. I just passed the salt shaker and kept eating. No one corrected anything. The silence that followed was more eloquent than any conversation.
November 2
I looked at myself naked in the full-length mirror for the first time in weeks.
Formed breasts. Marked waist. Rounded hips. Between the legs almost no trace remains of what was there before: only a soft, sensitive shape that gets wet when I get nervous. The mark on my side is still there, like a scar that doesn’t hurt.
I cried. Then I dried my face, opened the drawer where Mom has been leaving clothes “just in case” and tried on a simple dress. I stayed looking at the reflection until it got dark.
January 18 (the following year)
There’s a guy named Mateo. We met at the library. He doesn’t know anything about before. He looks at me the way you look at a girl. Today he invited me for coffee. I accepted.
While we walked together I realized I was no longer pretending. I was simply there, in this body, letting him treat me as what I now seem to be.
March 6
Exactly one year since the shootout.
The mark is almost invisible. Doctor Rivera says the changes have stabilized. That this is permanent. Second puberty, idiopathic hormonal reorganization, whatever they want to call it in the files.
Sometimes I miss my old voice. Sometimes I miss the way the body used to weigh. But most days I just get up, choose clothes that are now mine, and go out.
August 22
Mateo stayed over for the first time.
It was clumsy and sweet and too real. When he came inside me I clung to his back and buried my face in his neck. For the first time since all of this started I wasn’t fighting the body. I was just inhabiting it.
December 11
Almost two years.
Today, writing this, I realized that it’s been months since I used my old name even in the most intimate thoughts.
I am her.
I stopped fighting the diary, the clothes, the way others look at me, the way Mateo says my new name.
I don’t know what that bullet was.
I don’t know why it hit me that night.
I only know that I ran… and that something found me.
And that, somehow, I stayed.
March 19 (two years and one week)
I ran into her today.
Laura.
She was in the coffee section of the supermarket, checking prices the way she always did. She froze when she saw me. So did I. For a second I thought about turning around and leaving, but she had already said my old name in a low voice, as if she wasn’t sure it was me.
I told her yes. That it was me.
We stood looking at each other in silence next to the cereal aisle, with people around us. In the end she asked if I wanted to go get something to drink. I accepted.
March 19 – later
We talked for almost three hours.
I told her everything: the shootout, the mark, the doctors, the second puberty, the way the body reorganized itself on its own, the way Mom started leaving me clothes, the way Dad one day called me “daughter” and no one corrected it. I told her about Mateo. I told her about the days when my chest still hurt from the inside and the days when it no longer did.
Laura listened almost without interrupting. She only nodded from time to time. When I finished, she stayed quiet for a good while looking at her glass. Then she let out a short, tired laugh and said:
“I always knew something weird was happening to you. I just never imagined it was… this.”
She didn’t sound angry. She sounded relieved to finally have an explanation.
April 2
We agreed to see each other again.
Coffee. Then a park. Then the square. It feels strange and at the same time natural. There’s no longer the tension of a broken couple. Just two people who shared something important and who are now in very different places.
Today she asked how I preferred to be called. I told her my new name. She practiced it once, in a low voice, and smiled oddly.
“It’s going to take me time to get used to it,” she admitted. “But I’m going to try.”
April 27
Laura came to the house.
She met Mom again (Mom hugged her as if no time had passed). She met Mateo. The three of us talked for a while in the living room while I prepared something cold in the kitchen. From the doorway I heard them laughing about something. For a moment it felt like a normal life.
When she was leaving, Laura hugged me in the entrance and whispered in my ear:
“I’m glad you’re okay. Really.”
A knot formed in my throat. I could only nod.
June 18
We’re no longer “exes.”
We’re friends.
It’s strange to write it, but it’s true. We talk several times a week. Sometimes about nonsense, sometimes about the things that still weigh on me. She tells me about her new job and a guy she likes. I tell her about the medical check-ups and how strange it feels that the body no longer changes anymore.
Today she said something that stuck with me:
“At first I missed you as a boyfriend. Now I’m getting to know you again. And I like this version.”
I didn’t know what to answer. I just smiled and squeezed her hand.
September 9
Almost two and a half years since the shootout.
Laura and I went together on a double date to the movies. A silly romantic comedy. In the dark, while the credits rolled, I thought about how far away that night was when I ran with fear and a white mark on my side.
I no longer run.
I no longer hide the mark.
And, in some strange and silent way, I recovered someone I had lost… only in a completely different way.
Before we separated at the corner, Laura hugged me tightly and said:
“I’m proud of you. I don’t know exactly of what, but I am.”
Me too.
Even if I still don’t know how to put a complete name to what I feel.
The End.
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