So I just realized that there's nobody who might come in and look over my shoulder as I post something here, two weeks after getting home, and I guess this means that I'm just used to this? That I'm going to be Andy for life and maybe going back would be harder than staying this way.
The funny thing is, Andy probably could have updated the blog with his/her adventures as a freshman girl all year without it being a big deal; his roommate was a cool lesbian who is really into writing slash fanfic for some detective series and even if she didn't believe "Andrea" used to be "Andrew" before visiting a magical inn, she would absolutely have been into someone writing about their life as if they were really someone else dropped into it. Me, I got a jock who gave me a hard time every time I said I'd been to the museum or streamed a movie that was not built on explosions. So much more testosterone in the room than I wanted!
The whole floor was guys, which was some crazy immersion therapy, even after having been Andy for the previous couple years, because we could always come home and have each other and our parents know who we really were, or really had been after Andy unilaterally decided he wasn't going to saddle me with his long covid by switching back. Now it was 24/7, and it was kind of either be Andy or go nuts. Not that most of the guys on the floor were like my roommate, or I was at some boys' boarding school where you could go weeks without seeing anyone else or anything like that, but when you're surrounded by guys during your just kicking back/studying hours, it starts to mess with what you think is normal for at least that part of your life, it can kind of bleed over into the rest. I wasn't quite a complete idiot in less than two weeks, but I did kind of notice the way I was talking about girls with other guys after a while. Not disrespectful, I hoped, but much more "them" than "us".
Plus, I spent less time with folks who knew me. I thought I'd see Mack occasionally, but the day in September when she came down for the Janelle Monae concert was kind of uncomfortable. She looked more grown-up than she had before - she'd gotten her hair curled, put on some makeup, and padded her bra a bit - but even though I'm just a year and a half older than she is, officially, folks looked at the college freshman hanging around with the high school junior kind of weird. Not much, but she pointed out that I'd just get to know more people who would wonder what our deal was if she kept coming down for stuff.
Cindi and I thought we'd be seeing more of each other, too - she's going to school in New York, and that didn't seem quite so far, but apparently it is in the Northeast, especially since we left our cars back home. Even with regular buses and trains between the cities, you're still maybe looking at leaving later than you would and coming back earlier, her roommate was not going to let me crash in her dorm room (and that's reasonable! I wouldn't want her trying to sleep around my roommate!), plus you often can't just go straight there, but there's stops in Providence or Hartford or New Haven or whatever. It's a huge hassle, but whenever one of us implied it was a huge hassle, the other felt slighted, we found we had less to talk about at Thanksgiving, and... Well, not sure exactly when we broke up, but we did. Not like Andy and Len - we're still following each other on Instagram and stuff - but it got weird for a while. She's blossoming, but I kind of had a bit of a "I shouldn't even be dating anyway, because it's all a lie" funk. I haven't seen her since coming home. I hope it's not too weird.
What is weird is how much Andy has committed to my life/his life/her life. I was still mad at her when I went off to Boston, and Thanksgiving was kind of weird, but by Christmas I'd sort of settled into the whole guy's dorm thing, and started talking about changing my major and looking at other parts of the class catalog. It still kind of felt like giving up, but Andy's recovery has been kind of slow, and I kind of think about the number of hills I walk around campus or the time I spend on public transportation and I'm not sure I'd swap good lungs for ovaries.
Spring semester was more fun, though - I knew the city and campus better, the classes were more interesting, and making Andy's life my own has made things a little smoother. I do, occasionally, wonder if this electrical engineering major would have been more difficult as myself. I haven't been a jerk, I hope, but Andy and I have been noticing the way teachers and classmates have been treating us a bit differently for the past few years, and while this isn't entirely easy mode, I do sometimes wonder if I'd be on track to getting frustrated as myself and even wind up reverting to some more traditionally-feminine major.
(Looks at all those "myself"s and sighs)
I'm going to have a real hard time with the whole "I'm a guy going forward" thing, aren't I? I've kind of got to, because Andy is doing more to embrace his - her! - feminine side. It's getting warm, and I can't miss that she's shaving her legs more, letting her hair grow out, and hasn't made any comments about clothes or makeup or anything being weird since I got back for the summer, aside from wearing wedges most of the time and saying she misses being taller. Heck, she wears actual heels at work.
(But more about that later!)
-Still kind of Andi-with-an-i in my heart.
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