#If you’re here from my LU/TloZ blog hey how are you

[azraellytired]

-When they call her name

A story about my thoughts and feelings of my deadname.

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Sometimes I still hear her name. I used to turn to answer when it was said.

I’d feel like such a fool, answering to a dead girl's name. I’d always say afterwards that one day I won’t turn when they call her name.

I hear her name echo around me, reverberating against the walls and bouncing back into my ears, filling my senses with a sense of joyful grief. Yet I’d still turn when someone said her name.

It’s like a bell calling out for me. Like a whistle getting the attention of a dog. And in the end i'm always the fool who fell for the tricks of a king.

That girl died years ago is what they said. I personally think she’s always been dead. A rotting, walking corpse driven by the strings of those around her.

They saw a lively child while I saw her for who she truly was. She was a corpse, with flesh hanging off her bones. Blood would leak from her heart and teeth would fall from their sockets.

I do not mourn that girl, because she never truly lived. Even if she breathed and walked and slept and ate, that was a dead little girl who didnt know why she didn't want to fit in.

Sometimes they still call her name. Sometimes they forget she’s dead. Some are in denial.

One woman said she’d get a tattoo with her initials on it and not mine. Because she is the one in her heart, and not me.

Some people pretend that I'm her. I haven't been her and never will be her. That girl is six feet under and yet they still call her name and get angry when I don't respond.

Some people have her name. I used to look when they said her name even if it wasn't about her. It would always catch me by surprise every time, like a shock to my system. Like being dipped into ice cold water after standing in a desert. It leaves me shaken and confused.

I know they’ll all rue the day I don’t respond when they call her name.

I don’t think everyone understands. They still hold tight onto that girl's skeletal hand where flesh had peeled off and drained her of her blood.

But her bones are rotting, her eyes have melted, and her brain has been turned to mush. The worms ate away at her pristine skin and her hair has disintegrated into dust. Yet they still hold onto her as if she’ll come back and say she's okay. But that girl's rotten soul fills the room with that rotten smell that leaves me gagging.

But despite her rotten appearance her name still is spoken with such ease you’d think she still breathes. As if her lungs haven’t collapsed and her tongue isn't full of holes.

I feel like they see her in me. But we’re as different as night is from day. We’re as similar as a fly is to a worm. It’s like saying rocks and water are the same thing.

But one day, I suppose something changed. Perhaps it was a blessing, or a gift from whatever otherworldly being is out there. But I did not turn when they called her name.

I guess this means she really is dead and gone, and that I no longer have to worry about her sour ghost following me around. It’s like her spirit finally moved on into the afterlife peacefully, with no argument. She got what she wanted, she’s finally nowhere and nothing at all. And I got what I wanted too.

After years of pain and a rotten stench in my nose;

I no longer answer when they call her name.

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My names Azrael (or Azie for short) and I’m transmasc with family down in the south who don’t quite understand who I am. I express my feelings and emotions by writing them out in short stories such as this.