#like in early transition i'm finally liking my own body and feeling comfortable with myself and my thoughts

[wrecking]

crazy how i actually bounced back from my 3 day funk almost immediately after the calendar date was over. back to being parasocially obsessed with men 🫡

[catboybiologist]

Are you comfortable with questions about your journey to HRT?

Like, mentally how you took the leap of faith from femboy to needing something more / different. Asking for, uh, *a friend*, yeah 👀

Holy shit, this got long. This springboarded me into a massive writing about how my life influenced my personal gender philosophy, and is probably more than you bargained for. But I hope it's helpful in some way! I actually had a similar conversation recently with an NB, not on HRT friend of mine. What's the jump that makes you want to do HRT?

I don't think my experience parallels that of a lot of people's - everyone's is unique. But I do think there are good takeaways from my thoughts on this. Now that I have an Adderall prescription and my quarter is about to end, I've started writing some kind of more cited and developed essay or video essay, but that's random future stuff. This post itself is gonna be a little rambling, and a little personal. Sorry!

Vaguely, I think that the *push* to start HRT was a distinct force from tearing down the internal barriers associated with HRT, if that makes any sense. For many people, I think they have some sense of a mild preference of the gender they would "want" to be, but it doesn't bother them enough to actually break down the barriers to transition. For me, breaking those barriers, both internal and external, was as important as the motivations to transition themselves.

One of the major barriers in people's heads, often without them realizing it, is some kind of inherent belief in the "sanctity" of their body. For many people, "permanent changes" are terrifying, "unnatural", and even if they don't have medical risks, intrinsically *feel* like a medical risk they're taking on some level. It's an offshoot of purity culture in a weird way- it's the same root as a fear of psychiatric medicine making you "not you". Much of this is intrinsically religious, but a lot is actually not. I had a little bit of this growing up. Being raised atheist certainly helped in this regard, even though it was still a queerphobic slavic atheism.

The tiny bit of this I did have was sanctity of my mind, which internally, I still viewed as a separate entity from my body. This was 100% incited by crushing academic pressure, which influenced how I think and my own morality in a lot of unexpected ways. I grew up in a kind of infamously high pressure education area. It sounds unrelated, but it's really not. My mind, academics, and thinking kind of got put on a pedestal on my mind. My personal image of myself was basically a detached orb of thoughts and public speaking. I had 0 connection to my body. But since my mind was everything, both psychiatric medication and HRT were these vile things that could alter how I think and my mood! Gasp!

The final, crushing blow to both of these mentalities was studying biology. And WOW there's so much I could say about how studying biology has influenced how I think about this idea, which I want to talk about a lot more outside of the scope of just a tumblr post. But to summarize- it's not even about finding a biological "reason" for transness. It's about how I saw a living thing as a detailed, dynamic, intricate, constantly changing system that is as much a function of its environment as it is any intrinsic factors. And this includes the mind. So since I'm a shambling mass of chemicals anyways..... Why not be a shambling mass of slightly different chemicals?

The "detached orb" image isn't entirely accurate, though. Because, from an early age, I did have a self image that made me happy. And it was a female one. I shoved this deeply out of my mind in shame, leaving behind the "orb". This was my "push", as I called it before. In addition to a weird separation between my mind and my body, an additional factor contributed to my detachment- a growing distress around developing male traits during puberty, which coincided in the worst ways with academic pressure during teen and preteen years. Looking back, I now recognize this as dysphoria. I don't think my dysphoria was ever as extreme as many other people. But this is why I'm emphasizing taking down barriers as much as the weight of dysphoria itself. It has always been easy to distract from my dysphoria, but it's always been my "resting state" without realizing it.

Linked a bit to the second point is also how I felt shame about exploring any aspect of my life other than academic and professional achievement. Being raised in a high pressure environment means that any exploration of my queer identity felt like a distraction from the "real" things I should be focusing on. The final thing that tore this down, which I don't recommend for ANYONE, was an almost traumatic set of events during the pandemic/my masters degree that made me have a wake up call. I wasn't structuring anything in my life for my own happiness. Going through that made me realize I was going to continue being miserable unless I changed that. So... I started taking the idea of transitioning to actually work on my happiness very seriously.

Being a femboy was actually how I tried to reconcile these things in my head. It was my attempt to "compartmentalize"- allow myself to gently indulge in gender nonconformity and the happiness associated with it, while still not making the "commitment" to fully transition. It helps that most of my existence as a femboy was crossdressing during the height of the pandemic- spending hours on analysis and writing while living alone during my MS, wearing femme outfits while I did it. And of course, taking pics to kick off this whole online persona. I also kind of liked the idea of cis gender nonconformity as a concept, and still do. I love how femboys fuck with gender, and I wanted a slice of that for myself. It wasn't enough long term, and my new commitment to happiness overcame my desire to compartmentalize.

The final barriers were practical. By the end of my masters in 2022, I knew I wanted to transition, I just needed to get my social and financial shit together. Cue moving to my PhD university, becoming active in the queer community here, having an accepting professional environment... and yeah. Here I am. Still gotta socially transition outside of my queer circles, but now, I even have a plan for that. I still got a long way to go, but for the first time, I feel like I'm going in the right direction. And I'm very, very happy.

A lot of this is not applicable to everyone. It's mostly my personal experience. But if there is one thing that I think should apply to everyone here, it's this: kill bioessentialism in your mind. Kill the concept of complete sanctity of your mind and body. Break the barriers and then let yourself move freely across the new landscape you've opened up. At the very least, you'll come out with a more healthy relationship with your cis identity. And at best, you'll find a new part of you that needed to be found.

The other thing I think is broadly applicable is this: when initially figuring things out, stop thinking about what you "are", and start thinking about what you want. Would it make you happy to grow breasts, curves, have a femme face, estrogen regulated emotions, and other transfemme HRT changes? Because those are the actual, physical effects of HRT. If the answer is yes, start it. There's no reason not to. Your identity can come later. You deserve to be happy *for the explicit purpose of being happy*. You don't need to validate that desire through some other random factor.

This got WAAAYYYY too long, but if you have any questions, please, please ask!!!!

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

the truth about being transgender: my detransition story - jamie

This is a weird video for me to make, but it's something that I've spoken about on this channel before, and that is the fact that I used to believe - or I used to be - trans and since then I have the transitioned. This video is not intended to be transphobic, I'm just talking about my own experience and issues with the LGBT community.

I was very young when I started feeling issues with my body and my self-esteem. I was maybe eight or nine when I hit puberty, and it was around this time that my anxiety started, then I started feeling discomfort within myself. And when I got into high school, I fell in with an LGBT friend group.

In this friend group, everyone sort of aligned their identities so fully with their sexuality or their gender that I began to believe that this was normal, that it was normal to have your sort of only personality trait being your gender or your sexuality. And this was how a lot of them self-identified. I fully remember many of my friends saying, oh, my only personality trait is that I'm gay or whatever. And that was the way that I thought friendships, and that I thought people were supposed to be.

That we were in this righteous bubble, that defied societal conventions. And when I saw the idols that my friends looked up to - people like Elliot page or Hunter Schaefer - I would see posts from trans people that say essentially, I struggled with my body a lot when I was younger and then I finally realized that I was trans and I decided to fully transition - i.e. double mastectomy or bottom surgery - and then I finally felt happy.

And when you're young you don't really tend to assess the information that you take in. At least for me, when I saw that information, I thought to myself - not instantly but over time you come to think - okay well that is the solution solution to issues with your body and issues with your femininity. So I decided very very early in my life, I think as soon as I was 12 or 13, that the second I turned 16 or 18 or I had raised enough money, I would essentially run away from home and get a double mastectomy and go on testosterone, because I was non-binary, or I believed I was non-binary, and I did not feel comfortable in being feminine.

Now, my parents weren't even necessarily against trans people but the whole culture of LGBT teens is that you are in some ways misunderstood by your parents. Tthat's sort of the way that you perceive yourself to be, or how you perceive your relationship with your parents to be. Whether or not you know they're supportive or anti-trans. I know now that my parents love me no matter what, but still I would find reasons to resent them and to find excuses to isolate myself further and further from them. Probably because this is what my friends were also doing and what a lot of the people I admired went through too, like issues with their parents. Which is really sad looking back on it.

I'm very very skeptical of a movement that directly or indirectly - this is a very charged vocabulary, I don't intend it to be sort of criminalizing them - but I'm very skeptical of a movement that isolates children from their parents and makes them question their parenting and almost encourages them to step away, and to have a "found family" rather than cooperating with and trying to understand your already family.

And it's true too, that I had a terrible relationship with my parents and with the rest of my family when I identified as trans. It was very very easy to fall into the mindset of, no one understands me, I'm from a different generation, my issues are completely unique to me. But the truth is that when I spoke about it later on, after, with a few of the women in my family, they too have struggled with feeling feminine in their younger years. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're trans.

And this is one of the biggest issues that I have at the moment. I think it's posited as a solution, when really the solution is something else entirely, or rather a teaching of like self-acceptance, in a way.

No one ever explained to me that puberty would be a difficult time emotionally. I knew, of course that hormones were high and my body would change, but that was about it. No one ever told me that it's a strange feeling going from childhood to adulthood. And the difficulty of that does not point necessarily to your gender identity, it just points to your own discomfort and mental health.

I publicly identified as trans or non-binary for four years until I was, I think 15 or 16, and after which I made an Instagram post that said I'm not trans anymore, and then I deleted Instagram, and I sort of isolated myself for a very long time, because whether or not it was real, I sort of perceived the whole wide world to be against me. So I had sort of built myself into this little victim mindset where I thought that - because of course people didn't fully understand the fact that I was non-binary, a lot of people did not because we were 12 and 13 and this was a new thing - but I took that very very personally and I took that to mean that they were against me, when they probably weren't.

And so I assumed that the people who had been my friends when I was trans would stop being my friends after I stopped being trans. Which was true my LGBT friend group pretty much instantly disowned me, and I them to some extent, because I was slowly coming to terms with the fact that I did not want to be friends with people who I consider to be superficial. But that's another issue and not one that I'll talk about publicly.

The next couple of years after I publicly detransitioned were very very hard. It was really difficult to re-establish myself knowing that I had made such a huge mistake, and that was probably amplified by my own feelings of depression, social anxiety, and I don't think I ever fully reintegrated back into like high school society after that, because I found it really embarrassing. It was a difficult thing to have gone through so young and to base your whole identity around. And it's such a big thing that when you realize that you're no longer that thing, the people around you just turn essentially. They think that you've been lying to get attention, which I don't believe I was at the time. I think I was just heavily heavily misguided, and being so young I was so impressionable.

I read recently that it takes 14 times of being told something for a child to believe it, and so I suppose it could have just been that I was told so many times it's possible that you're trans, it's possible that you're trans, that eventually I started to believe it. And this is nothing against the LGBT community, but I know a lot of people with stories similar to mine, both personally and online. But no one really talks about them. No one really talks about the rising amount of young women who at some point consider themselves trans, either medically transitioned or didn't, and then came to regret it.

The only real time I've heard this discussed publicly or online was through a Joe Rogan podcast with Abigail Shrier who's also written a fantastic book that she basically says that, to some extent - and this is nothing against the transgender community - but to some extent, being transgender now is to depressed teenage girls what, say, anorexia was in the 90s, or drugs were in the 70s. It's what girls who have home problems, who have issues with their body, who have issues with their family, it's what they turn to as a solution for their Identity. Or not solution, but what they base their identity around.

To me, this is so convincing because I can see it now, how incredibly high the levels of transgender people are rising, particularly amongst young teenage girls. I mean it's unprecedented. It's a several thousand percent increase in the last 20-30 years, and you have to consider that some of that must be cultural, and some of that must be societal. I don't think it happens organically that such a huge percentage of young girls just wake up one day and realize that they're trans. I don't think that that's organic. I think that that is motivated in some way, whether they perceive it to be that way or not.

But the trouble with this is, despite the fact that I date women - not exclusively - I don't identify as being part of the LGBT community. Because to me the LGBT community, or the one that I have experienced, clings so much to its (political) beliefs and to its system and its agenda of sort of self-victimization, and attacking anyone who disagrees with this experience. This is true of a lot of detransitioners. I can't personally agree with it. I don't think it's right to attack anyone who doesn't agree with your specific dogma.

And this is in no way to an attack. If anything, it's me speaking about my own experience in, not officially, but rather leaving the LGBT community. And it's a difficult thing to talk about. I know that a lot of people will probably resent me for putting out this video, despite the fact that I've tried to stay as true to my own emotions and experiences as possible. But I do it with no malice in my heart. If anything I do out of empathy for other young girls who are like me, who see this as the new solution to their issues with themselves and their femininity.

Every day I am so so grateful that like my parents didn't have enough money for me to medically transition at 12 or 13, or that I didn't run away from home and decide to have a double mastectomy. Or even that it's difficult for young people in the UK to go through these treatments, that you have to wait so long. Because if I had not had to wait so long on the NHS, I would have regretted it so much.

In the past couple of years my femininity has brought me so so much and I never would have been able to experience that had I not de-transitioned and taken the time to really consider my own identity. And I know I'm not alone because I personally have at least five to ten friends that have all done this, to some greater or lesser extent. And I think the statistics mirror this too. It's something like a majority of people who transition are equally as depressed as they were before than they are after, and I think the percentage of suicide goes up very very highly five years and after medical transition for a large percentage of people. Which is interesting to me because it was always posited as a life-saving surgery to have top or bottom surgery. And I think it's such a huge decision to make without having been told the other side of it.

Things like testosterone. They tell you that it's not permanent, but it is. If you take a look at some of the public detransitioners who have been on testosterone, who have become infertile because of it - because that is an inevitable side effect of testosterone - who experience joint pains their whole life, chronic pain, fevers, anything like that. It's something that I wouldn't wish on anyone to look back and realize that they made a mistake. It's such a huge and irreversible mistake to make that, if anything I say can help people consider whether it makes them truly happy, then my goal is achieved.

All I really want is for people, young women especially, to, before they make any permanent decisions, take a long long look inwards. Heal your mental health first of all. That is the biggest thing I think, heal your mental health, and then consider if you still feel uncomfortable within your own sexuality or gender. Because for me, after I healed my mental health, I feel almost no inclination towards masculinity or androgyny. And I think that's the case for a lot of people who experience depression in their earlier years, but then change as they get older.

It's a terrible mistake to make, and one I hope that is made a lot less often. Obviously it's not a mistake for everyone, I'm not talking about everyone, I'm talking about the select few who are socially pushed or socially nudged into it. I'm so grateful every single day that I did not make any medical choices that would have affected me my whole life now. Because if I had had the choice when I was 12 or 13, I fully fully would have believed, yes I want to be infertile my whole life, just for this. And now having children is like my number one goal in life, it's my biggest goal, it's my dream now to have children. And it breaks my heart that that could have been taken away from me, if I had been encouraged just a little bit more by my parents or by the system or the NHS or anything like that.

But yeah, this video has no hate towards trans people. I just want everyone to consider my own perspective and my own experience as someone who has de-transitioned and having been on both sides og deep deep within the LGBT community, and then having left it, having stopped being depressed, having come to a lot more happiness in my life.

And yeah, again I only send love and hope and peace out to all of you, and I hope that you find peace within yourself if you're watching this video and yeah, love you, bye.

==

Very eloquent, thoughtful, insightful and self-aware from this young woman.

[valehirvas]

Hi! I need help understanding what Is gender dysphoria from a transsexual perspective because I'm confuse at my own experiences and the doctors I've seen viewerd dysphoria as only wanting to/believing you are the opposite sex and nothing more

I’m not an expert on this obviously, all I’ve got is just my own experience.

For me, it’s primarily a strong desire and a feeling of “should be” about male sex characteristics. As a child, I would often cry in my bed looking forwards in my life thinking it was already over because I wasn’t a boy, not because being a girl to me was bad in itself - I didn’t view it as limitating or see myself as lesser in any shape or form, I just didn’t feel like my body was as it should have been and the thought of never physically becoming a boy was crushing to me. This came along with various stupid childish misadventures like trying to learn to pee like a boy to feel more comfortable: let’s just say that one ended up in a disaster. I also quite classically tried to explain to my mother how I felt - that I wasn’t like a “girl girl”, I was more a boy girl. Something like that.

I didn’t have social dysphoria at this stage, because I’m very privileged in the sense that my parents and most adults around me allowed me to be exactly who I was, and those who found me disagreeable and too boyish never explicitly made it a gender issue, so I was blissfully unaware of the idea that girls weren’t supposed to act the way I was acting. I was very much a tomboy, but I was never made to feel like this was a bad thing, it was just who I was. I was in a lot of minor trouble often because of how active and curious I was as a kid, but nothing worse than doing what other adventurous kids were getting up to. For example, we liked breaking into the sewer system to chase frogs. Our parents HATED it, for obvious reasons. Things like that. But these were hardly things that only boys got into, and my friend group was rather equally split between the sexes at the time, so yeah, no, my social dysphoria did not exist at this time.

With puberty, things got a lot rougher. It’s tough to tell how much of it was because of dysphoria and how much of it was because of abuse in my life; I was targeted by a school teacher who made my life hell and triggered my depression at the ripe old age of 11, and ever since things were just really difficult for me.

I was still struggling with wanting to be a boy; I only had male role models, only male ideals of what I wanted to grow up to be, in terms of media and idols. I desperately wanted facial hair. Meanwhile, I was being raised by a single mother, and my experience with men was dreadful, and puberty chased off my male friends so I was left living in an all-female bubble, pretty much. I didn’t feel separate from it, but I was certainly different. My friends went down a more traditionally feminine path while I was a clusterfuck of alternative fashion and obscure interests.

My biggest “oh” moment was when I was about 12 years old and for the first time approached my mom to buy my own set of clothes - I’d secretly wanted to dress up as one of the boys for a long time, but this was the first time I really got to try it out. Being a skater was in because this was the early 2000s, so I bought a large t-shirt and a pair of skate shoes, and yes, a skateboard, and when I looked into the mirror like that, I felt like I was in heaven. I felt like things were finally going right and that this was who I wanted to be, that this was who I was supposed to be.

When I was 14, I met my first trans person. I had a terrible crush on him, he was a couple years older than me and identified as an FtM. The year was, what, 2005? I knew instantly that I was the same as him, but it scared me so badly I swore off ever thinking about it again, and that I’d just live as a woman like I was meant to be, because he was extremely suicidal and abused alcohol and drugs, and I didn’t want to die like that. It just seemed like the worst outcome - I knew I was like that, too, but I didn’t want that future. I was afraid if I’d accept how I felt, I’d end up killing myself like he’d tried to do so many times already. So I went DEEP into the closet.

I struggled a lot with relationships, being viewed as a girlfriend and treated as such, like my partners telling me they loved how I looked, touching my body, appreciating it as a female body. I told my first love that I wanted to go by the name of Gabriel, and that I felt like a boy inside, but that was as far as I went. I was 15 at the time. Around the same age I got sent to a group home because the social services were struggling with me (I wasn’t attending school due to my depression and various other mental disorders, and they needed to get me off their books asap). There, I was assigned men’s deodorant because they were out of women’s, and I never went back from there. Little things like that just made me feel so much better in my own skin. Now I at least smelled like a guy. It felt heavenly. In this same place, my supervisor was a nice young woman who borrowed me movies to watch. One of them was Boys Don’t Cry. Let’s just say I was pretty badly traumatized by that, and went ever deeper in the closet, because once more I knew that I was exactly what was portrayed on the screen but the reality of it was... well, I’d either kill myself or be murdered. Nobody wants that. So yeah, there.

Afterwards I went hyperfeminine but also became incredibly toxic because of how bad I felt in my own skin - I was extremely unstable, but at least I was playing my role right, right? I was suppressing how I really felt and trying to force myself into some weird caricature of a woman to spare myself from a painful death.

I used to do a lot of larping as an older teen and a young adult. When I was 18, one of my girlfriend’s characters was transsexual, and I went looking for information about the condition, you know, having the excuse of just “doing research”. That was the turning point. It was so comforting to know that I wasn’t alone, that this was something other people had gone through, too. That I didn’t have to live like this forever.

The things that bothered me most were the fact that I couldn’t grow facial hair, and my chest, which has always been very large. I’ve never had particularly bad dysphoria about the shape and size of my body, and I coped with genital dysphoria by packing, but the fact that I couldn’t grow a beard was the worst thing in the world to me. I went through a year of self-searching and research, during which my girlfriend left me because, duh, she’s a lesbian and I’d just come out as a trans man and it just wasn’t working out anymore, but she stuck by my side to help me become who I wanted to be, and fuck if it wasn’t working. Embracing the way I’d felt and doing the things that helped me feel better - like wearing the kinds of clothes that gave me that sense of comfort and rightness, and binding my chest - helped me to such a big degree that I stopped being completely fucking awful as a person. I stopped flipping out at the smallest of triggers and slamming doors and shouting and being an absolutely unbearable piece of shit, and my ex has repeatedly told me how good it felt seeing me become so much happier before her eyes. I practically changed as a person when I started my transition, first socially and then eventually medically, I became a very calm and difficult to irritate kind of an individual instead of the mess I’d been the years before. And I don’t mean “changed as a person” like I adopted a different personality, just that I stopped being blinded with anger and self-hatred at all hours of the day and lashing out at anyone who dared to love me as I was because I couldn’t.

Starting medical transition scared the shit out of me, because I’ve always been afraid of permanent changes. I nearly ran out of my tattoo appointment last minute because the idea of being marked forever killed me, and I only have one piercing that I can take out without leaving a visible scar for that reason. So obviously, taking that step was horrifying to me, but after doing my time looking into my soul and reflecting on my needs and desires for a year, attending some councelling and in general looking into what I really wanted from my life, I finally entered the diagnostic process, which here took at the time six months at the very least and included a lot of more thorough examinations like a psychological evaluation, chromosomal check and even an IQ test to make sure I was capable of consenting to the treatments.

Testosterone was a gift from gods in how much it eased my dysphoria. I ended up quitting it eventually because of how much it messed with my mental disorders like anxiety, and worsened my psychosis, but in terms of how much more at ease I became with my body, I can’t thank it enough. Seeing my body grow more hair on it, even some of that facial hair I’d always wanted, was blissful. Having my voice drop was comforting and comfortable, and I was excited to practice it and get back my range for singing and speaking, and that whole period of changes was just so good to me. I can’t describe it any other way. My dysphoria’s never come back since I stopped, because the changes that happened were those that I’d so desperately needed the whole time. I never got top surgery because of weight limitations placed on it, and this was an enormous source of pain for me for a long time, but I’ve learned to cope with it now. I’m getting along with my boobs because they’re just a part of my body, that is, unless they start growing cancer which does run in the family, and I’m never not suspicious of them for that reason.

It’s just, it’s hard to describe the story of my dysphoria without telling you all of this. It’s not just one or two things, it’s a history of a lifetime, little things that are good and this grand shadow that follows you around and makes everything more painful and difficult to endure because it’s already weighting you down. The terror of realisations and going back in the closet, but also the unmatched comfort and feeling of finally being how you were meant to be when you see yourself more akin to the picture in your head.

There’s a lot that I’ve left out, and not much of this is probably very helpful, but it is what it is.

[neverneverlouisland]

surprise [louis tomlinson]

surprise

[fandom] one direction

[pairing] louis tomlinson x oc

[a/n] this was originally written over two years ago, so it takes place before the rest of the boys disbanded and also before Freddie was born. future writings and stories about Louis will definitely include his son

“Are you absolutely, positively, one hundred percent sure you can’t make it?” A slightly nervous chuckle sounded from the other end of the line, ringing through the speaker of the phone. His voice carried from his end to mine. It was filled with guilt, but he tried making the tone of voice light as he mocked me.

“Yes I am absolutely, positively, one hundred percent sure I won’t be able to make it.” I groaned, falling back on the mattress and facing the ceiling. 

“Alright. Have fun.” I sighed and leaned my head back against the headboard, glancing around the bed and toward the place that would remain empty until after break. 

“Don’t fret over it, you need to have fun.” He told me from the other side. He sounded so distant, being in another country and all. His voice sounded as if it was fading the longer our conversation ran on. “I love you.”

“Love you too.” I mumbled into the speaker, removing the phone from my ear and pressing the end button. 

—

A blanket was wrapped around me as I sat in an armchair beside the flat’s heater, curled up in a snug ball. The snow had begun to fall a few hours ago, and the lightweight was slowly turning the individual snowflakes into clumped bunches of ice. They got through the screens, sticking to the glass of the large windows and sliding down the panels. The clouds were a faded grey, and they just kept dropping flakes of frozen water from the top, acting as a barrier to the unaffected part of the sky. I could hear the cold wind howling outside as it whipped at the bare trees and moved snow around, covering the city in a blanket of white. 

I brought my gaze back toward the television, watching reruns of holiday movies that had been playing for the past month. Joyous songs were playing in the background, and I had yet to figure whether it was coming from the neighbors or behind the noise of the characters on screen. I reached over toward the coffee table, grabbing one of two mugs of hot tea before thinking and placing it back on the wooden surface. I stood, grabbing the second mug and heading toward the kitchen area. I sighed, placing the hot drink in the microwave to keep it warm and quickly going back into my earlier position, bringing my knees up onto the chair. 

He’d been gone a good week or two now, and even though we kept in touch every day, it still felt empty. Usually around this time, we would be having the dumbest argument over taking down the Christmas tree that still stood proudly in the corner. He always wanted to keep it up the whole winter to keep us in the spirit of the season. We would still be doing all the other classic holiday traditions because we enjoyed the films, music and treats. There would be flour, icing and sprinkles covering the countertops and our faces. He would stare at me oddly whenever I entered ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ into the DVD player before joining me on the couch, still never getting the point of the movie. I tried to explain to him every year on both Halloween and Christmas, but he would shrug it off and enjoy the songs and how weirdly scary the characters looked. 

A buzzing came from the table in front of me, and I looked away from the movie to see that my phone had received a message. I reached for it, grabbing the device and sliding in the passcode. I smiled a little at the incoming message, reading a short paragraph on how sorry he still was for not being able to make it home in time. I’ve had to shrug it all off for the past hour he’d been apologizing, finding it a bit silly for either of us to feel any sort of sadness. We were still able to talk today, and that was enough for me. 

He ended up calling, saying how he missed my voice after not hearing it for days. I agreed with it, even though most of me was still sucked into the wonder that was holiday films and the songs that came with it. I partially listened to his own voice as I kept my eyes on the moving pictures set above the fake fireplace. I glanced at the object before bringing my gaze back to the movie; it was fake because we were on the third floor and couldn’t possibly get a chimney, so he got a virtual fire that still radiated the warmth we wanted. 

We were still on the phone as I continued to watch and rewatch all the amazing films, not being able to look away when certain parts came into play. I could barely hear him calling me with how engrossed into the movies I'd become. 

“Babe.. Babe?” 

It took a few seconds to realize before I replied, “Yeah?” 

“Are you alright?” 

I let out a chuckle and brought part of my focus back on what was happening. “I’m alright, love. Just watching something.” There was silence on the other end for a short of a moment, and I somehow knew he was nodding his head as if we were right beside each other.

“Which one?” His tone was turning more cheery by the second, and I couldn’t help but smile more at the question.

 “The Santa Clause.” I stretched over for the remote on the other couch, and opened up the guide for the channel. “All of them - it’s a marathon.” 

He sighed on the other end of the line, and it made me giggle hearing him whine. “I’m missing The Santa Clause? Can you record it?”

“I would, but honestly Louis, I still have no clue how to handle this remote or the setbox aside from switching channels.” He laughed that childish, melodious laugh and I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t my fault he never let me near the thing when he was set on watching soccer, cartoons, or himself. (It was weirdly adorable. He just enjoyed watching the talk shows, like Ellen Degeneres, because the boys always did or said something stupid.)

“It isn’t funny!” 

“It’s a little funny, sweetheart.” I huffed a breath and curled up in the blanket even more, setting down the cup of tea that was still hot enough to keep me warm and grabbing for a pillow. 

“How is it that even when you’re thousands of miles away, you start bantering with me?” At first I thought I had done the wrong thing in mentioning how we weren’t even in the same country, but he sounded fine with it.

“I live to banter with you, sweetheart. It’s what drives me.” 

I let out an embarrassing snort, causing him to go into a fit of chuckles. “Of course it is. Nice to know you’re only keeping me around for laughs.”

“Oh, not only for the laughs, love. Also for the food and cuddles.” I laughed and shook my head. It was just like him to carry on more jokes from another. 

“Great.” I sarcastically snorted out, glancing at the clock on the wall. 6:28 PM. There was a still a ways to go until midnight, but he wouldn’t be here to really make the transition into the new year special. I threw my head back against the seat and groaned.

He responded instantly. “What’s the matter?” 

“Nothing. It isn’t like my boyfriend is across the ocean, a thousand miles away.” My eyes widened once I realized I switched the mood of the conversation completely. I wanted to apologize, but was there really a reason to? “I -”

He sighed, speaking into the microphone of his phone. He changed the subject. “What's happening?” It took a bit to realize he was talking about the movie, before I resisted the urge to sigh myself.

“He just found out the North Pole was real, and Charlie went off with Bernard while Scott took the chance to look around the place. So he's still having a hard time believing he's Santa Claus.” 

It was his turn to snort, which returned the mood to what it was before. I rolled my eyes but stayed silent. “Of course he is. Would you believe you were a jolly, old man with a white beard and flying reindeer who could deliver presents in one night?” 

I smiled a little. “Of course not - I'm a girl.” He laughed. “I would believe it if you were that jolly, old man and I was that man's wife.” 

I could feel him shaking his head and the smile on my face grew wider. “Well who else would you be, love?” I finally let the sigh out, but this time it was one of content. He sensed it, and let out a chuckle knowing he would get an earful about marriage when he returned. 

We spent the next couple of hours talking. I continued to narrate the movie for him, he would bring in his commentary, and it moved into the second film of the trilogy. I ended up taking the pillow and moving myself onto the elongated couch.  It was much more comfortable and my body could stretch out. As we talked, it sounded as if he was just getting further and further away. The character's voices and the music were fading, and the pictures on the screen were turning dark. 

—

I wasn’t sure how long it had been, but it occurred to me that at one point or another I fell asleep. I kept my eyes closed, still groggy, but listened in. My boyfriend had hung up on the other end after realizing I wasn’t awake anymore, there was now a stronger wind building up outside, and the film voices were nowhere to be heard. I felt something heavy against me; it was made out of some sort of cloth. That was when I opened my eyes. 

As I looked around, I slowly started piecing together what was different. A thick, patterned blanket was set on top of me. The television was shut off and the cup of tea that was set on the table was gone. My eyebrows furrowed as I took in the rest of the flat. Is he...? I shook my head lightly. There was no way he was home this early. Surely he would have called me. I decided to stay on the possible fact that maybe I was just too tired earlier to remember that I had turned everything off and finished my drink. 

Then I heard a voice. “I guess our song was right- you really can’t go to bed without a cup of tea, can you?”

My head whipped toward my left. In an instant and without warning, I threw the blanket off and jumped to my feet, tackling the figure in a hug that nearly toppled over the chair he was in. His harmonious laugh echoed throughout the flat as his arms wrapped around my waist and held me tight.

“What are you doing here?!” I let my arms loosen from around his neck and backed away to sit on the coffee table, giggling once he pulled me back and into his lap. 

“I couldn't possibly let you find another guy to kiss tonight.” 

“Right, because it wasn't like I stayed around the apartment all day.”

“You mean the flat?” He raised an eyebrow at me, shaking his head as he continued, "You Americans and your weird words.” He stated jokingly, a wide set grin on his face.

We stayed like that for the rest of the time - chatting about our holiday in both countries and what had been going on. He was on about how much him and the boys missed their friends, families and/or girlfriends. I rolled my eyes when he winked at the mention of the word. He said they all flew out early, which meant he had been in a wide visiting range the past few days.

I gaped before punching him in the shoulder. He flinched and immediately removed one arm from around me to hold it. “What was that for?”

“I thought you were in America this whole past week, you git!” I huffed, crossing my arms and looking at him. 

“Well I apologize for wanting to surprise my girlfriend. I promise not to do it again.” The corner of his lip twitched into a smirk, and mine cracked a smile. 

“I hope you realize that if my birthday surprise is anything but, I'll personally see to it that you sleep on the couch for the rest of that following week.”

“Oh well that just seems a bit cruel, doesn't it?” We both grinned at each other, spending the last few minutes of this year shoving and making jokes toward one another. It felt amazing to have him back for this holiday after having to spend the one before talking through a video screen. That year I had actually spent with the girlfriends of some of the other boys (my two favorable cousins and our mutual friend who they introduced me to). We made our boyfriends agree to a pact that if they were ever away, both groups would meet up and we'd video chat. It was actually more fun than it sounds. 

A song from the band's very first album sounded from the table. I looked over to see my cellphone bouncing about the polished wood and nearing the edge. I got out of Louis’ grasp, ignoring his whine as I reached over and checked the time before shutting off the alarm. 11:55 PM. He looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

I shrugged, “I just wanted to talk with you for a bit before midnight. We weren't together together last time so..” I trailed off, glancing toward the balcony window. 

I gasped in excitement and turned my whole body around to face it. I skipped over after realizing that the frost on the window had disappeared, allowing me to see through it. It meant the moon snuck it's way out of the clouds, and was shining bright as flakes still continued to fall. I didn't think or bother to grab a coat as I pulled open the sliding floor. I was near to stepping out when he grabbed my wrist.

“And where do you think you're going?”

I pointed lamely toward the snowy wonderland, “Outside.” 

He shook his head and took my hand, “It's nearly midnight. It might as well be below zero.” 

He intertwined our hands, lacing our fingers together and looking down at me with a sweet smile. I glanced up at him, a small grin settling on my face before fully acknowledging his concern and giving a firm nod. A chuckle escaped his through his parted lips and he leaned his head down, catching me in mid giggle and embracing my own mouth with a sweet kiss.