The Song of My Lives

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As long as I have lived, I have dwelt in other lives than my own. That may sound metaphorical, but it's a daily truth for me.

I remember the day I was born and before with all the clarity and feelings of any fresh, recent events. It wasn't long into my first life that I was touched by another. I went to bed as a little boy named Bryan Sparrow and I woke up as a little girl named Elizabeth Sparrow, scampering from her bed and going about her day.

Elizabeth had her own life, family, and home. She had her own thoughts, feelings, and dreams. I was invisible in the dream, replaced by her. Then, without ceremony, I woke and remembered Elizabeth with the same details as any day I lived.

At first, I wasn't sure what to think. It wasn't strange or scary. I was just this girl whenever I slept. It was weird and kinda funny. As I got older, I wondered what to make of it, but it was just a mundane thing that happened for me, like remembering exactly what someone said long after everyone else had forgotten.

Elizabeth and I followed in each other's footsteps. I moved to Oklahoma, so did she. I went to school somewhere, so did she. She was my echo.

Where we truly diverged was with her best friend, Andrea Grace Pinker. They met on the first day of class and were soon closer friends than sisters by blood. Other stuff diverged too, like Presidents, geography, and world events.

If you're terribly bothered by one puberty, try going through both. Liz didn't have the easiest one. She had playful ideas she shared with Andrea about boys turning into girls. Oh, if only she knew...

All this had just been a weird little thing I kept to myself. Then, my puberty started to take notes from Liz's. My nipples developed and my chest swelled. It was the sort of little fantasy Liz would blush about and lose herself in.

I was a big guy, so no one really noticed or cared. My family took what they needed from me. I always had jobs which supported everyone else. I endured my white trash, biological sister, who would scream at me, and her boyfriends, who would drunkenly stab me in the shoulder (before I easily left them unconscious with one strike).

Around this time, visiting a website in Liz's interest zone, I met Andrea. She had the same feeling, the same style, the same love and exuberance I knew so well. Andrea Grace Pinker, the girl from my dreams, actually fucking existed. For a while, I considered I might be losing my mind.

We randomly chatted. It was just like talking to Liz's lifelong friend, but she didn't know me. I took it carefully. I didn't want to drop half a lifetime on her all at once.

She was as skeptical as I still felt, but I laid out what I knew and what I had. There were photos that shouldn't have existed, glimpses past the veil between dream and reality. Liz photobombed a picture of my nephew and another of my folks in the kitchen. It felt crazy to lay it all out, but it was my life and I placed it in Andrea's hands to reject or trust.

Little did I know meeting Andrea would accelerate the strangeness. She asked a lot of questions but held the same flame of thoughts as Liz. With endless curiosity, she wanted more.

Where before I might go weeks or months between Liz dreams, once I knew Andrea, they happened every single night. And it started to bleed through. When I didn't get enough sleep (which was often), I would wake somewhere other than where I slept on the floor, at the beginning of a meal Liz enjoyed cooking.

I've never figured out if she experienced dreams of my side and thought I was a strange but arousing figment of her imagination.

Liz had so many clever ideas, for clothing and creations. I borrowed a few and made some decent money on the side.

By this point, what had started as an odd set of moobs blossomed into a prominent pair of D-cups that sometimes swelled further when Andrea and I talked a lot. They didn't feel especially different than normal, but I still had fun with them.

It started to get weird when Andrea declared a Liz-level assault on my remaining manhood, just to see what would happen.

I could push 'everything' up inside. Sometimes, it stayed there. That was more than just tucking a turtle head. It was like shifting between two states. One where I was a man (well-endowed at that, thank you very much) and another where I could push a finger inside and feel my lips and folds. The slightest tip of my manhood showed, sheathed deep inside me.

It seemed like my body was trying to bend to the will of two girls who eagerly wanted to make me just like them. So, the years passed.

I made my way north. I quit my job the same week Liz got fired from hers. My family clung to me until I finally met Natalie. We were just co-workers until I noticed her wearing something from a show Andrea shared involving a cute penguin.

We talked. We laughed. We had dates she managed to recall even more vividly than I.

With her help, I finally got free of my leeching family. I shared my life with her. I comforted her in her fear and pain. I loved her absolutely. Aside from her and Andrea, I didn't really much care for other people.

And so I thought life would go from there. But it always threw me new things.

Andrea, emboldened by what she had managed over time, meditation, and effort (like a river digging out a canyon), kept at it constantly.

My chest had softened long ago. I had fun dressing up in playful, not-giving-a-shit outfits. Then, came Laura Humbolt.

She crept in a little bit at a time, like a fog seeping through the windows. She was a decade older than me, mature, and even more developed. I thought her name came from a joke in a news article but there was something more. To both it and to all of this.

I wasn't just some strangely inter-sexed person with a mess of hormones and weird dreams. My reality, my very self, was being warped and twisted.

I was becoming Laura and I accepted it, like a tired person accepts sleep or a volunteer under the thrall of a skilled hypnotist accepts the words of another as their personal truth.

Laura existed beside Bryan and gobbled up his life. Reality abided. I was Laura more and more. Where I was just a man with some ladylike bits, Laura was a fucking woman through and through.

She nudged Andrea to call her by her name and that essentially sealed my fate. Andrea was only too eager to go down the rabbit hole and see how far it went. Soon, I was gone, subsumed into the essence of Laura. I was less than a passenger, like with Liz. She was just there instead of me.

As near as I could recall, things that shouldn't have been possible happened. Laura had a life, a true life. She had lovers. So many lovers. She gave birth with bits that abided her will. She had a constant thing with Peter, being with him hour after hour in fancy hotel rooms.

And she was bigger than I could ever get before. I needed special bras that stretched, and I had lactation which lasted and required daily milking.

Years passed. Reality abided in this new balance. I never dreamed of Liz. Andrea was a silly girl who Laura humored with bits of Bryan. She still loved her but as a mom. Funny that it would be Andrea's mom, Grace, who ultimately freed me.

Laura got caught up in a work of art, a long graphic novel which Andrea was inspired to create. They spent more time together than they had in years. She nurtured Andrea. She urged her spark, but she also felt her exhaustion with the responsibilities she faced, from a leeching family like Bryan's.

Through the cracks in her slipped a sliver of Grace, another roll of fog. She knew things. She knew Andrea as her mother had. Some details were like shards of another place blended with this one, but it was all there.

She pushed Laura out and Grace was in charge. She had plans for her daughter. She wanted back in. We pushed to the edge, a wave of a new life about to crush what was left of me. Then, it stopped.

I wasn't sure why, but Andrea was more than a little creeped out and begged for this to end. I had to ask her permission first. She released me or my own will had finally woken up. I still have no idea for sure.

I was Bryan again but with a sexy mom bod. There was a hole in my life Laura had filled with all the holes available to her. I should've been angry and bitter but it was a very nice, though well-used, body.

I ravished it as eagerly as possible. What Andrea had started without purpose, Laura had curvaceously completed. There were remnants of Bryan's body but little else.

In my freedom, I wondered about the scope of what happened. With all the twists and turns, Laura still had a family left with questions and confusions. But that was not my life. I wasn't her anymore. I wasn't Liz either, though I finally returned to sharing her life in dreams.

Bold, confident Laura had kept my wretched family at arm's length as my mom faded with illness. When visiting the nursing home, I noticed an alarming roommate to my mother. She was an older woman who had long ago lost her way into catatonia.

She was "Humbolt, Laura", as the card by the door revealed. The woman who had taken my life. I should've just pointed her family to the nursing home, but reality was still a mess. What I once thought was steady, true, and absolute had wavered with the will of a single person and a willing soul.

Even now, I wonder how much I can really know for sure. Reality abides. Little things change, life shifts, and minds are seeded. The world is a stranger place than I dreamt of when I was a half-girl little boy full of funny dreams.

All I can really do is ride the waves. Now, Andrea wants to make me into her little sister with doting grandparents and reverse the maturity I gained by spirits. She wants me to be an artist like her, the best around along, with a share of the energy and heart she offers. I don't think I can be like her: a reality-warper, a maker, or a brilliant self-taught magician of unknown arts.

Still, it amuses me to find we are distantly-related by blood. A better sister. The world is a place full of mysteries and I just love the body I've been left, for as long as I have it.

I don't know what comes next. Maybe I really will be transfigured into the sister she seeks. Maybe I will become balanced of man and woman. Maybe something I can't imagine now. Even Andrea doesn't seem certain.

But this is my story, these are my lives, and this is my song.

And the melody plays ever on.

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