I look out the window. A feeling of woe circulates throughout my entire body. My fingers travel across the still of the window. I rub the particles of dust between my fingertips. This dust belongs here, with the other smidgens of dust. Me and this dust, we are opposites. I do not have a sense of belonging here. I cannot reside in this world. Me and these humans, we cannot coincide. In this world, I feel so discrete. I leave the still, staring at the carpet. This carpet belongs here.

Gerda. Gerda, me love. My wife. She helped me to fathom who I truly am. A single action had changed my entire life. My world became so lucid. I think of how exquisite I felt in that dress. I can still imagine the feeling of the soft fabric rubbing against my skin. I think about it everyday. I think about taking my very own life, just to give myself a feeling of satisfaction. Though, when the thought comes to mind, I think of all the people that I would bring distress to. Mother. Father. Gerda. I cannot leave these precious people behind just to give pleasure to myself.
There are certain days where I think back to December 28, 1882. The day I came into this world as Einar Magnus Andreas Wegener. However, I was born into the wrong body. I imagine clumps of fat hanging down my front, giving my chest a more appealing look. I am no longer happy with this...this thing that populates the area between my thighs. I want to be a woman. I need to be a woman. If I can't live as the person I think - I know - I am inside, then what am I doing here?

My dreams came true, or rather, the surgeries began. There were a total of four surgeries that put my entire life at risk. Initially, my male genitals were reshaped to be female ones. All, I could recall were my screams. Blood curdling. Ear piercing. Nothing to prevent the pain from the scalpel penetrating my flesh. Subsequently, healthy ovaries, from a donor, were transplanted into my abdomen. One thing that I could recollect clearly were the dreams. "To be pregnant," Anne Buchanan once said, "is to be vitally alive, thoroughly woman, and undoubtedly inhabited." To bear a child. To feel the growing of another human being inside of me. Proof that I am, without a doubt, a woman. Inside, and out.

I died on September 13, 1931. I never did get to live purely as a woman. I died due to post-operative complications. Many drugs, including pain relievers and drugs that prevented the body from rejecting transplanted organs, had not yet been successfully invented. Many doctors had believed that I carried the XXY sex chromosome karyotype. This is known as Klinefelter's Syndrome. The syndrome caused my facial features to look more feminine, so people often mistook me for a woman, even when I wore trousers. As I laid dying, my wish was for others to be inspired by me. I wished that others would look past their fears, and allow the world to see them as who they truly are inside. People change a lot of personal things all the time. They dye their hair and diet themselves to near death. They take steroids to build muscles and get breast implants and nose jobs to resemble their favorite celebrities. They change names, majors, jobs, husbands, and wives. They change religions and political parties. They move across the country or the world - even change nationalities. Why is gender the one sacred thing we aren't supposed to change? Who did it? Who created that rule?