“I’ve always thought… isn’t it such a strange thing to say you have an identity? We say that there's some… internal, integral part of us that makes us who we are, that… that we have a soul. Cause it doesn’t make any sense, does it? Cause we- we don’t have that. If your soul is you, then you can't have one. Because we aren’t- we aren't really, like, energy, or sprites, or whatever, we’re- we’re a collection of people, all stitched together into one new person. You’re the way your mother used to sing in the morning, and you’re the way your dad used to fall asleep in front of the television, and you’re the way your brother used to run around without his shoes on in the summertime, and you’re the way your teacher always smiled at you when you got a really good grade, and you’re your childhood friend, and your college friends, and you’re… everything except you. Everything that makes up what you are is… is just bits and pieces, it's not- there's no such thing as a ‘full person’. There's always going to be some little bit of ‘you’ that is somebody else.
I suppose I- I do have to acknowledge I- I might be a bit biassed, in my thinking, uh- there is definitely a part of me that is somebody else. There's… If we do have a soul, I… I don't think I have one. Whatever ‘I’ am- whatever I am now, at least… it’s just Aubrey. It’s… it’s not me.
Erm, Aubrey is my sister- or was? Or… I guess was supposed to be? Uhm, she died, the year I was born, I never even met her, she died about… three months? Before I was born. Uhm, just, car accident. Terrible, nobody saw it coming, it was just awful- I mean of course nobody saw it coming, especially not her! [brief laugh] I’m sorry that- horrible thing to say, I’m sorry, but… no, she was six years old, and… and she ran out into the road, and… she died. Then I was born.
The thing about grief is that… when it happens like that… you don’t really get to deal with it. My parents grieved for three months, and then they had a new problem. They- they lost their child, but they had another one to take care of, they had this whole new person that they had to feed and bathe and clothe and raise to be good and happy and healthy and at the same time they had to cope with… seeing their six-year-old daughter get crushed by a truck.
I don’t… blame them for the way I was raised, I really don’t. Well, I mean I… didn’t, I suppose. But… grief is a hard thing, and- and coping with the idea that you just lost your child is hard. Which is why I guess they… they didn’t. Accepting that loss is difficult, and they… that's why they didn’t- couldn’t accept it. They- they just didn’t.
They named me Aubrey too. All of their families thought it was… strange, but… that wasn’t it. They gave me her room, and- and they dressed me in her clothes, and, uh, they acted like, for all intents and purposes, I was Aubrey. I’d just… shrunk, I guess [laughs]. I’d shrunk down, and I- I’d forgotten who I was, and they had to tell me again, and they had to- to make sure I really knew that that's who I was and all this other stuff was just… nonsense, it was just nothing, I was this thing and I wasn’t anything else, I couldn’t be anything else, I was- I was Aubrey. You know, I- I liked science, and- and mathematics, and that’s who I was!
It wasn’t though. It… saying that, out loud, my chest just… tensed up, every muscle in my body tensed up, cause I just… I hate admitting that. Y’know? I… It feels like, like admitting some failure. I’m sorry I’m not just your daughter, reincarnated! Is that so bad? Yes! I suppose it is! [laughs] I suppose it's the worst thing I could ever do! At least that's how- that's how it seemed to me growing up [laughs, but not happily]. Could never be anything else. They had this idea in their heads of what Audrey wanted to be, she was very- forward thinker, you know? She- she told them all along; “this is what I was going to do, I was going to go, and I was going to study medicine, and I was going to be a surgeon, and I was going to do all this stuff”, erm, and so they- they said well that what I’m going to, I’m going to study medicine, I’m going to be a surgeon, and…and I-... I’m sorry, I don’t… I’m sorry, I [mutters] I don’t know why it's so- hard for me to talk about, I guess, uhm… god, it- it’s not even really a big thing, you know, it's- it's just… god, its so dumb saying it out loud. Uhm, when I was seven, I told them “I don’t want to go into medicine, and I don’t want to be a surgeon, I want to be a writer”, and- and i showed them one of my short stories that I’d written, and- I actually found that story, and it was… very good for a child! But they read it, and… and they told me I'd never make it as a writer. They told me that my story was terrible , and- and that I should just focus on medicine. Uh, and so I- I never wrote any other stories, other than that, just- just that one, erm, and then, yeah I- I stopped. Wasn’t what I was supposed to do, y’know, I- I was supposed to study medicine! Uh, which was hard, cause I was… not good! At science, or mathematics! I was terrible! [laughs] I was good at other things! I was good at art, and I was good at english, and I was good at social studies, and… everything. I just wasn’t very good at science and mathematics. I- they weren’t my strong suits, but… but the thing about that is, I - I wasn’t allowed to have them not be my strong suits, that was what I was supposed to be good at, because it was what I was going to do… I had to be good at it! But I wasn’t!
I started, uhm, cheating off peoples tests. I would study and study and study but I would still cheat because I just couldn’t grasp the concepts, but I couldn’t ask my parents for a tutor either cause they would just give me this blank look and say “why do you need a tutor? You’re good at these things, you’re just not trying, you’re not applying yourself, you don’t care, do you not care about what you’re supposed to be? Come on, look at me Aubrey, do you really not care about all this work we put in for you? Don’t- don’t you care at all about what you’re supposed to do - you told us when you were a child this was what you were going to do, what happened to you, Aubrey?” But- but I never told them that! I didn’t… I- I didn’t. It was the other Aubrey, she… she told them. I just have to live with the consequences.
Uh, yeah. I suppose I’m what you’d call a ‘people pleaser’ [laughs]. Always have to make sure that everybody likes me, so much! You know, an impossible amount! Else I get really scared.Uhm, its- it was especially bad with my parents. The thing about just… pretending the new child you just had is the same as your old one is… children don’t always look the same? Like, that's a very obvious thing, but… they’re not going to look the same. They- they always told me, “What happened to your hair?”, you know, “what happened to your hair, what happened to your eyes? Something’s- something going on! Somethings wrong with you!” But there wasn’t! That's just what I looked like! You know, that- that's what I looked like! I had curly blonde hair, and I had green eyes, and that is… what I looked like! Wasn’t what Aubrey looked like, but it's what I looked like… for the first few years of my life. Uhm, when I was thirteen, my hair started to go darker, and got less curly, and you know that- that's fine! That happens! Uhm, that happens with people, your hair changes over time, I’ve known people who were almost white they were so blonde when they were children and now they have, like, black hair, it’s fine, it's normal, it happens. But… but- but eyes don’t change. Do they? I’ve never been very good at science, but I’m pretty sure eye colours don’t just change, uhm… uh, but- but mine did. Uh, when I was fifteen, my eyes turned blue.
I never liked blue eyes. And now I have them. I don’t- I’m sorry, I don’t mean to say that “Oh blue eyes are terrible or ugly or whatever” they’re- they’re fine, really, it’s just… there's the connotations! [laughs] Uhm, I had spent my whole life with my parents telling me that- that my eyes were supposed to be blue, and that there must be something wrong with me that they weren’t, that I just started… to hate them. So much. And- god, sounds terrible to say it now- and it- it- not that it's like “Oh I feel bad about myself but it doesn’t really- isn’t actually-” like this is actually genuinely a bad thing. When I used to look at people's eyes, and see they had blue eyes, I would like them less. I would- just immediately judge them because they had blue eyes. And I hated blue eyes. But! None of that matters! Because now I had blue eyes. So… c’est la vie! [laughs]
I tried for a bit to be my own person, but… something I’ve found people don’t really talk about is… the terror that comes with being a person. You have to- you have to go out there and say “these are the things I like, and this is the way I act, and this is what I think about things” and on and on and on and… that's terrifying! I mean, who would ever do that of their own free will? How can anybody stand it? And you know I [mutters] it's my own trauma and neuroses et cetera et cetera but- how can anybody stand to be known? To be an observable, tangible thing? I just- I don’t understand! How can you be what you want to be, how can you not have an ideal to live up to? It's- it's like I’ve grown up in this mould, like- like a bonsai, right? Like a bonsai, and… I can’t fathom what it must be like to live as just a normal tree, or shrub, or whatever. I- I don’t know how to survive if I’m not constantly being pruned and twisted and repotted and I- I just don’t know, I… I don’t know how to do it, I don’t know how to have an identity in a way that doesn’t make me scared all the time! And I don’t know how to make an identity for myself! I- I just…
Something that I… haven’t… well, there are many things I’ve never told my parents, but, one of them… the big one, the- the real big one is… uhm, I’m transgender! Figured it out when I was fourteen. I… I don’t… It’s just an extra layer of… misery. My parents want me to be a replacement of their daughter… I’m not even their daughter. They would never take me seriously. They would never listen to me, because that's not the plan that they’d set out for Aubrey, so I… can’t change. I can’t be myself, can’t be what I am, I have to be what they want me to be, I have to be what they thought Aubrey would be.
I haven’t even let myself think of a new name for myself. I- I’ve just been trying to… deny it, I guess. If I let myself choose a name, then that makes it real, and I don’t want it to be real, I don’t…
For all of my… misery over not getting to be a real person, it's not the ‘not getting to be a real person’ part that I feel bad about, it's the misery. I want so badly to just be her. I just want to be what my parents want me to be. I wish that I could be, but I’m not, and that fact eats away at me.
Despite all of my, uhm, feeble attempts at protest, I- I did go to med school. I- I don’t mean to say that like it's a flippant thing, “Oh yeah, you know, I suppose I did end up going to med school after all,” like it- its hard, getting into med school, it is quite difficult. But… I got in. Somehow.
Something that's very important when you do something like that is having a good support system, y’know, somebody that you can go and you can say “I’m having some difficulties and I’m going through a hard time and I just need some support,” uh, but I don’t have that, because [laughs] confoundingly, I’m not allowed to be struggling! I have to be a prodigy. I have to be this incredible doctor, I have to be so good at medicine, and so smart, and above all my classmates, and I have to be incredible, and I am not. I’m barely passing. I- I’m barely doing anything, my professors hate me, uhm, because I’m, uh, really quite stupid, and I can’t ask for help from anybody, and especially not my parents, I- [mutters] cause I can’t! I’m not allowed to, I’m not allowed to fail, not allowed to be bad, I’m not allowed to… not enjoy this thing that I am doing, and- I- its, it's the stress, you know? It’s the stress of- of everything, its- its just… compounding, and… [groans] I- I just can’t do it anymore, I- I can’t do it, I can’t… Suppose I couldn’t do it.
Uh, I’ve kind of been dancing around the issue, cause… [sighs] I don’t like talking about myself, and I especially don’t like admitting my… mistakes. My mistakes? My… I don’t know. Impurities? Uhm… you know, when I was thirteen I read Frankenstein by Mary Shelly! [laughs] He did med school too, I’m pretty sure! Just like me! And just like me… he… dug up graves. Unlike me… there was something to dig up in his case.
[sighs] Ever since I was a child, my parents have taken me to visit Aubrey’s grave. I used to hate that place. It was the… symbol of everything I was supposed to be. This… headstone in the corner of the cemetery. I always found it so… odd that my parents were such good friends with the people who owned that cemetery. I went back to that grave. I- I need you to understand, I had been struggling through everything for months, nobody to talk to lest they talk to my parents and my parents find out that I’m not actually the person that I’m supposed to be and all hell breaks loose, and, and this fear, and this, just bubbling, festering self hatred that has been inside me since… ever [laughs] that has just been growing and eating more of me and- just- just the stress and everything I- I was not in a good seat of mind when I went into that cemetery! To that corner grave, with my shovel. ‘Here lies my sister’. Except - after about thirty minutes of digging - apparently here lies nobody. An empty casket in an empty grave. Why would there be an empty casket in an empty grave for a person I know died? Why were there no bones? Why was there no body? Why was there no anything? Who buries an empty casket for their daughter?
…Who doesn’t have pictures of their daughter around their house? Who has their extended family go quiet when their daughter is mentioned? Who doesn’t have people around town telling stories about their daughter? Who doesn’t have medical records of their daughter? Who doesn’t have teachers remember their daughter? Who doesn’t have… any… any remnant of their daughter?
…I-
I don’t know what’s going on. I just… I don’t know. If I have… spent my whole life trying to be this person, this… this little girl that got crushed by a truck… who am I if she never existed? I’ve spent my whole life being pruned and twisted into this… horrid shape. Who am I if there was never any shape I was supposed to be? If there was never any mould? Never any previous incarnation, there was always just me. The first child of the Bradleys. The second daughter.
The good news is, at least my eyes aren’t blue anymore.
die einde.