My name is Kate and I have one brother called Connor. We all live together and life is good. Its normal and boring and just how it should be. Friends come over and families fight. It’s the same circle of events that everyone experiences. Our life is exactly the same as every other’s.

But deep down I knew that it wasn’t.

Thing is, Connor’s different now. Before he was a boy and now he is a girl. I never understood when I was younger, I thought it was like playing dress-up. He told me that for fourteen years he was in a costume and now he has taken it off. I didn’t believe him because there was no zipper, no obvious seam. No accessories to come with the outfit. He never took off the costume, never stopped playing the part. He fooled everyone, every teacher, every friend, even family.

I remember thinking that he must get really hot in such a realistic, heavy costume. He looked uncomfortable in the costume, his spirits were never up, always down. Mum didn’t tell me much about when he changed, when he became different. I remember the shouting, the screaming but I was never told why.
I would make up reasons in my head why. That Connor was bunking of school, had a fight with another kid, argued with the ref in a match. To others they would not be stories but to me they were the tallest tales ever told. He wasn’t like the other boys in my class. Connor was quiet, he kept to himself yet at times he shone through. I remember lending him my magazines and dolls to play with. I thought nothing of it but when that’s all you experience that’s all you know.

Dad said he always knew that something was different but he never told me what. He told me that soon things were going to change.

That’s when the appointments started. Mum, Dad and Connor used to leave and when they came back he had changed slightly. They were changing him from the brother I loved into a sister that I had to learn to love. But I just couldn’t do it.

He became she and Connor became Anna. Brother was now sister and I was told off whenever I got it wrong. How can someone change like that? He was cheating at life, after fourteen years you don’t get a fresh start, you have to stick with it. I spend all that time getting to know someone when all along they are lying.

I suppose, underneath everything I was just jealous. I was the first daughter; I should have been the first to try makeup, first to get a boyfriend. First to suffer heartbreak. His role was to comfort me and annoy like all my friend’s brothers. He is meant to persuade me that not all boys are idiots, that someone can be just as nice as him. He was meant to be jealous when I turned to other boys. It was then my role to assure him that he would always be close to me, it would then become awkward, we’d brush it off, and quickly resume to fighting about the smallest things. I wanted the clichéd life.

Mum told me that on the inside he was still the same. He was only different on the outside. I wanted to believe it, I really did but every time I saw him I couldn’t see past the new identity. His new look was like a shield, stopping me from loving him again.
There were odd moments though when I did see the old Connor. He would just be reading some magazines turned away but if he ever looked at me then my failsafe action was to hate. I felt guilty for doing it but I couldn’t stop.

I still love him though. Amongst the battering storm of jealousy and hatred there will always be love. Love is like a promise. Throughout life you are told to never break a promise. I have never broken a promise to this day and am not planning on it yet. When Connor was born I promised to love him. Now Anna has been born I promise to love her.

Whatever happens in life, however big or small, you just have to make do. Life is like writing in ink for the first time. At the start you mess up, your work is full of scribbles and crosses but gradually you learn and the crosses disappear; what is left is what is right. Life doesn’t just hand out erasers, what life does hand out is a blank book. When your whole page is full of mistakes you can turn the paper over and start again. When a new chapter starts in your life then you start another page. Connor has turned over his page and now she will never have to again.

As Anna starts her new life, I start a new page of mine.

My name is Kate and I have one sister called Anna. We all live together and life is good. Its normal and boring and just how it should be. Friends come over and families fight. It’s the same circle of events that everyone experiences. Our life is exactly the same as every other’s.