Dreams Departed
I started reading trans fiction about twenty-five years ago, although not continuously for those twenty-five years — there’s a prolonged gap in the middle of that history. I put part of that gap down to reality becoming more real. I know I’m not the only person dream-desertion happened to but those nights lying in bed coming up with the crazy scenarios where you could be the real you departed me as I grew older.
At first the dreams left because of university, I was busy getting drunk. Then because I accepted I'm trans and started living the dream — sort of. I, at the least, knew what it was I wanted; there was a route to what I wanted actually possible and the only thing holding me back was myself (and prejudice, doctors, finances, health services, physicalities, etc.)
The dreaming stopped because I didn’t need a dream. I lived my life, openly, and I didn’t need dreams. What I needed was the world to be better. Which is to say that’s the dream that should have replaced the old dreams. And I should have laid in bed envisioning all the ways I could be more me, without doubt. But it’s the one dream I couldn’t bring myself to engage with; it was perhaps too outlandish — imagining a better world just for me....
Then, due to global economic crises, health issues and pandemics my already stilted, stymied life retreated even more. I was more in need of dreams than ever before.
I’d become disillusioned with the writing I was doing partly due to getting rejection letters from agents saying my work was good, should be published, that the world should be reading it, but there wasn’t a way a mainstream traditional publisher would find a market for it. And this is fancy, serious, Capital A literature I was writing; nothing so common and gauche as an honest to god real life trans woman writing about people like her.
A little over a year ago, in my disillusionment, I decided ‘Fuck it!’ for whatever reason and returned to *Those Sites.* There were some good stories but they weren’t what I could do, what I should be doing, which is writing. By that point I knew I’d be writing my entire life. With this in mind I did the only thing I could do; I began to write. And I began writing the story set around Light Avenue I’m currently publishing (all spruced up) on here; an honest to God trashy — but good — piece of traditional-ish trans fiction.
And something started to happen to me with it; I began ‘Manifesting.’ Or at least gaining back the confidence that had been beaten from me by those economic crises, my ill health and then a pandemic.
All those dreams I had as a teenager as I was falling asleep were returning in the form of a dream, or a fantasy, when I imagined — and wrote — a trans woman getting to live her life. (A trans woman who, due to plot reasons, didn’t realise she was trans until a Big Steamy Awakening.)
This dream, this writing, didn’t involve magic, or post-apocalyptic worlds where I was free to be me with no-one around to shame me. It was a simple fantasy where a trans woman gets the support all of us should get. Imagine that! A woman gets supported in being who she really is! Who she wants to be! Which isn’t to say there’s no hardships, that’s total fantasy, just her friends support her, she finds people who care, the path is eased for her. It is as it should be! Being who you are shouldn’t be an undue struggle and it isn’t for Toni in my novel!
Then that began to happen for me, too.
By writing, and so creating, a better world for a fictional trans woman I gained the confidence to demand it (drunkenly, at first) for myself. I began to stand up for myself a little more. My life isn’t perfect, and I’m not perfect, but the troubles I’d had before that seemed huge — economic collapse, ill health, the continued isolation after years of Covid isolating — suddenly began to seem possible to break down; the actual big and normal for anyone else problems I had in my life seemed like I could approach them.
And all this is because, I think, I simply imagined — and wrote — a world where such ease, friendship and support exists for a fictional, twenty-something trans woman getting the kind of consideration anyone who’s troubled by their life should get.
These dreams? They’re quite powerful.
If you'd like to offer feedback or kind words — or just give a big Thumbs Up! — you can contact me on Bluesky at Swolle