Here I am
Elise Nyhuis
I grew up amongst those who spoke in the voices of angels, yet my body was a fantasy. A conjuring of nature, an abrupt reminder of the dissonance of thought which dominates the chosen.
I am intersex.
The sun beat its own inevitable paradiddle upon my eyelids, a reminder of the corporeal nature of my body. My mum hurried towards the car: a utopia of normalcy in a concrete structure of ordered confusion.
I remember her panicked look a moment ago, the pastel jaundiced yellow walls of the waiting room, the knowing clinical smile of an adult who knew my body better than the person inhabiting it.
Every six months this inexorable rigmarole was a reminder of the provocative nature of my 12-year-old self.
The blissful primordial epoch of my childhood was at an abrupt end. I had never been so aware of my abject physical failings, so aware of my apparent gender.
This gender only made aware on an observation table, behind closed doors.
My gender must be a temporary thing as transparent and fleeting as the disposal paper which hid my body from the lino covering of its temporal holding.
I remember the paralysis of acceptance of a consent already given, a consent which was not said but given by my atypical existence.
I am one not many—here I am.