My Imaginary Friend and Me

As far back as my mind can go (which varies given the day), I had a little man inside my brain who went on fun little adventures in the Big City. I didn’t know what city he lived in although I later decided New York City fit best. And this person doesn’t have a name. But they’ve been with me since my first memory of my imagination. And as I’ve started testosterone and have gained access to dormant parts of myself, I think this person is me.

I remember being very young and imagining a guy in their 20s/30s who taught me about life and growing up and being myself. Of course, as with most imaginary friends, our time playing together ended. But my brain would still drift to a redhead in their 20s/30s, who just moved to a small apartment in the Big City. It looked like a hippie lived there, and over time I decided he was a writer. I’d imagine the tapestries that hung on the walls and what he’d cook for dinner (the few times he would). I eventually gave them a dog and guitar about the same time I received the first of my own. They were my escape and my friend. When my real life wasn’t living up to par, I found my mind wandering back to this young guy and his adventures in the Big City.

I didn’t have a name for this person. No name seemed to fit. Granted, I was only trying traditionally male names, but the more I’ve learned about gender, the person in my head is nonbinary (he/they) and does not have a traditionally male name. I never saw this person as aspirational, and I never told anyone about the guy in my head.

When I need a safe space in my head, I travel to his apartment and watch the sun warm their old studio through its bay windows. I watch my friend play a song on their guitar for their dog. I go on adventures with them as they walk by old brick buildings and buy used books. I watch them write very important words that bare his soul and connect him to his world. But I never confide my secrets in them the way I did my earlier imaginary friend. This is purely voyeuristic. It’s my own little internal tv show with zero plot and zero conflict.

And now that I’ve found myself in an old studio with bay windows, a guitar and a dog, and I’m on testosterone, I see more and more of myself in this person (this person in me?). I don’t know if it was anything subconscious or if the person in my imagination was actually a dream version of me. Can you have a dream without knowing it’s a dream?

There are moments when I feel like I’m living in-step with this person, and I feel like I could smile for a year straight, no breaks. I feel taller, more in line with myself. The colors feel brighter and my brain whispers “Yes, this is how life is supposed to feel.” And the more I work on my transition, the more I take my hormones, the more I get to know the person in my head, the stronger and more frequent that whisper gets.

It’s daunting, this idea of catching up to your only fictitiously realized self. Is that something you’re even allowed to do? Am I flying too close to the sun? The man inside my head doesn’t have the questions. They don’t cross his mind, and if they did he’d be thrilled at the idea of stepping into the unknown. But I guess, if this person is my Dream Self, that’s something to aspire to.

Maybe this ginger stranger in my head is me. Maybe it’s another character I’ve made up to escape. There’s a non-zero chance that they’re a little bit of both. Maybe after enough time, after being more like this person, I can maybe and finally become friends with myself.