Let Me Be Lukas

Part Ten

"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars"

~Khalil Gibran

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I brushed a shaky hand through my hair, still in awe of my own reflection. My once long wavy blonde hair was now short and laid over my forehead in a choppy fringe, my eyes which once held nothing but unhappiness now smiled along with my mouth. I had grown taller and my body had filled out in all the right places. No longer did I look at Lucy in the mirror, her sinister smirk telling me I was less of a man than her. No, now I saw the mighty Lukas, a confident boy who had so much life left to live.
A lot had changed in the past year, Archer and Ellison took my parents to court for custody. Making it clear to me that the way my mother and father treated me was in no way okay and that I deserved a happy life. That day in court was only one step in the entire staircase of my journey. Seeing the people I had once changed myself to please, refusing to so much as look at me as they told the judge they didn't want a tranny daughter and would sign over custody. Their words were meant to damage the armor I had built myself, but it only strengthened it. Because their words couldn't hurt me anymore. I knew who I was and where I belonged. And now, as I stood in the mirror, I recalled the rhyme from my childhood.

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"Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of"
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The very words that used to haunt my waking hours now only made me laugh at how much fear they had once placed in me. They were only words, completely insignificant if they weren't true.
I wasn't sugar and spice, I never had been. No matter how sweet my mother had tried to make me, I was still a mixed drink of snips, snails, and puppy dog tails.
" Are you ready, Lukas? "
Archer's voice was clear but I could hear his own nerves under the facade. He was just as worried as I was.
"I'm ready, dad"

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