Broken Trains

I woke up in a cold sweat from a nightmare. Then I remembered it wasn’t a nightmare, but my new reality these days. The anger washed over me like a cold wave. I got up and splashed some water on my face, drank some coffee, straightened my back, and prepared for another day of dueling with my thoughts.

Memories flood me in the morning when I walk by the corner of the living room where you assembled the train you got for Christmas. It was your ideal train, a real ride-on train you could build from scratch. Even though it was an adult project, with your science-y brain and logical reasoning, even at that young age, you built it in half the expected time. Then you and your younger brothers hopped on board. It moved ahead for a few minutes then broke down.

Working and working and working on that engine – you just couldn’t get it to start again. It was such a cheap train. I should have gotten the more expensive one.

Finally throwing up your hands you walked into the kitchen proclaiming ‘it just won’t work.’ I hugged you and we went outside to play in the snow. But you never got over the fact that that train just wouldn’t work. You wondered if it was something you did or didn’t do correctly when you were constructing it. You couldn’t understand why it wouldn’t work as was advertised. You couldn’t believe Santa would deliver a malfunctioning train. You just couldn’t believe that train wouldn’t work as all the adults said it would. As. Promised.

And now you live in the same frustrating place.

You believe the promises adults are selling you for their financial and societal gain. You believe when other kids say that their train runs perfectly, even though you can see with your own eyes it is a mess. You are too smart not to observe the pieces of their train falling. Yet you continue to believe the promises of teachers who say, ‘if you just can learn the instructions well enough, it will work.’ You believe the promises of doctors who say, ‘if you just put enough magic medicine in the engine, it will run just how you want it to.’ You believe if you work on it long enough, it will become a reality. You believe you can fix your own train.

Because mentally you are the exact age of your trauma, you stay working on that train.

What you can’t believe is the hard truth that dad says, “it just won’t work, son.” He sees you working and working on this train trying to make it something it is not and he hopes you will stop and redirect your efforts to something more productive. You can’t be swayed by mom making you your favorite dinner, pointing out to you there are other things in life to appreciate and look forward to. You can’t believe your siblings when they tell you that the train is really just a figment of your imagination and, even though they support you in your train endeavors, they really are hoping you will just give up on it and come outside to play.

But no, you stay stuck on that train.

You go back online to the groups that told you that train would work perfectly. Proudly, they push their trains around the track, seeming to work fine, as they brag about how beautiful their train looks now that it is painted red and has new bells. You go back online to reread the instruction manuals, written by very official people with titles like the World Participants of Associated Train Hacks - also known as WPATH. Intently, you follow their words – memorizing directions that apparently worked for everyone else. You go online to hear from ‘influencers’ who toot out train success stories every day not just on Instagram but also on Dread and The Hub, and all these platforms that have ‘secret’ knowledge of the operations of trains. They seem so smart and you start to feel so stupid because your train stays stuck.

So, you decide to change the outside of your train.

You decorate it and paint it and take the wheels entirely off and replace them with something constructed from paper that folds each time you try to put on the magic medicine that the train doctors gave you. You keep adding bells and whistles, rods and lights, and even a new smoke system. But, no, the train won’t work and now that you’ve done all this to it you feel committed to saying it looks great even though you know in your heart it does not. Desperate, you take the train to an official train clinic. You know it is official as a lot of your online friends told you so. It also has the important title of Train Refurbishing for Aficionados wanting New Success Clinic – also known as a Trans Clinic.

Finally, you feel like you’ve got people who will help you fix your train!

The words of your parents and your siblings, granny and uncles, old high school friends all seem so stupid as you think: ‘they just want to stop me from fixing my train!’ They don’t understand your obsession like these people at the Train Refurbishing Clinic do. You keep visiting the clinic at the encouragement of your many online friends, as well as the instructions online. They told you to sneak out in the middle of the night with your train so your stupid family won’t stop you. They even told you about the kind people at the Choo Choo Protection Service (or, CPS) – who will help you get out away from the folks at home who are stopping you from going to the great train clinic! You ponder about calling them and then realize it is just a few months away from your 18th birthday, so you can play with trains all day, every day uninterrupted if you just wait a few months. So, you sneak out and go to the train clinic.

Years later you are still going there.

Now you’ve reached the age of reason and you can finally be free to make your life all about trains. But as you look side-eyed at your train or when you flick the overhead light on in the morning and you see it in the bright light of day, you can tell your train looks much, much worse. The engineer is completely destroyed and the box cars dangle behind. The paint is peeling showing the green color underneath. Nothing looks right and the gears just make noise; they don’t actually work anymore. The magic oil isn’t soaking in – it just runs off the train like tears on cheeks.

You ask: How can you go on if everything you were told and everything you had imagined – just won’t work? You know you are smart – much smarter than your parents – but you can’t figure this out. You went to all the experts; you listened to all the other kids online with their working trains; you even got help from the train engineers; and still, no matter what you do, that train won’t work. You start to think that, therefore, the problem must be you, the owner of this train.

Since the train itself is fine you brutally conclude you must be the problem.

Today we see you sitting with a dress draped about your manly shoulders, hiding your body bloated by hormones. Your long hair hides your frustrated face as you lean over to push your train along the tracks very slowly. It only goes by the force of your own will. Your train friends have started to get married, find jobs, buy a home and find new friends who don’t play with trains. We see you but we don’t speak any more about your trains as we know it upsets you to hear we don’t think they will ever work. You have even stopped trying to really fix the train but rather you shout when anyone comes near: “Look how great my train works!’ and de-friend anyone who says otherwise.

We see you now, surrounded by your broken trains, pushing them along the tracks sullenly, with nothing but bitterness on your tongue. We hold you in our hearts because you rarely let us wade through all those tracks to actually hold you in an embrace. We shout over the sound of the grinding gears and engine sounds that we love you, dear son. We love you so much our hearts are breaking with yours as you come to see that the train will never, ever really work. We are sad that we were right all along about those trains.

What we want to say is that there is a life after trains. We pray with hopeful hearts that someday very soon you will put those trains away and come outside in the sunshine where we play, waiting and waiting and waiting for you.

Love

Mom, Dad and your two brothers