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Your name is John Egbert, and it is too late to be up.
John— what a unique name, isn’t it? (Whatever an old guy believes, I guess.)
Some days you imagine it as June. It sounds similar enough to be, but you know it won’t happen. Why would it? That’s dumb. You need to be happy with what you have. That’s something to live by in life.
If you choose to live it.
You can always quit. Like a video game.
It’s not much different.
After all, you’re homeschooled and nobody in your neighborhood knows your name. Your stupid name that doesn’t feel right and never has and most likely never will.
Nobody knows it and that makes you glad. Nobody knows it because why would you go outside? There’s nothing to do, nobody knows you and nobody misses you.
Nobody outside knows your stupid name that you hate. It makes you feel sick.
Nothing feels right in your mind. It’s not like you’re in the wrong skin like a lot of people describe being “transgender” as. Instead it feels like people are seeing you wrong.
It’s not you. It’s them.
They don’t see you right. They don’t see you as June, they see you as John. That stupid name John.
You take a filling breath, realizing you’ve been holding it for a few minutes, and turn to lay on your back, looking up at the plain ceiling from your bed.
Your name is John Egbert, and god, you’re tired of hearing it.
You’re just tired in general. You’re tired of Everything. Anything. You’re tired of being tired.
you’re just tired.
Nothing feels interesting anymore. Nothing is good enough for you, there’s no thrill or fun or live/die stakes or anything dangerous. It’s boring. Nothing is good.
It’s been a month, you think, running your fingers over the still-scabbed old wound across your wrist— but only the biggest one.
The one that failed. The one that left you still conscious enough to hear your dad running upstairs and calling out your stupid name that doesn’t fit and isn’t right.
John, John, John, you hate it, but you don’t know why.
Your name is John Egbert, but most days you don’t want it to be.
But how would you go about that? It makes you sick with guilt to even think about changing the moniker given by your parent. They chose it for you, you shouldn’t change it.
That would make him sad, you think.
Even though you two aren’t as close as some parent-child relationships, it still makes you guilty.
And then you feel guilty about being guilty, and then about that, and then more and more and more until you can’t even get up off your bed to get something.
Some days it’s like you’re being chained down by guilt and frustration and exhaustion and everything bad that’s ever happened to you ever, and every reason to not keep going, but you’re at a point that you can’t even get up to try and end it.
But some days you can try, who would care if you did?
Your online friends can just assume you’re grounded for forever. They probably wouldn’t even care.
Something taps against your window, startling you a bit even though you know it’s just a branch.
It’s too quiet now that you think about it.
Then again, the clock reads 3:48 am. Nobody’s going to be online, so you don’t bother getting up to go to your desk.
Your name is John Egbert, and all of your friends are in your computer.
You don’t go outside unless you need to, and you don’t go to school, so why would you talk to anyone, or why would anyone outside talk to you?
On the internet it’s easier. It’s easy to pretend to be someone you’re not, or someone you want to be.
At one point you pretended to be a girl named June. That’s how you met most of your friends.
One day you decided to tell them that you were actually not a girl, and your name is actually John. Sometimes you wish you didn’t. It was nice to hear yourself being called June, and it didn’t bring the sick feeling that your name did.
Your name is John Egbert, but who cares?
Nobody, really. Why would they?
Your name is John Egbert, and it always will be. June isn’t real.
Your name is John Egbert, and it is too late to be up.