Hail to you, glorious Thorin!
Your cognitive dissonance begins here. A month ago you accepted a friend request from some Alina girl who now messages you and calls you with your university nickname.
I have been writing and rewriting this message for a month now, so please, read it till the end. Thorin, do you remember, who used to call you that? In a student dormitory you shared a room with Aragorn and both of you were such idiots 
Idiots in the best sense of this word. We listened to heavy metal, jammed, read Tolkien, studied mathematical analysis, and considered us to be the sole intelligent people in our class.
After graduating from the polytechnic university, Aragorn disappeared. He deleted his email and changed his cell number. You were looking for him for a long time, you even asked for his address in the dean’s office and you wrote him many letters, sending them via Ukrainian Post. Once you even dropped by his parents’ place but when you dialed the intercomm, his dad’s voice told you that you had the wrong address. According to the tone of your letters now, you think that Aragorn is a complete jerk.
How do I know all this? Aragorn disappeared forever and Alina appeared instead. I am a woman now. Now you can pause for a moment, take a sedative or even something stronger, and google what a transgender person is.
I started to feel that I am a woman already at the university — I just didn’t know what to do with it. Now, probably, you would take offence because you thought we didn’t have any secrets between us. Well, you see, we almost didn’t have secrets. I just didn’t know how you would react, I didn’t want to lose you. You were my best friend.
After graduating, I got married and tried to live like everybody else. My wife and I had a son, a very cool guy. But just try to imagine how it was for me — living in the wrong body under wrong name… So I began my transition — to put it easier, I began the procedure of changing my sex. My parents rejected me, they don’t have a son now and they don’t want to have anything to do with their new daughter; and I hid myself from friends. Only my wife and my son stayed with me. I love them and they love me. Believe it or not, there are people who don’t care whether I am a woman or a man.
I took hormones, went through a medical assessment, spent one month in a loony bin (I am sane, it is just a mandatory procedure that the most humanistic state of ours requires from people who want to change their sex before they go in for a surgery), underwent the surgery itself, and finally moved to a big city in 500 km, so it is easier for me to cover my tracks. In order to get a new ID, I had to divorce my wife and give up my parental rights but these procedures are sham. If it wasn’t for my wife, I don’t know whether I would have enough courage for all this. And even though everything isn’t easy, I am happy.
I work from home, create web-sites for fat cats and stuff like that. I communicate with my clients under an obscure nickname Infinite, because when you’re a woman in IT, it’s difficult for you to sell yourself.
My new friends are mostly from LGBT… My old connections…
Thorin, I am afraid that you won’t respond to my message or will just delete me from friends. However, what can I be afraid of more? I miss you, I often think of you. Drop me a few lines, tell me how you’re doing, and then do whatever you deem necessary. Bye. Two months haven’t passed yet as I am finally pushing a “send” button.
Alina
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