2
A Fantasy Classic
Ash
Sometimes I feel trapped, knowing that the world can never see the real me.
If you know me, you'll know me as a girl but what if I told you that inside I feel I should be a boy? That I've always felt like a boy and that all I want to be is a boy? Teenage sexual identity crisis, right? I suppose I'm not the only person who's growing up questioning who I am but, for me, its a little different.
I was perfectly happy with who and what I was until I woke up one morning to find myself a different person, someone I would never feel comfortable pretending to be. Is this making sense? It was as if I went to sleep as myself and woke up as someone entirely different, in another body. A body that I didn't want.
That's how I'm dealing with my problems, by playing with the idea of myself as a guy who is accidentally changed into a girl by an angel. Every day, forced to play a part that I know inside to be a lie. Forced to pretend to be someone I am not.
That would make a good fantasy don't you think?
Maybe even a comic.
.
Lt JMS
The second notebook, which appears to have been written concurrently to the pages from Emily Macarthur's study diary, is a spiral bound, ruled, pocket notebook with "Aries Motor Mechanics" on the cover. The majority of the book contains neat workshop assembly sketches and scrawled parts lists that show that it was used for car maintenance work and, to a lesser extent, various school notes, mostly due dates for homework. It is not labeled as such, but from corroborating evidence it can be proven to belong to Ash Upton.
The following was written on the inside front cover, but forensic and handwriting tests show that it was inserted after all the text in the rest of the notebook was finished.
.
Prof. Dunsany
This was almost certainly written by Ash Upton who, from class mates statements, was given to dressing and acting like a tomboy. Taken on face value, this appears to explain that what she has written is fiction, however there are aspects of this that don't ring true. Her cursive script, for example, is a barely legible scrawl that I can tell you is uncannily masculine - not an easy thing to fake. This whole thing seems like an afterthought specifically addressed to us as readers and is totally out of character for a diary, not to mention a strange way to introduce a fiction.
As regards her theme of being a boy in a girl's body, it is a common, constructive therapy amongst those who are exploring transgender lifestyles. However Ash's fiction is incredibly complete, in fact, as we shall see, one would be hard put to see any instances of femininity in her writing. If not for the evidence of her birth certificate, one might be persuaded to believe we were reading the diary of a boy.
The strength and complexity of the illusion that she was building is disturbing and, speaking as a clinical psychologist, it reflects gravely on her mental health.
