/lit/ - Literature

There is this one very old author that I used to send letters to, almost a decade ago. His stories were about all sorts of things. Mostly about the human condition.

My letters were always short, I didn't want to take too much of his time at once. I wrote all sorts of shit to him. What I liked about his stories and what they taught me. Tidbits of my life and why his stories were important to me. I also told him about struggling as a trans woman, and costly it was. I was rejected from family. I was even homeless. I was a stripper for a while. The thoughts I had about human nature, gender, what it even means to be a man or a woman. About faith, god, and the reason things happen and how I don't think my condition is a random fluke but there must be a reason because if there isn't, then it's too horrifying to have to live with this.

I stopped writing to him for almost a decade. I also stopped reading his work, or books in general. I just got so busy and distracted. Every day I was dying inside, and I still don't know what keeps me going. Then his new book which was anticipated by his cult following was finally released. He worked on it for a very long time.

There was a character in that book that I, and I think other fans, would have never anticipated from an author like him. A transgender woman. I read the book and that character felt uncannily familiar. She was even a stripper like I was in the past, which I once told the author about. There were also conversations the character has, which were the exact same shit I wrote in my letters to the author. That character said a bunch of shit I have told the author... and plenty of other shit I have never told him. Did he know that I, a transgender woman, was actually thinking the exact same thing as his character? How did he know? And through the dialogue, it was like the author was speaking to me specifically. In his own way, indirectly by using a story and his characters, responding to the things I wrote about in this letters years ago and telling me that if god didn't love me, I wouldn't be here.

He never responded to my letters (or anyone else's, really). I didn't expect anything when I sent those letters. I actually don't even know why I told him all that shit, I was pretty young. He may have read my letters and thought about it, but it was radio silence all these years. I forgot until recently. If he did read my letters, then he did the most loving and validating thing he could have done for someone like me. This character was the response without directly writing back to me. It's almost like he knew I was going to read his new book.

This is like a fan's ultimate dream...

He made me his character in his book.

He wrote that character for me.