Talking to my younger self

A Transition story

© 2026 Natalie Romana
Albers, All Rights Reserved

Prologue

It ended in pain, confusion, and then silence. I felt myself floating
a formless void, with a mild sense of surprise that there was anything
to feel at all. The car that had just swerved into my path and nailed me
to a tree felt like the final punctuation mark to my overly eventful
life. I’d never really ever believed there would be anything after. Only
it seems like that event was a semicolon and not a full stop.

You have a choice to make

I didn’t hear a voice so much as know a thought had passed through my
brain. And that this thought was not my own.

What is the choice? I thought to myself.

Move on. Or go back for a last conversation with someone
you love

What’s the catch?

And then I knew. I could return to any moment in my past, and have a
short conversation with anyone I had a strong connection to. But doing
so would effectively end my existence afterwards. And the further back I
went, the more of my life and connections to other people would cease to
exist as I knew them. The universe would play out differently, and there
was no way of knowing how or if it would be better or worse. Also, I
would have limits placed on what I could say and do. Not huge limits,
but I couldn’t pass on future knowledge that could be used to give my
conversational partner an unfair advantage in life. And I wasn’t allowed
to directly identify myself to my conversation partner if they didn’t
already know who I was.

Okay, I could work with that. I already knew where, when and to who I
would be going. And the price I would have to pay was a small thing as
far as I was concerned.

Another time, another person

It was a mostly sunny autumn afternoon as I walked across the playing
fields of Ilam primary school at lunch break, the day after my 10th
birthday. Normally, I’d be sitting somewhere chatting with Geoff, but
he’d come down with the flu this week so I had nobody to play with
today. I decided to sit next to the clumps of trees and bushes that
marked the boundary between the school and the University student union
grounds next door. None of us were entirely sure how far over the
boundary line we were allowed to go. Sometimes, we’d run in circles
around one of the islands of green that dotted the lawn, but nobody ever
went further. I sat down in the grass next to one of the patches of
greenery, right on the invisible line. I wanted to be alone for a
while.

As I sat watching the games being played on the school side of the
line, a strange movement caught my eye on the Student Union side. I
thought I’d seen something shimmer? I turned, and I saw an adult walking
in my direction from the student union side. This was strange. She
wasn’t a student, she was old, older than my parents. As she got closer,
I could see her better, and that was enough to really get my
attention. Because while she had long, dark brown hair that fell in
curls over her shoulders, her face was so familiar. She looked a lot
like my uncle Eric and Dad did. But I’d met Dad’s sister years ago when
I visited the Netherlands, and she had short, blond hair and looked
nothing like this?!

While I was staring, she came right up to me, and while hitching her
skirt to sit down next to me with her legs curled under her, she started
talking.

“Hey Girl, how was your birthday yesterday?” she asked me with a
friendly, gentle smile.

“I’m not a girl, and how do you know it was my birthday? Are you
family?”

She had a knowing smile on her face as she answered. “Yeah, hold that
thought. For a boy, you’ve spent a lot of time hanging around with the
girls.”

“How do you know that? Did Dad send you to see me?”

“I have my ways, and no, I haven’t spoken to your Dad since this
morning at breakfast” she shot back at me.

What??? The only people at breakfast this morning were the normal 5
of us? Mum, Dad, Milja, Marike and me. “That’s impossible”, I told
her.

“It’s not, but you’re going to have to figure out how. The rules say
I can’t tell you directly. We were definitely at breakfast with Dad this
morning.”

“Rules? What rules?” I’d have thought I was dealing with a nutter,
but this lady didn’t look nuts at all. She looked kind, and just a
little sad somehow.

“I’m glad you asked. This is a one time deal. I have been given
permission and the possibility to talk to you for this lunch break only.
I’m not allowed to tell you who I am. I’m allowed to answer
questions, but not anything about what’s going to happen in the future,
so no lottery ticket numbers or who’s going to be president of the US or
anything like that. After this conversation is done, I’ll leave, and
you’ll only ever see me in the mirror every time you look”.

The look she was giving me was intense, the kind of look people give
when they’re telling you something really important while giving a
hint.

Future. Mirror. She knows about me, looks like family, says she was
at breakfast? Only the hair is wrong? “You’re Milja from the future?” I
say, while knowing that somehow, I was wrong.

“Oh, so close. No, but you’re bang on with the time travel.
Did Mum ever tell you what she was going to name you if you’d been born
a girl?”.

Okay, this is the most surreal conversation ever. I know this though,
Mum had mentioned it to me just this morning while telling me I was her
birthday present. “Natalie? I suppose it sounds okay in Dutch, but I
don’t like how people say it around here?”

“It will grow on you with time. That’s my name. Nice to meet you
again”. She smirked at me.

“WHAT?” was my only reaction. Because my brain had
finally caught up with my mouth and was telling me something utterly
impossible. This woman was me. Assuming she was telling me the truth and
not messing with me. I just sat and stared while inside my mind was
racing. “You’re me? Tell me something only I would know about”.

She leaned over and whispered something in my ear that I’d never told
anyone, and that I’d vowed never to tell anyone about ever. I wish I was
older so I could swear. Godverdomme. I was talking to an older version
of myself, and I was a girl? Out of all of this utter insanity, why did
that one fact not seem impossible? “How. How can you be here. How can
we be a girl?”

“I don’t know about the first. Call it a miracle if you like. I
couldn’t tell you if I knew and wanted to. But we’re girls, you just
haven’t realised it yet. And you’ve never read about how doctors can
help you become a girl on the outside. Part of why I wanted to talk to
you right now is because it’s so much easier and more effective if you
start treatment during puberty. So here I am. If this is all too much,
and you don’t want to hear about this, I’ll leave. This is your life
after all. But if you do want to know? Ask me and I’ll tell you what I
can.”

My head was spinning. Did I want to know how I could become a girl?
Old memories of regrets came drifting to the surface. But one thing was
clear. True or not true, joke or not, I needed, always needed
to know. So I nodded, and sat there for the rest of the
lunch break, listening to myself tell me about who I was, what it was
called, and where I needed to go look in the library for more
information. And I filed it away with more care than I’d ever given to
all of the other facts I had spent my time gathering. Because I also
heard what this would cost me, and how brave I would have to be to
persevere. And the only reason I kept listening was because of the look
of sadness and trust in my old, old eyes.

I heard the lunch bell ring, calling me to class. I looked over at
myself and asked her “What happens now?”

“The only reason I could talk to you now is because my own life was
ending. Call me a ghost, if you will. Now that you know this, everything
changes, and I will cease to exist or indeed ever having existed in the
first place. But you have a chance to become everything I was and much,
much more. Remember what I’ve told you, hang in there when the going
gets tough, and be amazing”.

I/she pulled me over for a fierce, desperate hug, and then, like
fading mist, wavered and was gone.

When I walked into class just before afternoon lessons started, Mrs
Walsh asked me why I was crying.

I didn’t answer.