This was just a thought I came up with as I was pondering multiple dimensions and what gender might be like in them. What would happen if transgenderism were caused by bleed-through from another dimension? Impossible to prove, but what if?

My earliest memory wasn't of my parents.

It wasn't my first birthday.

It wasn't learning to walk.

It was looking into the bathroom mirror when I was barely four years old and wondering why the little boy staring back at me looked... wrong.

Not ugly.

Not broken.

Just...

Wrong.

I didn't understand why. I only knew that every time I imagined myself growing up, the person in my imagination was always a girl.

At four years old, I had no idea what that meant.

When I was five, I had an imaginary friend.

At least, that's what everyone called her.

Her name was Emma.

I never invented her. She was simply... there.

Sometimes I could hear her humming while I played with my toys.

Sometimes I'd hear her giggle when I built a block tower that immediately fell over.

She never held long conversations with me.

Mostly she was just a comforting presence.

Mom thought it was adorable.

"Daddy," she laughed one evening, "Ethan says his friend Emma likes princess dresses more than superheroes."

Dad chuckled.

"Well, maybe Emma can wear the dress while Ethan wears the cape."

I wanted to tell him that I wished I could wear the dress too.

But something inside me warned me not to.

So I smiled instead.

As I got older, the strange feelings only became stronger.

Whenever my classmates split into boys and girls for games, I instinctively started walking toward the girls before catching myself.

When my cousins played house, I always wanted to be the older sister.

Not because I thought it was more fun.

Because it simply felt...

Right.

I couldn't explain it.

Whenever I imagined my future, I wasn't imagining becoming a man.

I pictured myself as a woman.

The image came so naturally that I assumed everyone secretly imagined themselves differently than they looked.

It never occurred to me that I was the odd one.

By the time I was seven, Emma's emotions had started reaching me.

One afternoon I was drawing dinosaurs when I was suddenly overwhelmed with excitement.

Not because of anything I had done.

It was excitement over getting a pretty new dress.

I looked around my room in confusion.

There wasn't a dress anywhere.

A few minutes later, the feeling disappeared.

It was replaced by embarrassment.

Deep, intense embarrassment.

Like someone had tripped in front of their entire class.

Again...

Nothing had happened to me.

I quietly put my crayons away.

These feelings came and went all the time.

I eventually stopped questioning them.

When I was eight, I asked Mom a question during dinner.

"Do you ever feel like you're supposed to be somebody else?"

She looked up from her plate.

"What do you mean, sweetheart?"

"I don't know..."

I searched for the words.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm supposed to be a girl."

The room became very quiet.

Dad smiled gently.

"A lot of kids pretend to be different things."

"No..."

I shook my head.

"I'm not pretending."

Mom reached across the table and squeezed my hand.

"You can be anything you want when you grow up."

I nodded because I knew she was trying to help.

But that wasn't what I meant.

I wasn't talking about the future.

I was talking about...

Now.

The older I became, the more Emma felt less like an imaginary friend and more like...

Someone real.

Sometimes I'd hear a violin playing when the house was completely silent.

Sometimes I'd suddenly know the answer to homework I'd never studied.

Sometimes I'd catch myself brushing my hair in front of the mirror despite the fact that my hair barely reached my ears.

The habits weren't mine.

Neither were many of the emotions.

But they fit me better than they should have.

It was as though another life kept brushing against my own.

A life where everything that felt out of place here...

Was perfectly natural.

Neither of us knew that, somewhere beyond the limits of our universe, another child was growing up with dreams about being a boy.

Her name was Emma.

And every time she looked into a mirror...

She couldn't explain why the reflection seemed just a little unfamiliar.

Or why, whenever she dreamed...

She always dreamed through Ethan's eyes.