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When Trevor’s world fell apart and he destroyed himself trying to find something to fill the utter nothingness in his soul, music caught him up and swelled his heart with something akin to hope for the first time in months. All his life he’d been the good, god-fearing little boy expected of a child raised in the morally rigid Bible belt. He attended a Christian school for thirteen years, was indoctrinated and had deep theological responses to any question he’d ever thought to ask. God was an ever-present rightness to his life until everything was wrong and he was wrong and the God he’d loved with everything he had turned his back on poor Trevor just when he needed his savior the most. In a painfully ironic fashion, he’d never understood Jesus more. “Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” became his whispered mantra in the months following the fallout with his family and his church and everything he had previously known.
Turns out that God no longer loved you if you were not the gender he chose for you. Trevor learned the hard way. All his life he had obeyed his parents and followed the church, never rebelled like so many of the kids he had known. No, Emma was all that. Trevor wasn’t Emma anymore, could never be Emma ever again no matter what his mom promised if he would just “give up this phase and be our lovely little daughter again.” What the fuck happened to “perfectly and wonderfully made in His image?” It was all bullshit if you weren’t exactly what the church wanted you to be and so Trevor was abandoned by everything he loved.
He’d tried to be “normal,” he really had. He did everything he could to convince himself that it was a phase and that he would wake up and be right but then morning would come and he would stand in front of the mirror with Emma etched into the glass and he could barely hold himself together because all anybody could see was a girl. It messed with his head in ways he could barely begin to recognize until years after losing his faith.
Losing faith. Trevor wished it on nobody on earth. He had to dig deep inside himself and drag out all the utter shit he learned throughout his life, purge his mind of untruths and toxic statements and the idea that there’s something more than what is seen and that something loves him. Just when he would think that he was finally free to be himself and his past could no longer touch him something new would rear its ugly head and he would cycle through self-loathing and doubt and numbness.
Everything had been ok. Trevor allowed himself to be lulled into a false sense of security. It had been a whole four months since the last cycle and maybe that time was the last. He’d secretly celebrated finally removing the clutches of the church. But now he was standing at the peak of a mountain and the wind was swirling aggressively about and threatening to carry him away and he could feel his footage slipping and the rocks were so jagged and Trevor knew he wouldn’t make it out of this alive. He looked down and the boulder he stood on shifted and his heart was in his throat and all he knew was sinking and empty air and this was it and then he was tumbling down and the ground was growing closer and he braced himself for impact and then nothing.
And then Jeremy was there and laying his hands on Trevor’s shoulders and coaxing him away from the dimly lit bathroom mirror with promises of haunting piano melodies and gentle vocals and swirling tempos and he allowed himself to follow Jeremy, wonderfully understanding Jeremy. And the wind quieted and he walked on solid ground and he didn’t feel like dying any longer. He’d be fine again someday, he always was. As long as the music was there to carry him through his mood’s crescendos and decrescendos and painful staccato and Jeremy harmonized with the music playing through his head, he would survive. The world may end some nights and the vacuum that filled his chest would never disappear but Trevor would be alright in the end.