"I ought to be scared ... but I'm NOT!" (Amy Winston aka Amethyst)

"I don't want to be born in January - I want to be born in February!"

"Well, Dennis - you CAN'T!"

That was me having a conversation with my Aunt T, a woman whom I admire very much and who has been an inspiration to me.  In case you haven't heard, inspirational women are awesome.

I remember that I was four or five years old when we had that conversation, that argument.

And what was the cause?

Rocks.

Because my brain works along the autistic spectrum, I'm gifted with an almost-perfect recollection of most of the conversations I've ever had, going back to my earliest memories.

Sometimes it's wonderful, but it can also be upsetting to be able to think back that far and see the events as clearly as that. 

Imagine if every petty discussion you ever had was locked away in your head, never to disappear.

Yeah, that happens even with the petty arguments and minor squabbles - so it's not as fun as it might seem at first.

One the day that the birthday argument took place, Aunt T had received a gift.  It was a gorgeous ring that featured her birth sign - Leo, the lion - and her birth stone.

I don't have any pictures of the ring, but the lion's head symbol on the ring looked quite a bit like a three-dimensional version of the following image.

Tracing along the inside of the lion's head field were what I have to presume from my family's general economic status were faux rubies.  

Sure. it sounds gaudy.

But this was the aunt who had given me an enormous mood ring that I still have to this day and which still works almost four decades later, to the degree that any mood ring actually "works."  

And as far as I was concerned, the Ruby-Leo ring was one of the most beautiful pieces of jewelry I had ever seen.

It also seemed like one of the most potentially-magical rings as I had ever seen in real life.

Not being a fan of Tolkien, I hadn't had many dealings in my life with the idea of magical rings.

So, if the ring was magical - what magic did it hold?  What could it do?

Surely, I reasoned, it could turn you into a lion or make magical fire designs come out of the stylized lion's mouth or do SOMETHING amazing, if you only knew the right phrases to say.

I mean, that's how amazingly gaudy 1970s jewely works, right?   Television would teach me that.

I would've been content to accept that I simply didn't know the magical words to make the ring perform its feats of supernatural wizardry.

I also knew I wouldn't be content until I could wear something like that ring every day, myself.

Then, one day, I'd face some dire predicament and the power of that magical force would activate, and I'd somehow know those magic words to say, and it would be SO cool.

When I explained to Aunt T that I wanted a Leo ring like hers, she explained that it didn't work that way.

She explained that the lion on her ring represented her Zodiac sign; also, she reminded me that and the ruby represented her birth stone.  

I'd never heard of either of the Zodiac characters at that point in my life, so I asked her to explain - which she did.  She then explained to me about my own Zodiac sign - Capricorn.  And then she explained my birth stone - garnet.

This did NOT sit well with me.

I was completely intolerant toward my Zodiac sign and my birth stone.

They were ... LAME.

Capricorn?  Capricorn?!  Honestly?

I remember thinking that a fish-goat is not going to be able to survive in either the land or sea environments.  That made being a Capricorn decidedly uncool.

I pictured the poor creature writhing in agony on land, its gills soffocating from lack of water.  What a fun creature!

Imagining the beast drowning in the sea as it feebly tried to swim with goat legs didn't help me feel OK about being a Capricorn.

So, no, not cool - not even a little bit.

And then there was the matter of my birthstone.

Garnet?  Really?

To my young mind, the garnet was just a muddy version of a ruby.  There was no strength to it, no mystery or allure.  It was just a lump of weird rusty-colored stone. 

As I recently pointed out through illustration, garnet - to me - looked like someone had frozen some cola.

I decided that was only one thing to do:  officially have my birthday moved one month into the future.

You might think I chose February because it's  the very next month after my real birthday.

You'd be wrong.  I wasn't content to just pick out a birthday based on something arbitrary like succession.  I had to pick the appropriate unbirthday that would tell the world something about myself, some fundamental truth.

And February - well, that would present an opportunity for magic.

It was a kind of magic that felt like destiny.

And it was also the kind of magic that mattered to someone like me.

You see, ever since I was very, very young - like when this whole argument with my Aunt T had happened - I have loved one kind of gemstone more than any other kind.  

Yes, you read that right. 

I had a favorite gemstone.  

"Do you have a favorite baseball team, Little Dennis?"

"No."

Well, I do now, actually ...

But I didn't then.

"Do you have a favorite gemstone, Little Dennis?"  

"YES!"

   

Most kids who are only three or four probably can't name gemstones, but I could. 

I knew them only by their color and sometimes their texture, so I wasn't exactly enlightened - but I knew the basics.

I knew what mattered to me.  Birthstones mattered.

This put me slightly ahead of my peers once we got to geology class later in my life.

And that didn't exactly impress the guys.

Prettiness of gemstones wasn't a taught subject at my school, but if you'd asked me then I would've told you it should've been.

As for the animal element of the Zodiac characters, I found that equally unfair.

Now, it should be known that I wasn't necessarily typical when it came to my favorite animals.

I loved ponies and bunnies, sure.  But I also  adored creatures that might not be seen by many as all that cute.

Awwwwww.  Adorable - right?
So, yes - I loved rats bats, snakes, possums and skunks.  I still do.

And don't even get me started on werewolves.

When my Aunt showed me her Zodiac guide book, I discovered that my favorite Zodiac symbol was actually Aquarius.  I pointed at the page with information about the Water-Bearer.  "Which birth stone is for this one?" I asked.

"Amethyst," Aunt T replied. 

And my brain exploded.

Well, not exactly like that.

Close enough, though.

So, while I wasn't carted off to The Beyond, I nevertheless felt that the gemstone amethyst was part of my destiny.

Now, the reason I knew so much about gemstones in the first place had to do with a candy store.

We called the place The Little Yellow Store, for what should be obvious reasons.

In the back of the store was a little area that sold touristy local "artifacts," like you see at  many Discovery Store locations: baskets filled with found gemstones you could buy for a minimal cost. 

I had what my dad called a "fidget stone" that was made of amethyst, a round flat stone you could rub between your fingers.  We'd gotten it from The Little Yellow Store store and I loved it.

Being a young trans kid, I spent more than my fair share of time fidgeting about any number of crises, like wanting to change one's birthday and being told one just can't do that.

The alternative was running into the bathroom and crying into the mirror, and we all know that never turns out well.

Life as a transkid was tough when I was little.

And I didn't feel like I could change it.

It seemed like a fact that was set in stone, even if that stone was disgusting and gross - like garnet, the cola stone. 

Trans people know what it's like to feel as if they're butting heads with "reality" in this way.  Looking in the mirror and seeing something that doesn't jibe with one's understanding of oneself - on a daily basis - will do that to a person.

In my case, the misery was having that unwelcome Y chromosome sitting there in my genetic structure wreaking all kinds of nasty havoc on my body - a reality I did not want to embrace.  But I couldn't articulate it well, even to myself, let alone to other people.

I just knew some thing was very, very wrong.

I also recognized that I had to at the very least accept that Y chromosome, at risk of going insane. 

I've seen a lot of people suffer from being unable to even ACCEPT the existence of their Y chromosomes in the first place and suffer greatly as a result, simply rejecting reality and giving up on life. 

One only needs to a do a little searching on Google about the statistics for young trans kids who kill themselves in despair that their lives will ever get any better. 

I don't suggest that an individual comic book character can change that - but I do submit that having strong heroes one can look up to can help in the most hopeless times.

This is true whether they're a real life Aunt T or a fictional heroine who transforms herself from one being into another to fight against otherworldly opponents.

At least, that's how it was for me.

AMETHYST: PRINCESS OF GEMWORLD appeared on the scene in the year 1983. 

The years 1982-1983 - an important time for me, for a variety of reasons, and an unique period of my life.

I was still a ways away from having to step into my teen years; simultaneously, I was still able to enjoy so many of the freedoms of a childhood I was acutely aware was growing close to coming to an end. 

I knew even then that there were bigger responsibilities coming just around the corner, but I was still not entirely sure what would be expected of me. 

I was 10-11 years old in those years, and I was also still a few years away from the typical transgirl crisis of oncoming male puberty.  

I, however, paid no attention to that at the time, simply enjoying the last years when I could "pass" as a girl without having to worry about people thinking I was anything else.

And that's precisely what I did.

I even had a little help with it all.

I used to get together with a neighbor who was my age, one of those summer-time total best friends; you know the sort.   We'll call her C.  

C and I we would go out together to the next town as a pair of girls and look for all kinds of trouble.  

When we'd meet up, she'd always bring along a change of clothes for me.

We were the same size, and so I could wear her clothes and put whatever I was wearing into my white macrame "backpack."  

It looked basically like the image directly above this paragraph.  Of course, it was totally a purse, but social worries saw me calling it a "backpack" even though any attempt to do anything with it but sling it over your arm would likely have failed.  Oh, social conventions and gender - always such good friends.

But not as good friends as C and me were.

I remember that we'd  giggle the whole time at the "trick" we were playing on everyone, with me "pretending" to be a girl and her pretending I was her sister.  It was like a cosmic joke on everyone to her, but for me it was a respite from a reality I did not want to be a part of, a bandage on a wound that refused to heal and kept festering worse and worse no matter what I did.  

But when we'd bike to the next town over, we were a simply a pair of sisters on the type of day trip kids could take in the early 1980s in those smaller communities.  

So I became Dee instead of Dennis, and it was a peculiar sort of fantasy world, all too brief and leaving me agonized whenever it came to an end.  

But the "during" time was worth it, and was one of the only tastes of that kind of freedom I had at that time. 

Unfortunately, C moved away to another state - putting an end to those adventures.

At roughly the same time, AMETHYST: PRINCESS OF GEMWORLD came out on the newsstands.

Of course, we all know that an imaginary friend is no substitute for a real person.

So, of course, I was depressed.

I suffered from that kind of melancholy and depression that comes from losing a summer-time best friend.

It's the kind of sadness where you're in a state where you realize that the loss is beyond your control to change.  At the same time, though, you're also happy for the exciting adventures your friend is going to have.  In C's case, I was especially excited for her because she was going to be journeying to another country.

But I wanted - desperately - to be distracted from my loneliness.  AMETHYST: PRINCESS OF GEMWORLD was published in this time, and I bought the first issue. 

I was already collecting DAZZLER by that point and bought every comic I could find featuring Jocasta or Valkyrie, among others.

And, of course, I collected WONDER WOMAN comic whenever I could find them, as well as the Harvey comics targeted primarily toward girls.

The comics were all fun and distracting, thankfully.  But there was a problem.

None of these characters were me.  I couldn't identify with them so much as idolize them and want to be like them.  I identified with elements of them, but there were no characters I felt like I could look at the page and say "This is me, going on this adventure."

That all changed with AMETHYST.

  

AMETHYST featured a story of a girl, Amy, who was also simultaneously a princess in another world. 

At that moment in my life, at that crux of time when everything was swinging from one direction into another, this was vital to me. 

I desperately needed the inspiration of a character into whom I could invest myself, and that was Amy Winston.  

It all made so much sense to me, too; it touched on so many elements of my mind's eye.

She was born to a mysterious power nobody understood - which I identified with as my autism.  

She was brave - ferociously brave - no matter what.  And I felt like I had to be brave like that in order to get up and go out into the world every day.

She was also brave enough to admit to being frightened. 

Fear, to me, wasn't the opposite of courage, the way it's often seen. 

To me, fear was being smart enough to understand your mortality - and courage was being willing to do something about it.

Plus, she was a little kid who turned into a beautiful woman with strength and power and determination behind her, and the woman she became inspired me.

I saw myself as that kid. 

Later, as I got older, I would identify more with the adult Amethyst of Gemworld, but I felt like I was Amy when I first read it.

Heck, I even had as a part of my extended family a golden retriever back then, though mine was named Sherman and not Taffy.

I didn't BELIEVE Amethyst was real, or that I was some kind of magical princess in real life.

I understood that clear division of reality and fantasy, just as I understood that I couldn't change my birthday or wish away my Y chromosome. 

Even dressing up and going out to the next town with C was just an illusion. 

But with AMETHYST, I could share her adventure and fight the evil of Dark Opal alongside a female hero who was in the midst of discovering herself.

I could keep alive the imaginary worlds of my childhood even as adulthood was starting to come into my life, maturity and responsibility.

So I read and re-read those collected adventures I discovered, of Amethyst and Taffy and the diabolical Dark Opal and all the citizens of Gemworld. 

And I recommended the comics to others & loaned them to people I felt needed cheering up in their lives, people I knew who I felt could benefit. 

The comics got worn out and ruined and I replaced them, over and over, repeating the cycle, like traveling the path of Gemworld and starting over at the beginning again. 

And each time I reread it, I found something to resonate with me. 

When I was very young, the first time, I saw only the story of the magical world and the girl who was two different people at the same time, and it resonated with me. 

When I was older, I saw her courage and her journey into maturity, and it resonated with me. 

When I was older, I saw the family dynamics and the story of faith and deceit and sacrifice, and that resonated with me. 

It reminded me that no matter how much of an adult I became, there should always be that capacity to allow my imagination to take flight on a magical horse with wings. 

It reminded me never to surrender that part of myself to its demise.

I've always tried to keep those fires of imagination alive inside of me.

I don't BELIEVE in dragons and flying horses, but I believe in the power of those images to warm one's heart and change one's perspective, and that, to me, is what the magic of Amethyst and Gemworld represents.

It represents that journey into one's own imagination, and the way that's so empowering.

Likewise, I know that even if I were to get gender-reassignment surgery, I would still have that Y chromosome. 

I still wouldn't be able to give birth. 

I still wouldn't be able to "fix" ... well, anything, really, except the perspectives of others. 

And I don't really care about those perspectives, I'll admit. 

I don't worry what they think when they see me.

It's nice when someone online acknowledges me as female, as I've said before, but it's not something where my world ends if they refuse to do so.

But it's not what matters to me.

I define myself; they don't define me, no matter what they try to do to me.

They have no power over me.

It's their choice to see me how they feel.

It's  my choice to be the warrior I think I am inside my heart.

I believe honestly that a big chunk of that courage came from a Princess of Gemworld.

Amethyst as a character was gone from the scene for a very long time.

However, I never forgot the inspiration, and rereading those comics and sharing them with others was a joy every time. 

And as I've made peace with myself, seeing myself and identifying as a woman, I've been pleased to see Amethyst reborn just as I feel I've been reborn after tough years and tough times and people not knowing the real me because I was afraid to talk about my trans identity. 

No more.

We're both ready to burst out from the crystals of stasis into the world again, to escape our mutual limbos and journey again to be known across Gemworld, across the real world.

Princesses have a magic that's immortal, after all.