"Looking at this picture, what do you see?

More than that, what don't you see?

In most pictures created of me before this one, I realize, I've looked hardened. I've been careful to appear strong, presenting myself like I'm some iron maiden and to keep that image up as a visual reflection of the ideal of the warrior covering the facade I present. All these years, I haven't wavered.

But here, and now, looking at this picture... What you no longer see is important, because the absence of it finally lets the world see something real.

You can see my back is against the wall, and I'm tense and nervous. I look like a frightened animal because that's exactly what I am. My stomach hurts and my heart is beating a mile a minute, thinking about what I'm about to tell you.

Frightening as it is, the time is here for me to do this. For such a long time, I've lived a lie, a life of secrecy, and it's isolating, extremely so. Now don't get me wrong - I can handle it. I've learned to understand and use many different coping methods to deal with being alone. I'd assumed this would always be my fate, more or less, so I've become good at handling it. I was prepared to accept that, as the price for the things I've done, all the people I've killed and the wars I've fought. I think I believed in my earlier days that I would always be a bad person for that, and for... Some other things about me... And that I deserved this loneliness. And honestly, I thought I would be dead by now. I thought someone would have killed me. I never thought I would be a survivor to see days of peace, where I had time to really think, without an enemy to go fight.

I used to think that could never be a life I would have. But now I think that was just me looking for an easy way out to escape with my secrets intact and this vulnerability inherent in them never needing to be faced. Better to die alone as Mariko Setsugen, presented to the world as the perfect wolf, than to live as Mariko Setsugen, merely a mouse, merely a real person with all her real person flaws.

The truth is that I was only punishing myself with such thinking. I was only hiding. I was never able to embrace who I really was because I didn't understand or accept parts of it. How can you, if the truth down inside is that, no matter detached you try to coldly pretend to be - and I did a lot of this pretending, not even knowing it - you fundamentally believe that you're a bad person, or a flawed person, for something that you can't change?

This isn't to say that I'm not the warrior I've lived as. I am. After so many years, after all the training in my young life and all the fighting and killing and the bloodstains that soak me to the core and the way that it's colored my winding path through life, that will always be a part of me. Once you've done the things I have, you can't go back. You just can't. Nor would I really want to. It would erase much of my true self.

The issue with it isn't that it's not truly me. The issue is that's all I've focused on, but it's not all I am. I've ignored, covered up, and neglected the other parts of the person I am, the ones that felt as if they contradicted this by creating any feeling of vulnerability.

This has been such a long struggle, and it's one I didn't even understand was happening. I finally realize now the reality that life isn't about deserving things, either punishments or rewards, so it's not about needing to be strong, hardened, and invincible and present this face of being the perfect... Whatever it is you'd like to be seen as. It's not about being good or bad as compared to external standards and opinions. I finally understand in a fully internalized way, an intuitive one in my heart instead of a detached intellectual one only in my head, that all of those are subjective, nonreal, devoid of any meaning. All you can be is what you are - all of what you are. And what I am... Well... That's about to get complicated. But the part of it that matters to the point right here is that I've finally changed, deep inside, and learned to understand and grow beyond thinking of myself in judgmental ways. I'm ready to let go of these self-imposed punishments and the pursuit of image. I don't want to live that way anymore, alone, walled off and hardened and waiting for the end to come behind the mask of a stoic warrior front.

Stepping out from behind the shield - this is the only way I can finally show anyone who I really am. This is the only way I will ever be a real person.

Vulnerability is terrifying, and revealing this true self is the most vulnerable position there is.

I'm putting myself in a position to be mocked, and ridiculed, rejected and hated. I'm vulnerable because it's a position from which to be easily hurt and there's nothing I could possibly do to stop it. Skilled a fighter as I am, that gives a person no power over the thoughts and expressions of others once you've let them see the real you. In revealing ourselves, and risking what that causes others to think of us, all we can ever do is ask, maybe beg, for acceptance and at least an attempt at understanding.

Sometimes I worry that could be asking too much, though. I would understand it myself if many people found it impossible.

To explain why, I have to ask again - looking at this picture, what do you see?

Physically, I know what the things you see are telling you. Long hair. Facial bone structure on the softer, more delicate side. Narrowish shoulders, wide-ish hips, a moderately hourglassed shape. Breasts. They may be somewhat small (thankfully), but they're there. Everything you see tells you you're looking at a girl. That's a reasonable assessment, given that a physical appearance is all you have and that your instinct is to place me in one of only two possible categories you believe it possible for someone to be.

I see it myself, whenever I look in a mirror.

So why doesn't the way I feel match with the image in the glass?

I don't really know the answer to that question. All I can tell you is of the sense of unreality and disconnect I feel in that image. Could that really be me, staring back from the mirror? It's my skin, my face, my shoulders and chest and hair, my everything. My body. I was born in it, I lived all my life in it, I've watched it grow and become what it is. No one could know more intensely than I do, that I look for all the world like a woman.

Fooled you, didn't I?

Yes. Yes, I did. This mask is my best one, but my most useless one. I can fool anyone but the one person that matters - myself. I have always been alone with this secret, I have always felt different because of it in a way no one else would understand, and I have always tried as hard as I can not to acknowledge it. It's half the reason for the warrior mask, to keep anyone from getting too close and suspecting I'm... Not like everyone else.

So what am I? I guess that would be the logical next question. What do I consider myself to be? Conventional wisdom to most people says that someone can only be either male or female. Physically, I suppose that usually makes sense. Maybe that physicality is not necessarily tied to what the case in a person's mind is, though, because I feel equally distant from either of those. Neither one is comfortable. Women sometimes to try to make me feel included among them - they think I am one of them, so I suppose it's only natural - but quite honestly I'm clueless about so many of their mysteries and it's always awkward, I only end up feeling forced to excuse myself and withdraw before it becomes just too difficult to deal with. Men, understandably, could never accept me, nor would that be any better anyway. The same unease and unfamiliarity prevails.

So there's my secret. I'm neither. I'm an 'it', for the lack of a better word. This identity, however, possesses no realistic path of its own for living life in ter