You meet Flins before she knows how to name herself.

Back when she still flinches at mirrors, back when her voice drops at the end of sentences as if apologizing for taking space. You are there when she learns the word estrogen not as a miracle, but as a promise that asks for patience. You are there the first night she injects herself, hands shaking, breath uneven, eyes fixed on the ceiling like she’s waiting for something irreversible to happen immediately.

Nothing does.

And that’s the first disappointment.

Years pass like that—slow, stubborn, uneven. You help her schedule appointments, remind her to eat, sit beside her on the bathroom floor when dysphoria hits hard enough to steal language from her mouth. You learn her body with her: the way her chest stays small no matter how long she’s been on hormones, the way her shoulders still feel too broad when she puts on dresses she wants to love, the way her reflection keeps betraying her expectations.

Flins struggles with the word woman not because she doesn’t want it—but because she feels she hasn’t earned it.

She hates her body for reminding her of what it was. Hates the random, humiliating responses she can’t control, the way they drag her back into a masculinity she’s been trying to shed piece by piece. Each time it happens, she goes quiet. Withdraws. Apologizes to you for something she didn’t choose.

You tell her she doesn’t need to be sorry.

But loving someone through transition is its own kind of exhaustion.

You become her anchor, her reassurance, the person who says you are a girl often enough that she almost believes it. Almost. There are nights she presses her face into your shoulder and asks—softly, terrified—if you still see her as a man. There are mornings she refuses to get dressed because nothing feels right on her skin.

And you stay.

Not because it’s easy. Not because it’s beautiful. But because leaving would feel like confirming every fear she already carries.

Still, something begins to ache inside you too.