Trans regret

Embracing the fear of loss as one of the positives of transition

I made an inappropriate joke to one of my children the other day.  “What if I stop transitioning as soon as I get your mother out of my life?  Wouldn’t that be ironic.”

“You better hope you do it before you cut your dick and balls off,” came the reply.  I love children who can speak up.

We talked about a show that they had never heard of but which was a household reruns staple when growing up, M.A.S.H..  I told of Corporal Klinger, the burly, hairy man who wore dresses to be seen as mentally ill in hopes of being sectioned out.

“Did it work?” my child asked.

“Nope.  But officially, being trans is a mental illness.”

This, a post-dinner conversation over the dishes.  We go deep.

But it struck me, and it isn’t the first time I have thought about it, that it sure would be a lot easier if this feeling of dysphoria would just go away.  My career is about to take off again, with an opportunity of a lifetime that is straight out of a soap opera.  But I think I blew it by coming out to them after they told me they wanted me, but before I had started.  I get it.  A headhunter coach/friend/mentor of mine told me to “get the job first,” but I found that dishonest.  A Dame told me to let them know but not make a big deal about it.  I think I probably got it wrong.  There is no getting it right.

And part of me wants the glory of that job.  But a bigger part of me knows that I have hidden this aspect of me from myself, let alone the world around me, and at what cost?  I do believe I would be dead had I not given in to this path, to my truth, and come out.  And I don’t want to live in a man’s world if the price of that is to be a man.

I have chosen a different path.  If choice can be the word.  It feels truer to say I have no choice at all.  Is a fork in the road which says, uncertainty about everything v. death, a choice?  I don’t think so.  I do not think it is courage even to choose the uncertain path.  People tell me I am courageous, as if I have a choice.  But to be, in the Shakespearean sense, has nothing to do with choice.  The mere fact of existence requires it.

That is what it is to be trans.  And little by little, I learn to suffer.  To suffer the crushing of dreams.

And please, don’t think I am complaining.  I am not.  I am learning. Understanding.  Learning about bigotry, discrimination, the eyes of judgement, suffering micro-aggression on a daily basis.  This is the lived experience of everyone alive who is not a white man, a white man with privilege.  When I made the formal and spiritual commitment to myself the night I came out, the night of my deepest Ayahuasca trip, I committed to taking the good with the bad.  The bad itself is the mother of my experience, my first and most important teacher.

In the airport over coffee with one of my dearest friends and biggest, and long-standing supporters, we ran aground over a thread of the TERF in her.  I find this thread exists in many women.  Women who have suffered at the hands of men, of society, and who think their suffering is unique.  Dare I say most?  In this instance, it was a surprise to hear the words coming from someone who appears to be a supporter of trans people, but resentment does come out.  I wrote about one of our previous conversations in a blog post on how equal opportunity is not a zero-sum game.

She shut down an argument from me from a feminist perspective.  She said some things which I found either hurtful or inappropriate.  Certainly unenlightened.  These are two of the references, told without context:

• Referring to a man who lives off of his wife because she makes vastly more money than him, and refusing to divorce her because he doesn’t want to lose the trappings of a comfy life a “pussy”;
• Referring to a mutual friend of ours who liked to have sex in her twenties so had many partners as “loose”

I told her that I found these terms offensive, and just as likely to reinforce the patriarchal systems she hates and rails against.  She didn’t like that.  Didn’t like that an ex-man, a trans woman would tell her, a life-long feminist, that she was not showing the bona-fides.  She lashed out and told me that I had only been a woman for a little while, and that I had no clue about the female experience.

“You’re right,” I said, “but I do know what it is like to be a trans woman in a man’s body, in a man’s world, and that begets its own suffering.  And I know what it’s like now.  I know what it’s like to know that people are polite to your face and say what they really think behind your back.  I know what it’s like to find that people no longer think of my competence, but only think that I’m a freak.”

She got up and walked away.  After, she apologized, not for what she said, but for having a moment of hostility in what had been a lovely time together.  But I don’t shake things off easily.  If at all.  I can’t love a TERF.  I can’t love a sister who carries a knife in her hands ready to stick it, whether she means it or not.  So the damage is done.

While I don’t ever get to experience child birth, something that I think most trans women would give up years of life to have experienced, I do get to experience something else which will cost me years of my life.  Surgery.  Deep, pelvic surgery.  A surgery which formally asks me to take 12 weeks off of work.  12 weeks.  And what do they mean by that? Not even phone calls.  Completely off.  The reality of this came home to roost when I received a series of “meeting” invites from my preferred surgeon, with all of the dates of my operation, pre-op and post-op visits.  It is now only six months away.  With a little luck it will come sooner.

For now that I have suffered through electrolysis of my genitals, its own form of hell, and have a year of hormones under my belt, the requisite support letters from a medical doctor and two therapists stating that I am ready, I am ready.  And others in the queue ahead of me might just get cold feet and pull out.  That’s how we get a lastminute phone call and are summoned into surgery.  That is what I am hoping for.  Then I won’t have to think about it quite so much.

What am I afraid of?  I’m afraid of dying.  I have extremely low blood pressure.  Extremely low.  My sleeping rate is in the 30’s, my daytime rate is in the 40’s.  When I get hooked up to the machines in the hospital, the alarms go off before we even start.  A heart rate below 50 is a warning sign.  This is the blessing and curse of being a genetic super-athlete and so physically active.  Anaesthesia is not kind to those with low blood pressure.  The margin of error is that much narrower.  My life will be in their hands.  And for someone who has never been under for anything other than my tonsils out when I was 6, this is the part that scares me the most.

What else scares me?  That my kitty won’t be pretty.  When I see the results of so many surgeons, they look botched. And it is mainly the Western ones who seem to have the ugliest results.  While there are there are few very good surgeons scattered around Europe, parts of Asia and Latin America, there are really only two places in the world to go for the very best surgeons: Thailand and the United States.  You can guess easily that there are many pros and cons for each.

Thailand is substantially cheaper.  Several Thai doctors are the most experienced in the world, absolute innovators, and working with the most modern methods.  But there is often a language barrier.  There is also the absence of a support network.  There is also concern about what happens if something goes wrong, or the practicality of follow-up visits.  This question about anaesthesia scares me most about Thailand, also in part because they tend to take longer to conduct the operations than US doctors.  This is part of the reason why, however, their aesthetic results seem to be off-the charts better than anyone else’s.

When I look at an array of post-op results from my original first-choice doctor, one of the most sought after in the world, hence the nearly 4-year waiting list, there are not many results that wouldn’t make me want to go back for a second operation for aesthetic corrections.  I want it right first time.

And then, what about sexual function.  Anecdotally, the two Thai doctors I am considering, have excellent results.  But there are no official stats.  The two US doctors I am listed with have excellent stats, my original second-choice doctor (who is now my first), has possibly the best stats on sexual function in the world.  And this doctor has aesthetic results which are substantially better than my original first choice doctor.  But neither come close to the Thais.

What’s a girl to do?

There comes a point where faith steps in.  I don’t mean Christian faith.  Although I was born into a Christian family and raised that way, went to a Christian school, attended chapel every day before classes, I am not an observer.  And yet, my faith in God is unshakeable.  My God is not your God.  I do not believe that the God described in the Bible is God, but rather a construct designed to shame women, enforce patriarchy, preserve privilege, enslave, and to sell favours thereby enriching the institution and the people who life within it.  That is not universal condemnation, but near enough.

My faith is ancestral.  My faith is shared with my ancestors who were slaughtered for their beliefs, the Albigensians, a people from whom my family descends and from whom we take one of our names.  My faith is descended from the mother and daughter who were executed as witches, and for a lineage of shamans and healers.

Every trans day I take, every trans breath I live, brings this faith closer to the surface.  Why this interlude?  Because the doctor who does my surgery will be the doctor who is mean to do my surgery.  They will also be the first doctor.  There are five in total I am talking to.  Any one of them is more than capable.  My faith tells me that the right one is something I will never know through a rational process, particularly when finding all the information, having mental knowledge is not enough.  No.

The right one will be the one where the path opens up and is clear.  Where the path is easy.  With less friction.  That’s how it works.  That is what it means to walk with magic.  And the more training I do, the more work on others I do, the more practice I get, the stronger the magic is within me.  The more I can feel it.

Star Child is in my home, one of the beautiful refugees who has taken up residence in the refuge.  It is an honour to be a refuge.  She has asked for my help in becoming an FSSW.  As if I know.  I only know one.  Star Child is young.  She is beautiful.  She likes to party.  I do too, but substances silence the magic.  The conflict that arises, even though played out with the sweet words of a Jezebel which she whispers in my ear, are all in me.  She is not a “bad influence”, my own weakness is the bad influence.

We had some sport over dinner last night with a bevy of children at the dinner table.  Star Child noted that I had many shared characteristics with her mother, that we had lot’s in common.

“Yeah, you both love to exercise, you’re into herbs and medicines, super focussed on what you eat.  You’re much more of a witch than she is, but still,” she smiled.

“That’s why you like me so much.”  She laughed.  “You can call me mommy,” I offered.  She laughed, the kids too.  “But then I get to call you Daddy.”Another day in the trans refuge.