Going for my surgical intake interview with my first-choice SRS* doctor

I was up early and out early and arrived early to meet my potential re-birth doctor.  I think of it as being born again, and while I am marking my life as a trans-woman, there is something which feels like the true watershed after surgery.  It is the moment of my true rebirth, even if it is happening in so many ways already…and is how I feel in my body.  But the presence of the vestiges of my male self are out of line with this future and will be gone soon enough.

Anyway, going to meet my intended and preferred future surgeon to ask questions, to get to know her, the team, the facility, and for them to see how I was doing and assess my readiness was absolutely a priority to me. 

“This is a big day,” I said to my taxi driver.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes, why?”

“Because I’m dropping you off at the hospital.”

“It’s all right.  I’m just going to meet the doctor who is going to give me a sex change.”

“Wow.  So you’re going to have a pussy?”

“I sure will.  I can’t wait.”

“There will be so many men waiting outside for you when you come out.”

“That’s very sweet, thank you.”

When I got to the floor, I was impressed by the views and how clean and tranquil it was.  And there were several other trans girls waiting, and everyone was nice.  And I sat down and was overwhelmed and teared up.  I wrote to my kids and told them how much I loved them.  I took selfies separated by about 30 seconds showing me with elated face and with tearful face.  

They were not tears of sadness, but of this overwhelming and repressed joy.  It is coming now.  I can’t wait.  There is nothing else that matters to me in the short term.  This is something I have waited for all my life.  All my life.  Every damn day.  And it is finally happening.

I am happy for and sad for my trans sisters who have not come out, who are afraid to come out, to live free, to be themselves.

And I am so proud of my children who have been so supportive, but have also begun to blossom by letting go of shame and fear, perhaps in part because that they observe me in social situations and see there is no shame and no fear and only joy, and that 99% of people embrace me, and the ones who don’t are mostly older white men who look at me with inappropriate lust…or their partners who realise that their men are feeling this for me…one such man just stared at me insouciantly on the underground in London recently.  He (and the wife sitting next to him) was American…I could tell by the running shoes—and the accent.  But somehow, the male gaze is less bothersome to me now.

Gay men don’t really look at me anymore as I think most really don’t like effeminate or trans people…and I have crossed the line from male to female no matter what I wear.  I am not saying I pass, I never will, and if the trade-off for that is this amazing life I have already had, and my beautiful children, then I don’t give two figs…I could be a line-backer (to borrow a term from American football) in a frock for all I care…Not passing is its own badge of honour.

I still get mis-gendered, and it is starting to bother me a bit, but I also don’t know how to answer the question, “are you my brother or my sister”.  I am going to stick with brother for now.  I got it with aunt or uncle too.  “Aunticle” sounds like a foot disease not a clever hybrid.  So I am sticking with uncle.  That might change, but I don’t think so.  I am used to what I was and so are they…And I am a bit of both really.

What else.  I have completed the paperwork to change my birth certificate from male to female.  That means my male identity will begin to be erased.  I won’t use a woman’s bathroom until it is done, though.  I also don’t have any interest in coming out of the hospital with my new pussy and have paperwork that says I am a man.  I can well think I am going to struggle with how people address me when I am post-op, but it is hard to say.

Some people just get it effortlessly, and I am so grateful for it.

My new electrologist gets it without a blink.  Ditto a woman I am courting.  When I showed up at her door, she ushered me in with a “there she is.”

“Yes, Miss, here I am.”

*SRS stands for Sexual Reassignment Surgery