Sex change was a goal, but the watershed is the life which follows

You can spend your whole life wishing for something, the comforting knowledge that you will eventually have it keeping you alive, just another day, another year.  But then it happens, you get what you have been waiting for, and it isn’t that it isn’t enough, it is that the implications of getting it are what it really means to have it. In other words, we get hung up on the event, when it is the implications, the aftermath, of the event which make the change.

This is what sexual reassignment surgery has meant to me.  Now I lie here, convalescing, feeling my vulva, my vagina, and feeling them more and more as I am gradually being weaned off of painkillers, and realising that it wasn’t the surgery itself that mattered.  It was an event.  An event that I am glad that I vested so much spiritual energy into, and one which saw the universe align for me in strange and subtle ways.

As a child at first it was, “wow, you can do that?”  And then, “One day, I’m going to do that.”  And a lifetime of learning to keep my mouth shut as it doesn’t take long to realise how trans people are viewed by family, friends, the media.  So, it becomes this little hidden flame.

And the need to protect that flame turns us into a suit of armour.  To protect us? Yes, but also one so strong that people fear they will never get out, and perhaps most never do.  There are plenty of bloggers scattered around the world who are closeted and seemingly unlikely to come out.  It is too scary.

Sometimes there are legitimate safety concerns, well, always, but sometimes they are really scary.  My taxi driver to my facial laser appointment today (yes, I’m well enough now to do that as long as I sit on a giant donut cushion in the back seat and ask the driver to take it real slow…), a gay man married to another gay man, who had been to ’70 countries’, was incredulous that a trans woman like me might have concerns about her safety…“dude,” I said, “over half the world is off limits to me now.”  He soon changed the subject to include the two tech start-ups he had founded and sold.  

The more you boast, the less you have.

The thing is, that when you tell yourself you can’t do something, it’s true, you can’t.  When we live in fear, those fears become real.  It is easy for me to say, right, and I sympathise with those who teeter on the edge, or who are too afraid to even approach it.

Someone asked a group therapy session I was in today “how do we live ourselves as smoothly as a hot knife through butter?”  My answer was two requirements.  First, let go of the ego, and simply be.  My therapist has said to me, “it’s none of your business what so-and-so thinks of you.”  She’s right.  That is a very powerful way to look at the world. I think it is a form of radical self-truth.

The second consideration is to not “other” other people. Find community and connection, not reasons to exclude. This is a very challenging part of life, though no less worth focus.

Super important? Neither the loss of “ego” nor the “othering” of others has anything to do with boundaries–ie. maintaining a healthy set of boundaries is a given in either case, even if the two requirements might seem to run counter to this idea.

My coming out has been smooth.  Of course, I don’t know what is said about me behind my back, but I don’t really care.  I attribute some of this to committing.  When you do something, do it all the way.  No half measures.  If you hesitate, then you leave a void for intrusion.  Own it, live it, and you force others to do the same.  One of the key family members for me in my life said to me, “you’ll have to give me some time.  It’s a lot to deal with.”

“I beg your pardon?” I said, “you have a lot to deal with?  Get real.  Get over it.  You don’t have anything to deal with.”  I could tell my words shocked them, but the change was immediate.  They went from weird to totally embracing me.

Pretty much all of my friends have done the same, making the coming out process a truly joyful one.  It’s been great, actually.  I got to call people up or go out and see them and tell them one at a time.  Getting to relive that joyous moment over and over.

Surgery seems like this monolithic thing.  And I don’t want to downplay it, as it is one heck of a surgery.  And boy, when I see some of the complications that arise when you have surgeons who don’t know what they are doing, or something else goes wrong, you think its amazing that more people don’t die from it.  Thank goodness for the various trans chat groups where the community can share photos and images around doctors and patient outcomes.  The sad and sick thing is that trolls go into these “safe” spaces and download the images, republishing them, or sensationalising what they read.  Disgusting behaviour.

So, it is a big deal.  But it’s like, you get excited when you are nominated for an Oscar and you have all the anticipation in the run up to the ceremony, and then, even if you win, the next day it is already yesterday’s news.  People stop calling.  The flowers stop coming.  In other words, you have to make a conscious effort to keep the energy flow positive.  It reminds me of a sugar high, and then the drop after.

I am told that this process is real, and that it takes about three months, which is about how long it takes to get well enough to regain a sense that you are returning to normal.  There are still serious constraints on your body, which last for about 6 months, but the healing goes on for a year.  Post-operative depression is such a real thing, though, that my surgeon has asked about what support network I will have in place after this initial recovery period is over, and who will provide that for as I break through that 3-month mark. 

One of my coping strategies in life has always been to distract myself.  Knowing that I have something to look forward to coming up soon, is just one such way to fight off depression.  A concert, a date, a trip, some event.  At least one thing each week, preferably two.  There are so many things that we like to do in life that have extra meaning because we can talk to someone who will also care about them afterwards.  For example, I had a lovely walk around a garden that I know someone I care about would really enjoy visiting.  Seeing it ‘for her’ makes it more fun for me to see it for myself.

I think that this risk of post-operative depression is very real.  I feel it.  We wait for so long for this operation.  And it is a big operation.  And if we are lucky, we are surrounded by affirming support.  And that is a wonderful feeling.  But as we heal, and can stand again on our own two feet, we confront the world, not in the body and with the same persona that we had before the operation, but with one which is entirely new and requires some serious getting used to.

I used to think that I could just put on boy clothes and all would be fine.  That I could rock and waltz my way through work and play in this liminal space between male and female.  But I can’t.  I’ve changed my name.  Do a background search on me and it will come up.  Do a background search on me and it will come up that I am not a man, but a woman.  You don’t even have to do a background search.  I got an out of the blue call from a company that I have a connection to that said that they noted the change…and that was an automated process…there is no hiding from this.

And when there is no hiding, resistance means you just lose control.  Instead, embracing it, riding it, then you master it.  As I lie here, I think it’s a bit like surfing…own it or get crushed.

More importantly, it is life beyond surgery that is the new life, it wasn’t surgery itself.  And consciously thinking about what kind of life she is going to have, and manifesting those things, stripping out the noise, and just stepping into that new life without hesitation, without apology.  I am pretty sure there are consequences, as me “losing” two plum jobs over my transition shows this to be not neutral.  But I will try again.  But on my terms.

A number of head-hunters have told me to “get the job and then disclose”, but it’s like, for the jobs I take, I am subjected to a background check every time.  And anyway, that seems to me to be not fully honest.  I’d much rather be up-front about things.  So, I am.  And I continue to come out now in my former professional circles, and lord knows why I never bump into former colleagues in airports or lounges as I always used to, perhaps the universe is protecting me a wee bit longer.  But on my short foray out this morning to grab a hot matcha latte, I promptly found money on the paving.  It was ought but a penny, but the energy from copper is at least as good or better as any other.

It has taken me months of denial of what I would do after in the professional sphere, to a few weeks of accepting that I have been in denial, and now a few days of confronting it.  The Den Mother and my therapist are due the credit for that.  I do the work, but they both intervened to keep me from going in the wrong direction.

I’ve said I get to live two lives, and I meant it, but I didn’t ever process it.  The watershed moment was bottom surgery, not hormones or coming out, both the death-throes of my inner male.  Now I get to discover what I meant, to breathe life into my own words by going out and living them.

I have chosen a beautiful name for myself.  I love it.  But who is she?  Who will she be?  What is she capable of?  I’ll tell you one thing, she is capable of everything he was who came before, but more importantly, her impact will be far greater.  She will do in ways that he never dreampt of…Of that, I need to learn to be sure, and to learn to live…there is only this way.  Anything else would be less than potential.  And not living up to potential is a form of self-harm, something which has no place in my life anymore.

My body was an enormous block to self-hood.  There can be no ‘me’ if you cannot accept your body.  It is a feature of gender dysphoria.  I am not saying that dysphoria is gone, it isn’t, but it is a lot less, and for the first time in my life, I can accept my body, and can see it with warmth and affection, and joy.  And this process of becoming ‘me’ is what comes next.  I couldn’t have done it without the operation.  Some do, some can, but I couldn’t.

In the trans community, we speak of “second puberty” as the course of hormones we go on when we begin transition, and for roughly 5-6 years after…It is called “second puberty” because so much of what happens to the body and the mind is the same as what we would have experienced had we gone through puberty as the correct sex: moodiness, emotionality, body changes, boobs, arousal…

In my own development, all those years in the closet, I think of as a kind of babyhood–my infant female self never had a chance. Coming out was the beginning of moving into teen years, self-actualisation. Puberty this time around has been very real for me, very felt. Right now it is just fun…and the arousal part, I would call it a flirty-friskiness, is the dominant energy in my body right now.

My therapist has found this physical/biological track running parallel to my development as a woman. She makes the link to surgery as marking a new passage, from adolescence to adulthood. What I feel that I am coming to understand is that being a woman is an utter mystery. Just as much as “who am I” questions which could plague anyone at any time. In other words, what I am is a woman, but I seem to know less and less what that means, other than to say that it is what I am, who I am…and in a way, being a woman is shaping the way I conduct myself.

I am afraid of the “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” adage which seems to operate in the trans community, and my own personal version has been people pleasing. So many trans people try to just be kind and sweet so that bad things don’t happen to them. Well, that’s no way to live, and not my desire. I also am aware that bad behaviour from me will get watched and reported. There is a fine balance. But as my therapist says, “its none of my business what others think,” and that too is a liberation.

What am I saying? We get hung up on events, this or that surgery, this time on hormones, or not, and for me, the message is simpler. I am a woman. I am a trans woman too. Being a woman, starting with that as the given, means that the process itself is not one of becoming, but rather one of being. And that is the unexpected blessing of all of this. I don’t have anything left to prove to myself.