It is March and according to the calendar, we are supposed to be talking about motivation. Seeking an answer for the ageless questions of where do our passions come from and what to do with them. As you may have noticed we are not talking about that topic, in fact, for the past two weeks, I have been silent. I have been in the grip of depression for a few weeks now so let’s go a bit off topic this week and talk about what’s going on.
As many of you know, I am a transgender woman and this year marks a very big year for me. I will have my gender confirmation surgery this May and I could not be more excited. Growing up there was a version of me that I had to keep out of sight, a vision of a woman with long brown hair, and hazel eyes, she was a woman in every way that I was not. Transitioning felt like I was finally realizing the dream of being that person I had imagined myself becoming when I grew up. It was exciting! I was finally showing the world who I really was. The past few weeks have shown me just how far away from that ideal I am, and I have had to grapple with the realization that the years I spent living in fear and hesitancy instead of living my truth had come at a cost.
Having gender confirmation surgery is the next step towards feeling whole in my body, of embracing the womanhood that I had been denied at birth. In addition to my bottom surgery, the plan had been to have breast augmentation at the same time. It would save some money, and the recovery time wouldn’t be impacted too much by having the additional surgery. Something however nagged at the back of my mind. I wasn’t as comfortable with top surgery as I had hoped. The thought of putting something in my body that degrades over time, something I would spend the rest of my life maintaining with other surgeries and expensive procedures needed to check for leakage, was not what I had in mind when I signed up for it. Yet what other choice did I have?
I have been chasing this dream for decades and I have come so very far.
Hormone therapy is designed to help transgender folks go through the puberty they wish they had gone through naturally. When I was a young child my body seemed intent on betraying me, instead of developing breasts, I grew taller than my female peers, my shoulders widened, my body hair grew wild and the hair on my head began to fall out. My hormone therapy, nearly twenty years after, was designed to help shift my physical body towards the female side of the biological spectrum but it will not be able to fix all the changes that testosterone did to my body. My shoulders will remain wide, and my breasts small. Upwards of 70% of transwomen have sought out chest augmentation surgeries to help fill in where nature failed us. Yet I found that I wasn’t comfortable with the operation (my surgeon is amazing, it’s the lifelong care and repeated maintenance). I felt like I was letting go of a long-cherished dream, one I was only a few months away from achieving. Then more bad news. Another doctor confirmed my greatest fear, the hair stolen by testosterone was gone for good and there was nothing that anyone could do about it. I would spend the rest of my life hiding a horrible bald spot with wigs and wraps. I was shattered. My femininity was stolen before I had even started this journey, without my permission, destroyed by years of living in fear too afraid to take action before it was too late.
I have been chasing this dream for decades and I have come so very far. When I found myself unable to fulfill the dream of the woman I had envisioned becoming, I was unwilling to just let it go. In many ways, I am still grieving over both of these losses, one thought to give me a sense of empowerment and confidence and one thought to tie directly to my own femininity. I have mourned and I have cried for them both but I cannot stay in that grief though. I will not give up. When we find ourselves short of the dream we have to adjust, we have to learn, we have to pick ourselves up and keep going forward. Day by day I get stronger, I am able to hold my head a little higher now. As I prepare to take the next step on my journey with my gender confirmation surgery, I look towards the horizon not sure of the answers, but not afraid to seek after them.
I am left now with a question, “Who am I striving to be?” How can I find my femininity without these physical characteristics? I am embarking on a new journey, one of self-discovery, finding comfort and identity within my own body and my own feelings. The image of the woman with the chestnut hair and breasts is gone. She was an amalgamation of all the lies that I had been told while I was growing up about how a woman should look. The person who stands in her place will be my own true self, not a construct but my real-life body. A