cuts

Got surprisingly hard hit by unexpected TERF rhetorics somewhere. Will probably truncate thoughts and sleep.

At the same time, feeling increased need to be recognized. Need to take voice further. Thinking I will start correcting people until I am spoken of correctly, whether or not they are irritated. And continuing from earlier, feeling unhappy about my anatomy, for my own view of it, and because it seems like it affects how others read me. Feeling perhaps for the first time an actual longing for the end state of successful Thai-style SRS, rather than a curious interest. That is interesting but also notable as then it is not only positive but inverse negative motivation.

I’ll set aside a personal fund for this, to have the option. And perhaps some three years from now, there will be a time when my PhD students are in writeup phase and don’t need me holding their hands, and when my post-docs are experienced enough that they can hold down the fort, so that me disappearing for a month of hospitalization in Asia, then being reduced in energy and time for 3-5 months of dilation and healing, won’t make or break my research programme.

I’d still fear an unsuccessful outcome, fear failure to heal right (am I too old to heal easily?), fear the pain, fear that nerves would not reconnect, fear that I still would have a deep voice and facial features that make people think I am male, so that I somehow would have gone through all that pain and sacrifice and still not have been understood right. Fear of the sadness and pain and worry in the eyes of my parents from them knowing I was doing it, though that fear is dulled now they know I really am transitioning. Fear of being weak and alone and helpless during recovery. (To my friends and lovers and family and all who reads this: If you come to conclude you would be willing come with me and keep me company during that first month, if I made that possible for you, please let me know. Knowing I would not have to be alone would help this fear.)

Lots of fear. That said, right now that feels like the fear of something planned and anticipated. Right this moment, when I still have that TERF-fuelled dysphoria (for it is that, it is that feeling as though the world freezes and dies), then the thought of fears and physical pain and awkwardness is still not as bad. Right now my feelings of dysphoria are worse than my fear of SRS recovery. Tomorrow it might not be. But this is in some sense a first, and I find it meaningful, find it telling.