grind

It’s not a great day. I think I stress dangerously clear to burnout. Particularly one task (start/finish recrunch of all consortium data) has been delayed so much it physically has been difficult to start it. I’ve not had that before, something anxiety disturbing executive capacity. I need to finish that, temporarily let go of all other duties, and just restore tonight. Eventually.

Suporn clinic accepts my Chettawut recommendation letters. So I am one step closer still!

Drew blood again today to check if levels are as they should with gel regime + some progesterone. So I got out for that. Decided to not be as afraid of the sting – after all, I’ll have IV needles in me within a year from now, not to mention deeply deeply invasive cuts into muscle and skin and nerves, and so many surfaces being raw and healing all at once. It’s time to kick my phobia of needles. I still looked away but it really was easier.

amn aion

Thoughts. Emotions.

So, Suporn clinic got back to me. Seems that my gmail worked better. They say to go elsewhere for severe complications when back home (but in interviews, seem still have fixed it both times fistulas occurred), revision guarantee is mostly cosmetic. Which is still scary.

But there’s no-one with better statistics, or more reputable. This is as safe as I can make it. So I don’t need to make it safer than this.

I’m deciding, I’m going to have SRS with Suporn or his successor as early in 2020 as I can. I have told them this.

I am scared for everything practical. This is really at the border of my available funds, and I don’t know yet (Monday I might) how much renovating the bathroom and swapping out the lead pipes will cost. Likely I’ll have to save up more this year to be on the safe side. Learned that medical expenses may be tax-deductible here in Babylon, but no guarantees and cannot rely on that. And still always fear something will go wrong.

But this is enough certainty, enough preparations to proceed to next step. I’m setting this in motion. Spoke to more work people today. My administrator got an interesting smile on her face she tried to hide when I said I’d be away a few months on medical leave next year. She must understand what this is. I look forward to telling more people and seeing their reactions.

They don’t do surgery if you’re HIV positive. No risks taken this year, from now. Not that I usually do. But this means, keeping fluid safety under control, and should get tested again just to put my mind at ease.

Deadline of the surgery date then for getting bodily into shape, getting voice up somewhat, getting better sleep, all those things. Preparing everything and everyone. So exciting! Motivating. But harsh.

The dates are announced on a website and they go quickly, first-come, first-serve. January dates will be announced maybe in a month. Apparently many write scripts to check this. I installed an app which checks every few minutes. But better would be a script that polls and emails them as soon as there is a good date. Challenge is, I don’t know how to gmail from a script. It’s delightful if it turns out writing a web scraper is a trans girl rite of passage, in line with the programmer stereotype.

But even more, this means I cannot yet be certain. I am exactly like a woman who just decided – narrowly and still scared – she will want to be a mother. She’s just stopped her contraceptives and been come inside, the night before, but there will likely be a few months before she knows for certain she has been impregnated, and only then can she start planning for a birth date, start preparing properly. She too may use apps or calendars to plan this as best she can. She too may worry about the pain or risks, and know she is only certain enough to start this process. Certainty reflected in actions more than consistent emotions.

Then the pregnancy. Taking care of the body, preparing, getting enough sleep and staying healthy, setting up leave, learning what she needs to know. Then birth. I will give birth to myself. Like that woman who hopes to be a mother, I don’t know if I will be among the unlucky few who get serious injuries that might take a lot of effort and searching to heal. We both fear that yet here we are working up to the moment.

And just like I’ll fear to hurt myself during recovery, fussing over every detail, so must every mother worry – will I somehow hurt my child’s development by this or that thing?

We cope with this fear and uncertainty as best as we can. By being real. I will become pregnant with myself, birth myself, nurse myself.

This is powerful and I can follow up on it.

If ever I wrote somethin TERFs would thing was appropriating womanhood, it would be this. Never mind that. This is real.

cusp cryptid

Writing from my other address worked, Suporn clinic got back to me.

I’ll start the process of scheduling SRS with them in the next days.

Seeing the message cleared a lot of the anxiety I had the last few days and kept me fuzzy and warm despite the insane stress right now (two grant proposals, one student thesis, three really major papers, one minor paper, home refurbishment).

Of course I’ll stay anxious and on edge until the moment I go under, I wake up, I am all healed. But that I can move through.

Once there is a date, I will have a deadline. Need body and voice and names and life context and family prepared by then. It will require some work. I will perform that work.

Another dear person (first Avatar of Chaos, my sibling-by-soul) also offered to come. That gets my list of preferred companions to three extremely transformatory, hard-to-pin-down, magical queer loved ones who each impacted me. We’ll see what happens.

thing

I did a really minor thing today which was scary, and that is relevant.

A distant friend polled for interest online in a woman-only event, not specifying further. I know she considers trans women included in no-label women, but I still was scared to assent without adding my usual “yes, if that includes trans women” caveat. I did so anyway. It took resolving and I was shaky thereafter.

Which is meaningful because it is a positioning that I’d expect to be welcome, and facing a fear that I would not, or that – more importantly, really – I’d come across as an intruder.

That is to say, this was a first step towards dismantling that intrusion fear.

Which is also a first step towards dismantling impostor syndrome.

So much encompassed in a single “yes”.

insurgent

CW: weight issues.

The emotion has inertia, it stays, it continues, it grows and surges within me like snow piling up in the darkness.

There are people who meet loved ones every day, who experience touch on a daily basis, confirmations in the physical space. This feels like some impossible dream, a mirage. How long ago since I was anywhere near it? Thirteen years, I think.

I believed I couldn’t have it, didn’t want it. I felt certain that only very very few rare people would ever be able to love someone as queer as me (that is, someone who wasn’t comfortable with their assigned gender), and that I could only feel comfortable with very very few people. I assumed long-distance would only ever be the option because the chance of meeting someone like that who additionally happened to be near me, that was exceedingly unlikely. I mourned and made peace with this, and assumed it wasn’t something I could hope for.

More to the point, I believed I was so introvert that being near someone on a daily basis could never work. Since I needed so much time alone, unpredictably, to manage dysphoria, I assumed that even fewer people would feel comfortable in any relationship with me, and that those would be the ones who similarly were like cats, generally reclusive and not predictably present. So in some sense I mourned the above less because I thought I wouldn’t be able to handle it anyway.

In the relationship I started about as I began transition, I sensed when we were together that somehow, I could feel safe with some particular people around without needing to escape as much to time alone. The part of my introversion which was recovering from baseline misgendering miasma of being closeted faded, and I realized it a possibility, yet still hindered by lack of other people. As I transition further and meet more people, I don’t feel as alien any longer to such a large fraction of those I meet – still the majority, but in Babylon a sizable majority can actually see and interact me as I am.

So the excuses are fading and the need is there and I feel envy and hunger and sorrow and self-sympathy and longing and cold, cold, wanting warmth.

Where do I take this? Tinder and therapy, presumably. And yet another need to lose that weight, because while I am pretty to many, I could be pretty to more, and the more people would give me a chance through some initial spark of interest, the more a chance to find people who want to be near me and cuddle and nurture me regularly. I’m cold. But I’m used to things not being easy, so I’ll manage. I’ll do my best, every moment of every day.

craven

Waking and feeling rested and in control, but with all the unresolved challenges present. They are not existential but practical, so they don’t paralyze me. I know I can be here to face them so I will. But I also feel I am small before the fullness of the world, and I feel my body and mind straining. And that is fine and as it should be, as are my emotions around it. Do they have a name? I want to say vulnerability, but not sure that is right.

Mostly I crave so deeply right now to be held. A wish I have not had in this way for very long, during isolation or focus modes or self-seclusion for dysphoria. I want to wake next to someone, want to be touched and held and maybe cry a little in their arms for no reason but that it’s there. I want touch, physical nearness. My long-distance relationships are as central to me as anything, and I cherish what time we get, but my everyday life still lacks touch. I need that, I realize. I need being close to someone, being seen, skin against skin, lips against my forehead, hands in my hair, warmth beneath my fingers.

I don’t think I’ve let myself recognize just how much I miss that, now that I’m beginning to be able to receive it without needing to escape to tend to my fortress walls. I want to be held when I am most defenseless, and I want glancing touches and casual nearness when I am joyful and energetic.

I stopped daring to believe I could have it, so I wouldn’t let myself be sad for not having it, wouldn’t acknowledge I want it. I must have it, somehow. I must be open to it, and try to seek it out however I can. I don’t really know how but I feel I am in a position to try.

anxiae mirabilis

This morning also waking… urgent. Until the Suporn clinic writes back to me – I wrote them a week ago and then on Thursday – I will worry, what if they didn’t like my tone or chose to ignore me, something like that? Irrational but very S. Until I’ve confirmed I can book a date not too far away, and that it’s within my budget when combined with the refurbishment and accounting for uncertainty, so that I know it’s on its way, I’ll be a little anxious. I crave SRS now as soon as I can have it, subject to all my caveats on quality and security and preparing my life properly. I long for it, feel distressed awaiting it. Half wanting to go with Chettawut anyway just to get there quicker. But this, if it works, is probably the right path.

Probably I need this waiting time for confirmation right now, because it presents the necessary thought experimental stimulus. I sense other reservations melting away because the need to get there is quite strong.

stat

This morning is one of… anxiety? Feeling everything is 50% harder and seeing 100% more possible things that can go wrong. Also dysphoric quite a bit, stomach lurching from mirror image. I think the main thing is, I decided to try for Suporn rather than Chettawut and they have not answered me yet, so that feels entirely uncertain, as does the situation with whether I have enough saved at this point enough if surprise home repairs also happen. It all _should_ work out, they should get back to me within a few more days and I can make a plan. Hopefully they will also confirm their USP namely that some revision guarantee still holds so I am not in an actual emergency in case of the rarest possible complications.

But not having a definite surgery date actually grates really heavily on me now, this is interesting. I need to know it’s coming, it’s bounded. I need to know I’ve done all I could. I don’t want to continue with my present anatomy any longer than I have to, by which I mean, really no longer than I have to in the slightest. Inanna, please let me be fixed soon.

sens7

Huh. So apparently I have a libido, and aside from it having me fantasize about specific people I feel for, especially triggered by memories of scent, then I also fantasize idly about experiencing a lot of non-penetrative, non-damaging pain – being bitten, being spanked. I have to know it will go far enough that I can’t take it (rather have to take it) and still not leave lasting damage. Damn it. I want that now, eagerly.

conclude

Got to point where I go all Weatherwax and decide. No time to wait around for Godot and perfection. So the way it seems is, fistula is my only remaining worry over SRS, and I am fine with it happening so long as it is fixed. From what I can tell, only one surgeon offer free revisions in any form, namely the Suporn clinic. I could go to Chettawut with probably the same low risks and good expected results, but in the unlikely case of revision I’d need to pay for it, and I don’t have that buffer now. So better to pay 50% extra to start, go with the very most renowned surgeon (or rather his successor), and feel more secure it will work out even in the worst case.

(It would feel extremely awful to have to ask my family for financial support because my SRS went wrong. I need for them to know this is the right thing to do, from start to end.)

So looking into that now. Documentation will not be an issue, my therapist can provide it and they likely would accept my letters for Chettawut too. Dates are unclear, this will possibly delay my plans but the “must be healed by 40” fervor is less important than doing it right. Still want to if I can. Shouldn’t be much further ahead anyway. Waiting for responses.

Cost is a little challenging. I have the means but I also just learned I will have unavoidable home renovation costs in the next months, which I don’t know yet how large they will get. So I’m looking at needing to keep some check on my expenses during the year, until I reach a point where again I am comfortable having a buffer. I don’t like that sort of uncertainty but working with uncertainty is what I must do now.

Also my water pipes apparently ARE lead. They will be replaced, this is part of that unavoidable home renovation cost. I wonder if I have damaged myself during this past year by drinking so much water at home? Hopefully I’ll recover. Seem to still be able to function, at least.