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.

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.

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.

uncomfortably numb

I really am numb right now. I don’t feel much of anything. Everything has similar pale-green, pale-grey colours. I still have directions, objectives. I still act, even quite targetedly, calculatedly. I just don’t feel much, so things that would be fear or panic triggers right now have very little impact. It caused someone to call me unempathetic just now, and it’s not wrong in this state – I just parse things in pieces, look for something actionable, and feel nothing.

I am sure it won’t last. I was in it a little before, but got better. I don’t prefer this state but I am there and it probably won’t go away super quickly either. On meta levels I find it an interesting observation. I think perhaps this is a new defense mechanism, or a reuse of an old one. If my potential for hurt and emotion grew, then it stands to reason also that the set of coping strategies would evolve. I’ve gotten into new intensities of emotion lately, and after several days of panic and disappointment and foundations shaking a little, I must have found this strategy. I’m sure I had it before sometimes.

But it doesn’t feel like grief or sorrow or a dissociated machine. It feels like being something else. Is this the void?

nadir

No-one owes me anything, so if I want something, I must find people who want to give it to me. I shouldn’t hold back, shouldn’t wait, shouldn’t restrict. Need to make myself visible, need to try all my chances. What one person cannot give me, perhaps another can.

Tonight brought several interesting, independent sources of emotion. It was useful.

It will all go somewhere.

lead

OK, today is a day like I had at some points before. Everything feels really difficult and heavy and I am tired. For whatever reason this is, I need to scale down to do only the absolute minimum and relax all other requirements on myself. Check.

snow moon

Increasing my progesterone dosage to higher than before now. We’ll see how it feels. My dreams were a little vivid, my waking tired, and my day so far a little anxious. I’ll try to focus, basically. A lot at once. I should have more coffee, and dutifully do my programming.

glow moon

I am feeling desires welling up intermittently but abidingly. Like springtime feelings except they are more person-specifically targeted than those used to be. Memory of touch and scent and rapport plays a large role and it spins off into very corporeal fantasy. It’s to an extent that is almost distracting. I have a libido, apparently.