shard haddock

Today is a day of interesting vulnerability. I feel baseline anxiety levels high in that way where I worry unnecessarily about arbitrary things, where everything feels vast and difficult and scary. It’s OK, I know to navigate it. It’s been blogged about before too. I have these days rarely.

I can see three main issues influencing. Three nights with less than six hours of sleep. Near-overwhelmingly much to do in a short time. And going into off-cycle for progesterone since Monday. It has happened in the past I had states like this when going off a high-P cycle.

Four issues but who knows cause and effect, some photo angles combining with my new shorter haircut to make me dysphoric.

Neither blood sugar, caffeine or alcohol (they gave me prosecco at the hair salon) has helped.

Never mind why. It’s here and I will navigate it.

I drink coffee, do my tasks and listen to the Turrican soundtrack.

mount point

Things are heavy but what else is new?

Arriving at the conference hotel I’d felt good about my presentation all day, though I was tired and irritable. The receptionist greeted me with a “Hello… (pause) … sir.”. I mumbled by “It’s madam, actually”, don’t think I got a response. I smiled emptily and checked in and went to my room, then had waves and waves of body loathing staring at my face wondering what was wrong, writing despairing messages to loved ones, tweeting, and leaving an unsatisfied review. Cried and worked and delayed rest feeling shocked.

They tried to knock on my door, or phone me, later. Then left a letter of apology in my room with some chocolates. Fairly patronizing letter not getting the point, and sweet milk chocolate is not quite what I want most to be tempted by as a vegan on a diet. Never mind that though. I suppose I shall have to talk to them and try to explain at least a little. I am not offended or angry, I believe in no malice here. I’m just hurt, as a consequence of honest misgendering, for what it implies about my misshapen carcass body and disgusting voice. They weren’t offensive, they were careless, and I was hurt. So would they be if they were in trans modality. It will be less work emotionally to try to tell them so I can do my political duty, then I’ll just leave that chocolate behind. I have a surgery to starve for.

Understanding now better how oppressed groups experience pressure to perform emotional labour to soothe the guilt of those who hurt us.

So on that surgery, I keep moving and preparing but I feel messed up because everything happens at once and I’ve had no time to let anything sink in. I have to, so I can process. I have to let myself rest so I can do that.

It was shocking to read those worst-case scenarios but I am beginning to reach an equilibrium again, perhaps.

Someone described her Chonburi organ (the sensate area inside the vestibule left from the glans) as looking “like a penis stuck in there, scaring away any cis lesbians”. One photo I saw looked weird but others do not, and really this is a selling point of the method, it lets material be maximally reused. I can think of it as the hidden part of the cis female clitoris. I think any technique not retaining nerves would scare me more than this does. And if it looked that bad, then the Suporn clinic would not be so renowned.

On the other end, someone described her clitoris as being not very sensitive at all. Ultimately, this I know is a risk. But it must depend on individual factors. I can’t see any way in which any other surgeon could do this better, or more consistently.

So scratch those two worries.

One said she hurt whenever she grew aroused. This would be swelling somehow. She noted that some other women who had been growers rather than showers before had similar issues. This is again something hard to address. It can’t be that common, and while it probably depends on how much erectile tissue is removed/retained, that also is not something that speaks against the Suporn clinic. Chettawut is said to remove more, but I won’t go to him because of how he drops you if you have complications. Mesopotamia are said to retain material causing the “bulbus”. So here, I don’t really feel it keeps me back. It may end up being an issue, but I can’t reduce the risk and I’m hoping I would be able to deal with it if it goes poorly. Honestly the description sounded much like vestibulitis, hurting while swelling, so it may be an infection or skin thing also. Can I prevent it? Not really. The risk is there with the surgeons I consider.

Major worry is the issue with dilation. Scar contraction, granulation tissue, so that getting to depth is painful and takes long. Some needing much time even years post-op. That is one of the greatest fears, that I will find that down the line I still spend lots of painful and boring time dilating, so much that it detracts from my work or relationships, not just during recovery but thereafter.

This fear is real, it happens to people. I know that it can happen. If it does, I can wait and see, but not too long. I’d have to seek help, removing scar or granulation tissues. For that I’d need to go back to Thailand, or void my warranty and have another work on me. It might not work. There exists a worst-case scenario where I’d have to let it grow closed and be no-depth, if I heal bad and have no life. I’d mourn it like the lost uterus or XX karyotype or girlhood. I don’t want that. But surely it can’t be more than a fraction where it goes so bad?

It can still happen. I’d have to set a time limit after which I am not OK with trying more. And I wonder if the Mesopotamian “combined method” which uses partial inversion heals easier? Then again, that uses urethra inside, there will still be stitches to stretch. I don’t think I’m so afraid I’d refrain from the Suporn method because of this.

So I just have to be aware of my fallbacks. In the worst case, after years of trying, let my vagina close up. Or go back to Thailand or get Mesopotamia or another to help remove scars. But mostly, try my very best to avoid it, make the chance low.

That’s probably the greatest worry. The fistula worry is grand and terrible, but if I stay two months in Thailand then surely it would show up if it was the case? Though I might not know. But if it does happen, I would go back to Thailand – I must budget for that. It will still be cheaper than Mesopotamia privately. It also happened more than they said – maybe even no less often than in my native country. But I somehow trust that it can be fixed if it does, just like when giving birth. The worry of not detecting it early enough; not sure how scary that is. Significantly but I don’t have the energy for that fear? Fear that it will happen if I dilate carelessly, in the pushing-through stage. That is a worry. And a reason not to be made too deep. And to be careful dilating. So mostly it speaks to the above concern on dilation becoming a big issue.

What else? Someone experienced granulation issue so bad it needed revision. Some had wound separation. These… I think I can get through these.

Someone had urinary incontinence which is extremely scary, as is having to wear pads from incomplete healing for very long. The latter goes back to the dilation/healing part. But the former, if that is lasting somehow, would need treatment. But that sort of treatment I think it is known how it is carried out.

So how do I actually feel? Afraid I won’t be thin and healthy enough by December but I can deal with that. Super scared for the poor healing outcome, more than from graft rejection, more than from the fistula or incontinence, because those latter all are so relatively unlikely, and likely to be already discovered in Thailand and dealt with. Scared of chronic pain and sensitivity loss but don’t see any other surgeon being less risky there.

So it comes down to healing/dilation difficulty vs non-inversion method in the first place. I am guaranteed to regret an inversion vagina, whereas I will only regret a lost vagina in the unlikely case of persistent bad healing. So that does not hold me back.

Then that leaves me with the fear of how to go about it if I need help. Some hours by train away, or a long and expensive flight away.

That in turn balanced against cost and how long it will take to wait, or more to the point, how long until details are certain.

I seem to calm down. It’s like when I was talking with several loanbrokers, or several employers. Feeling bad over that. And it was scary to decide on a loan and apartment.

I may end up just having the surgery with Bank. We’ll see. The need is to know what to do when anything goes wrong. I probably will do as I planned and continue to prepare for.

There was a reception and I drank lots of wine. Then I spoke to the hotel representative. It was OK. Maybe they don’t understand but maybe the understand a little better now. I hope. They may do better with the next guest. I’ll eat their chocolate and drink their complementary drink, and I’ll be fine.

And the next hotel where I am misgendered I will do the same, and so on, until I no longer am.

ninshubur faithful in waiting

It worked.

My Ninshubur, sukkal of Inanna, messenger and proxy and right hand, she did it. When a date for SRS with Dr Bank, successor and disciple of Dr Suporn, opened up, that very same minute she requested it and I now have it provisionally reserved.

Ninshubur here is a virtual Ubuntu 18 server running in the Google Cloud, with a fake cron script running in a screen; it scraped the calendar once a minute, parsed it, prioritized available dates, then sent a message on my behalf directly to the clinic using the google mail API. Tech I needed to learn or brush up on for this: VMs, cloud services, python, PIP, google API, CSS, HTML tables, Android notifications, robot.txt, and I would have kept going as needed. I feel this means I’ve done my part in propagating the trans girl hacker stereotype, though I’ll happily continue that so long as I draw breath.

So.

I’ll have vaginoplasty on December 6, 2019.

That’s in eight months. Exactly as long as I would have from my first missed period if pregnant. Time to prepare for what may be the hardest and scariest thing I’ve done so far in my life.

I’ve never had surgery. I am needlephobic.

I need to tell my mother.

I need to get in shape: lose enough weight (but stay stable for the month before), exercise to get cardio and circulation maximal, reduce any tendency to insulin resistance, reduce stress levels. I need to start sleeping properly and rush less. I need to make sure I am (and stay) HIV negative. I need to look into everything else – skin spots, teeth, breast exams. I must become as healthy as I can.

I need to get all other transition components to a state I am OK to wake up in with my new anatomy – carry out voice training, electrolyze the remaining facial hair (which is all white), decide on my new initials and change my name to its final form, then get a new passport.

I need to prepare my life: My apartment must be ready to recover in, unless I do so in my ancestral homeland. If so I must ensure it can be rented out in the meantime somehow. Renovations e.g. elevator and bathroom need to be ready so I can stay there. I need to prepare my team so they can handle it when I am gone. I need all projects to be in a stage where my absence entirely for at least a month does not break them. I need to prepare my friends for my silence and following weakness. I need to ensure I have support in place – prepare therapist in case of post-op depression, work out and establish contact with gynecologist, pact with friends who can help me during the helpless period. Set up time off – vacation, holidays, then sick leave, and last more vacation if needed. Prepare my habits to make time for years of dilation and wound aftercare.

I need to prepare my mind and heart. I need to learn to endure pain and fear and confusion and hunger and chaos. I need to finally learn to set boundaries and guard my time. I need to make myself ready for something scarier than I’ve ever been through. It’s on the level of traumatic childbirth and I really will think of it so. I must gain control of my life for the sake of she-I who will be born.

Certainly all of these things have value of their own, and it is true I use this now necessity as an excuse for my higher self to take priority. I let my greater fear defeat my lesser fears. I’ll take a major step forward in transitioning, not only my body, but all of me so as to be able to accommodate that. I welcome those side effects.

But most of all, I want my post-op body healed up by my 40th birthday.

And it now looks more likely than not that I will.

Praise be Ninshubur, sukkal of Inanna! Praise be Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth! Hail Eris! Hail Discordia!

ninshubur and the hidden moon

So, I couldn’t let it go and I walked the rest of the way and coded up a virtual machine that polls the Suporn surgery calendar every two minutes. If parsing doesn’t break when they update next it will automatically select an available date based on my preferences and mail to request it.

Having a date feels very very major a need now. It’s the thing I turn to when I feel tired or sad. I long for it. I feel like a girl whose pregnancy test turned up negative, and who will keep trying until it is not. It’s a painful uncertainty, by contrast of the certainty of my longing to leap headfirst into the whole of the procedure and use the momentum, the gravity, as a tool and excuse to make other changes to my life and habits.

Just as I wrote this, got other communication from them on another question (re: hair removal being OK), and they say new dates will soon come. Curious on whether the parser will break (worried that it will ruin my chances if it sends them an embarrassing email). Excited to see. Really centering on this now.

Otherwise tired and headachy, next steps will be coffee and regular work-y programming. Need to stay strong so my life can be prepared for what comes. I.e. need to be ahead of my plans so I can rest from them later.

staggra

Epiphanies come quickly these days one after another. Experience is so intensive and it shifts. My life has weird dynamic ranges. I go from the very detailed or the very obscure to the very high level. In the past weeks I hung out in squats and witnessed the Babylon arch-Chancellor inaugurate something. I hang out with drifters and philanthropists and teenagers and medical bosses, and am at once a patient and part of the treatment infrastructure. I really am spanning systems at this point, in one way of witchery.

By way of the less impressive watch tool, I found Suporn dates in November opened up this morning. I’ve been dazed all day since, but I emailed. I expect someone else requested them before me, but it lets me know I must escalate, accelerate, proceed.

And if I get a November date, that is less than nine months ahead. Almost nothing. I feel like someone who just stopped using contraceptives, still not expecting a pregnancy so soon even though she planned for it, set it in motion. Like the process falls out of your control and it’s time to struggle to get all in place. But I don’t know yet. It’s like I wait for a pregnancy test. It may well be negative still.

Today I didn’t shave and didn’t put on foundation, but still went to another inauguration ceremony and talked to people. I feel individual hairs but don’t see them. Need to let them grow until I see them, to see colour. This is less scary now. As is being out and social.

Core to that is, I believe on an emotional level that I either pass for cis or am read as trans. I don’t expect to be misgendered or parsed as cis male. Surely I am clocked often. But at the same time, I know on some level I have passing privilege now, to some extent. I am treated better than some of my sisters because some of my changes went quicker, some of my starting points were better. Increasingly I have to remember that also. Still really wondering how often I am not clocked. I’m really curious about this.

fvlmina pvella

Things are again so intense stress-wise I have persistent headache but I can’t let any of it down just yet.

Felt deeply lonely during the Friday, and almost didn’t go out Saturday because I expected to be lonely and sad also at the club. Instead I found a queer sex party/disco in a former squat, and going off of the experiment at the concert last week (project “talk to the cute guy/enby named Leo even though you don’t know each other b/c my friends dared me to”), I spoke with some people even though it seemed like that was intruding.

Meaning I ended up talking to strangers, giving several my card, kissing two, and being dressed down by one to my panties in the darkroom and making out. Which was amazing and felt great, and did so despite the person being a man. It helped that both the guys I kissed looked good and projected enough wokeness to fit into that space.

So I felt my touch starvedness decrease, and my self-identification as also interested in men increase, and was sort of euphoric-yet-headached the day after. I may meet these people at the local BDSM munch again and would certainly play with, and go to this party again.

I left quite early still. Did not want to fully lose sleep. Had I stayed, might have gotten spanked, but that’s for next time. It was then at a stage that I could have asked.

I need to keep on practicing these social skills. And I need to keep going out, putting myself out there.

The one I was in the darkroom with, before we kissed I said “you know I’m trans, right?” and he said he was “fine with that” and seemed to find it endearing I asked. The other one said he did not realize I was until I mentioned it. I don’t know if I can believe it but I liked hearing it. With Darkroom Guy, he wanted to go dance off his high quite soon after we started, but I think that was more him than me. More importantly, I couldn’t have been comfortable going further.

I really want a vagina now so cute people can fuck me in it. I want the casualness sex maybe can have then, once I am healed. I want to be able to get fully naked without dysphoria.

And yes, my social life has evolved to a point now where “going out” means “BDSM club” more than anything else. So be it.

Today I should have worked, but I was freaking out over the uncertainty of a surgery date, that I don’t know it yet. I worry everyone wanting Suporn SRS have web scrapers that autosend request emails and that my watchlist marker will be too slow. So I’ve spent way too long today writing HTML parsers and trying out the gmail API. Still not there but once my workstation runs, I can finalize it.

The existence of a trans girl rite of passage where we have to write a web scraper to schedule SRS has delightful stereotype power for me and I cherish it even while it irritates me. Met early morning with an architect. It will cost to fix my bathroom once they pull the pipes out during refurbishment, but I think it will work out. I can save enough this year to be able to cover that even going for Suporn SRS early next year.

I need a surgery date now. I need to know it, build up towards it, prepare for it.

Part of this will be to fix the rest. Voice therapy starts next month.

Laser today. Hurts very little. Before next time, need to not shave for a week so they can see what hair I actually have left. Will start shaving nipples so I can laser them next.

Going without foundation felt fine. I really do look very smooth now. Not all the way there, but almost. Even going away for laser without makeup felt OK. I feel I can defend my legitimacy even then. May try without foundation more often.

Soon time for sunblock again, and today was the first high-heels day of the year.

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.

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.

combo breaker

Ultimately it doesn’t matter why someone is not interested in a particular type of connection. If there is an incompatibility, it means we would have needed to be two different people for a different outcome to be possible. However the incompatibility is understood or described also does not matter. The outcome is what matters, for this aspect in and of itself. There are plenty of valuable aspects of friendship I can experience with a lot of people, which is beautiful and valuable and necessary.

Meanwhile even if I do not perceive myself as flawed for an incompatibility, it reveals what is lacking in my life. And it remains that I must be allowed to be sad for that which is lacking. The fact that for so long I did not is what messed me up. So I’ll be as sad as I want. And I’ll go for all things that help me get closer to where I need.