I forgot to take my estradiol today. It’s not a big deal, it’s only the feminizing hormone I’m on for the rest of my life. I’ll take a dose when I’m done writing this. But what I don’t like is that I forget, I get in a rush in the morning to get ready for work and it slips my mind, and next thing I know, I’ve only taken 2mg of the six I’m supposed to take every day.
And if I can’t remember to take a pill, how am I going to remember to do all the aftercare for surgery?
I’ve mentioned it on Twitter a few times now, but I recently got my surgery date for GRS. I’m going to Montreal, where I’ll be laid up for a week, and then it’s back to my apartment for the better part of three or four months, where I’ll have to dilate four times a day, followed by cleanings, baths, and lots of anxiety about the whole thing.
I mean, even now, a good three months out, I’m very anxious about this. I have feelings that I don’t deserve this. Isn’t there some trans woman out there who gets physically sick every time she strips, someone who’s dreamed of this moment since they were 12, someone that, in so many words, deserves my spot more than I do? I’m just some asshole - what makes me better than some other, more deserving person? Should I cancel and let someone who needs this more take my spot?
My friends tell me I am a deserving person, and trying to find reasons why I should cancel is a form of self-harm. It’s the kind of self-harm my brain, in all it’s wisdom, tries to make me do. Find reasons why I shouldn’t have nice things, why I should push people away. If my brain had it’s way, I wouldn’t have friends and I’d never go outside. It makes me feel bad. I worry about this, too. If I’m alone for three months or more, keeping myself occupied and my brain from playing tricks… that will be a challenge.
Then again, I did just plunk down for a copy of Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries, a 1,700 page novel following a woman in New York City throughout 1968. So maybe I’ll read that.
Another worry I have is about all the aftercare. I worry about missing a dilation and having it collapse on me, about missing a cleaning and getting sick, about forgetting to do something and having the whole house of cards fall down on me, putting me in a worse position than I’m in now. I’m sure that missing one thing won’t make everything awful, but… what if it does? Can I afford to find out?
It all sounds like so much work, and it’s work that I’ll always have to do, for the rest of my life. Is this a commitment I’m ready to make. It’s like deciding to read all of Balzac or listening to every Anthony Braxton record. No matter how much you’ve done, there’s always another title waiting to be discovered.
Remorse, that’s another one, too. I worry that maybe it won’t be something that makes me happy, or feel more like myself. I don’t expect it to make my life complete, and I’m not expecting that it’ll solve all the problems in my life - or even that it’ll solve the big problem of getting misgendered every single day - but I’d like to think it’ll do something to make me feel better.
There’s a lot of things I’m looking forward to: stopping blockers, being able to wear a bathing suit, not having to tuck, not having that appendage in the way all the time. I think, on balance, the advantages for this outweigh the drawbacks, but I guess I won’t know until I actually go through with it. And that’s what scares me. What if I wake up and even through the haze of painkillers, my first thought is “I’ve made a terrible mistake”?
Any time I’m about to make a big decision in life I get paralized by fear. I think that’s probably anxiety 101. When I started HRT, I almost detransitioned. I purged my wardrobe, deleted all my old photos and waited nearly a week before I started taking them. I was so scared that I was going to ruin my life that I avoided something I wanted so badly, I went to a doctor and asked specifically for them. I wanted to transition and I talked it over with two doctors. And I was still so scared of taking a pill - of something which was, at that point, completely reversible - that I put it off for a week.
And yet, I’ve been on hormones for almost three years and I don’t regret it even slightly. I mean, I don’t like being cold all the time, but that’s a minor cost for all the benefits I’ve gotten from HRT. And maybe that’s how I should be thinking about this: it’s a big, scary step, but it’s one that I want, that I’ve communicated to three different doctors about, and everyone seems to agree it’s a good idea for me. Maybe I should relax, have a cup of tea and try to think about it rationally... but first, it’s time to take my pill.