It’s hard to put into words how hard this phase is. It might be the hardest experience since my horrible COVID illness in the spring of 2020 (& long COVID throughout 2020).
Today is exactly three weeks since I got my masculinizing mastectomy — at this time three weeks ago I was getting my chest masculinized under general anesthesia. In some ways, it seems like yesterday. And yet, it also seems like a different life. It feels like I went through a portal. That’s really the only, or the best, way I can describe it.
This portal leads to a new life for me, to a “new me” in many ways, to an even more wholly authentic me. But before opening up into the “new world” ahead of me, it leads to a dark antechamber, which is where I am now. A dark antechamber of gloomy thoughts, of looming depression, of existential crisis (mainly around my professional career), of unfathomable exhaustion (mental and emotional as well as physical), and of nagging FOMO.
When I see myself in profile in the mirror with that sweater I got in a men’s department in December falling straight down my flat chest, or when I rest my hands on my hard & flat chest as I fall asleep at night, I feel happy. Profoundly happy and deeply myself. I love how this chest looks under clothing and how it feels to my gentle touch. But seeing it naked is painful. The bruising, the redness, the long scars, the sore scabs, the lingering swelling: it’s all visible proof of how much my body is struggling now, how much it’s suffering.
Visible, tangible proof of that dark antechamber in which I have to sit and wait patiently — for how long?
The Little Prince and the Fox 