Let the body-hair come!

It’s hard to put into words the joy I am feeling in this moment. I’m almost besides myself with joy. 

The boy is running! 

I’m a trans athlete! 

The boy is running, I’m a trans athlete, and I’m ready to let the body-hair come! 

Today I went for my first post-op run: my first run in nearly seven weeks; my first run after six weeks of hardly any physical activity; my first run after masculinizing mastectomy; my first run ever without a bra! 

But the joy is not about not needing that garment (the bra) anymore. As much as it feels liberating to be able to ditch bras for good, the joy I’m feeling now is a much deeper one — a happiness with much deeper roots and a more profound significance. Because this was my first run in the body that really feels like me. 

It’s not just that I don’t have to wear a bra anymore (unless I want to, of course): it’s that, at last, I have a truly flat chest, actually a boy’s chest. At last, the body I see in the mirror, the body that I feel under strain running on the trail, is the body that belongs to me, the body that feels like me: a non-binary/trans boy’s body. 

I’m a boy. I’m a boy with XX chromosomes (as far as I know); I’m a boy with female genitals, a boy with a uterus, a boy who was brought up as a girl: but a boy nonetheless. 

And now I am ready: I am ready to let the body-hair come, to let it grow, to see what happens. I’ll probably then shave it off, at least on my upper body (if I get any there), but I’m ready to let this happen. I’m almost eager to let this happen, to see what might happen, to see what this boy will look like. 

And then to go race on my next trail run, with my now-legal ‘X’ gender marker, in the male category. 

I am trans, wholly and proudly trans. A trans athlete. 

God, I feel so liberated…!