It’s amazing how much the ability to be active in my body again has brought me back to life in the past two days.
I had had glimpses of this wonderful feeling again with the visit of one climbing buddy who took us to explore a National Park three weeks after my surgery and then the hike with another of my closest climbing buddies a couple of weeks ago.
For a month and a half, I was in survival mode. A survival that was made much easier and even more joyful thanks to the loving support and practical help of so many friends and acquaintances — I don’t know what I would have done without that, without them all. But I didn’t realize how much I’d been in this survival mode, how deeply I had dissociated from my body and even from some of my most intense feelings and memories, until this past weekend, until I was officially out of my recovery time/sick leave and could start doing all of my physical activities again — until I started running again.
I’ve started living in my body again, not just surviving in a wounded shell of a body.
I cannot survive in a wounded or sick shell of a body for long — at least, not without severe damage to my mental health, which is one of the reasons why COVID & long-COVID were so hard for me in 2020 and I’m so terrified of getting very sick again. In order to survive in a wounded or sick shell of a body I dissociate from that body. Which is, in fact, a trauma response and also a possible symptom or aspect of depression.
I don’t in the least regret getting gender-affirming top-surgery but now that I’m active and living in my body again, and thus being my whole self again, I realize how traumatic the past four weeks of recovery have been for me.
On the other hand, I’m also realizing how joyful it is, or can be, to be on the other side of it. The sheer joy, the profound happiness I’m experiencing at feeling in my body, with my body in motion again, is wonderful, despite my relative weakness and lack of fitness now. It’s a different level of consciousness for me — that’s how it feels to me. I experience myself as well as the whole world in a completely different way when I’m active in my body. And now that I have a partially new body, and a body that finally aligns with how I feel inside, it’s even more wonderful, even more joyful. It’s also strange and a little melancholic, though, at times.
Strange because I haven’t got fully used to my boy’s chest, yet: it still looks unfamiliar, almost surreal to me both when I look at it naked in the mirror and when I get dressed in ways that make my flat, masculine torso evident, especially when I’m out in the world and feel very self-conscious of how other people might perceive me.
Melancholic or a little sad because being alive in my body again, and especially in this partly new body that I love so passionately, reminds me of the physical cravings that I have: my sexual “hyperdrive”; the need or desire for cuddles; the fact that I’m touch-starved. And also some melancholy coming from emotions or situations or memories connected to other people that I had shelved while recovering or that I don’t really think about in my daily life anymore but that are coming back in wavelets now. Re. one person in particular, the memories of our “special feelings” have come back with the wish of showing him my “new body”, of showing him how real this boy is, how similar to him in some ways. I know this wish cannot be satisfied and the memories, fortunately, are not so painful anymore (oh, the miracles of time healing!). Although I know this boy in me was clearly visible even through my feminine clothes three or four years ago and therefore that the boulderer fell in love with this boy and without knowing it helped this boy in me come out, he would probably never admit it or understand it or fully appreciate it, so it’s best to leave this wish on the shelf.
Admitting the existence of this wish or feeling, though, is important for me because it is part of my coming back into my body, part of my coming back to life: I live wholly only when I can be fully in my active body and finally having this body that externally aligns to how I feel inside intensifies not only the beauties and joys but also some melancholy. Which, for me, is all part of life: beautiful, joyful, but also sad sometimes.
The Little Prince and the Fox 