This scared child

[Trigger warning: some detail about surgery (ablation & salpingectomy).]

Last night, despite my tiredness, I couldn’t fall asleep. I was physically exhausted but my mind kept spinning, taking some upsetting thoughts & feelings and running with them. I could literally see, feel the spinning — one of the few times that I have really been able to understand physically what it means that our mind can “spin”, and “spin out of control”. Fortunately, I was able to keep it under control, but barely. The way I found and maintained this control was to finally say out loud while lying awake in bed at nearly 1 AM: “I am scared”. I said it over and over again, almost a dozen times — “I am scared”, “I am scared”, “I’m scared”, “I’m scared”… Then, heeding the (scared) child within me, I put on a lullaby, turned on my tummy hugging both the pillow on which I put my face and my cuddly animal (a gray triceratops called Tracy), and eventually fell asleep. 

In three days I am undergoing surgery again, a double procedure: ablation and salpingectomy. It’s both a gender-affirming surgery for me and a practical safety measure given that I am a gay boy with a uterus living in a country where abortion is no longer a guaranteed right. 

I want to do this surgery. I’ve had to postpone it a few times this past year and now I’m feeling ready and impatient to get it done. But also scared. This scares me more than both my masculinizing mastectomy and the UCL surgery. Both procedures (ablation and salpingectomy) are considered “standard, not very invasive, and with a short recovery time”. But they’re going to go into my abdomen. And that scares me. Also, the pain and discomfort that I’ll feel for a few days after this double procedure scare me because they’re probably going to be worse, or of a type that I’m not used to, compared to the pain after other surgeries I’ve had. 

I’m also scared because I don’t think my housemate, i.e. the person I’m living with, understands the seriousness of my procedure coming up — or of any surgery, really. They’re all wrapped up in their whim of getting a kitty (they already have a dog) in a rush now and I feel that my needs, not only around my surgery but also around having some more time to settle into this place where I have been living for only two months, are not being heard. 

And here’s where the scared child in me really comes in. Not so much for the reasonable, justified fear around my surgery; but rather for all the other fears that have been coming up this past week and really escalated in my mind last night. The fear of my needs not being really heard or valued by my housemate. The fear of my friends leaving me behind and/or not missing me. The fear of the other members of the chorus forgetting me and/or not missing me. The fear that the text messages from one of the chorus member with whom I have plans for Tuesday were not really to check in about our plans to hang out but rather a veiled way to change those plans and/or avoid spending one-on-one time with me. 

Looking at this list of fears from the “outside” what does one see, what do I see? A person — a child — who is fundamentally afraid of not being valued (loved?). Whether it’s my practical/living needs or my presence or time with me one-on-one, it all boils down to the same deep fear: “I am not enough”; “I — i.e. me as a person, my needs, my emotions, time with me — am/are not valuable, not important, not worthy”. 

This wound is so deep. Its origin probably goes back three or four decades. 

How does one cure, heal such a deep wound? 

I don’t know.

But what I do know is that today I’m going to sit with this child, take its hand, and do what I can to soothe its fears (while also trying to separate the practical issues, like living compromises with my housemate and surgery preparation, from the emotional ones).