The Little Prince and the Fox

These have been the best “holidays” that I’ve had in a while. 

One of the strongest feelings in December 2016 was the sense of liberation and joyous relief for not having to undergo the usual “holiday tour de force” into which I had been forced my entire life up to then (or, at least, for two decades since they stopped being fun when I “grew out of them” but wasn’t allowed to avoid or ignore them). 

Since then, my Christmases and “Gregorian” or Western New Year’s in California have varied a lot, still being less stressful or painful or triggering than how they were for me back in Europe but also suffering from the effects of the pandemic (and probably some of my own stress on top of it). 

I’m a little afraid of jinxing things if I write this but I’ve been feeling consistently grounded for over two weeks now. Things haven’t been perfect or “all good”. There have been hiccups and scares and worries — the frightening possibility of my health insurance not approving my gender-affirming top-surgery, some loneliness here & there, the non-ideal situation with my housemate, the fear of not having the support I need around my gender-affirming top-surgery, an upsetting conversation with a dear friend, and the ongoing concern always present at the back of my mind of my gender-affirming top-surgery actually happening in less than a month. But I seem to somehow handle these issues without getting as overwhelmed as I had previously, in the past months. Moreover, after the initial upset, I’ve been finding it easier to come back down to my “ground state”, to feel grounded and okay in a shorter amount of time and with less effort. And last but not least, I have been able to access more easily and more consistently strengths or skills or grounding habits that have always been part of my “internal tool-kit” but which had become less easily available to me in the recent past: a strong and clear capacity to put the upsetting thoughts or feelings aside after venting or processing them, without ignoring them fully but, rather, not allowing them to take hold of the whole of me; taking a very matter-of-fact problem-solving approach to the issues arising; turning to the positive things in my life and letting myself dwell on those more; a wonderful re-found grounding joy and peace (with much less impostor syndrome) in doing science, which has once again become what it has often been for me throughout my life — an anchor or safe haven.  

There are also, of course, many practical reasons for this groundedness I’ve been feeling and for these holidays having been so peaceful for me, including: being able to actually spend time in-person with friends and acquaintances here despite the holidays and being around other people who don’t celebrate Christmas, either (YAY!!!); feeling the affection and connection with remote friends who have been making time for me despite the holidays and, in particular, reconnecting to a couple of my oldest and dearest friends and communicating with them more often and deeply again; the fact that the “really important dates” for me this winter will be towards the end of January, with the anniversary of my move to Colorado and my gender-affirming top-surgery, which reduce the symbolic importance of the holidays, in a good sense, shifting it or spreading it out throughout this season; the excitement of possibly starting to date someone here; the weather, with its perfect (for me, privileged for not being forced to necessarily go out in the snow) alternation of snow, cold, storms, and sunshine, allowing me to enjoy both the coziness of the season that I seem to naturally need and the freedom of getting outdoors enough; the liberty to work from home on a very flexible and autonomous schedule and the fortunate coincidence of having re-found my scientific ardor & confidence to actually get work done. 

I am well aware that these last two points, in particular, come from a position of privilege that I have and can only acknowledge gratefully while trying to make the best of it — for them, as well as for the other reasons for my happiness & groundedness, I am full of gratitude. 

However, some of this I have earned and come a long way to find. A year ago, a good friend’s violent husband literally kicked me out of their house moments before Christmas dinner was put on the table; another of my closest friends bailed on me last minute for New Year’s Eve after we had planned it all out & built up a lot of expectations around it; and while struggling with depression and/or burnout, I was packing up (with the invaluable help of some very good friends) my Californian life to set out for Colorado with a plan reaching only as far as the following five or six months. I’m not a hero(in), I couldn’t have done all this, as most of the things in my life, without my loving, supportive friends and generous people around me. I just want to remember and celebrate what feels good now. 

My last snowy New Year’s before this one, supposedly relaxing and having fun in the mountains, was in reality leaden with heartbreak and forced companionship. 

This New Year’s weekend was a perfect, delightful balance between joyful company and peaceful solitude, between homely coziness and outdoor adventure. Something to celebrate, for sure!

Today I went on my first official queer date. And my first date ever with a woman. 

A little over a year ago, in September 2021, after a couple months of very intense climbing and regular weight-lifting, I had gotten as big & muscular as I had ever been (at least up until then), I had been using “they” pronouns officially even at work for about a month, and was finally really embracing and starting to feel more deeply, or more openly or consciously, the boy in me. And I can distinctly remember this one morning as I was getting ready to go to work: I saw myself, my strong (naked) shoulders in the mirror, I really saw the boy in me, and I realized all of a sudden that I felt less attracted to, or less interested in, (cis) men and then the thought came to me, very clearly, “Now that I am openly a boy maybe I don’t need to be with a boy as a partner”. 

Gender identity and sexual preference are definitely two distinct things. And yet, as my own gender identity has been evolving or, rather, coming out and expressing itself more openly and clearly (even to myself), my sexual preferences have also been shifting. Or maybe just as I’m finally allowing my “gender world” to express itself in a more flexible way — even beyond the “gender-non-conformity” that has always been part of me & my character — in parallel I am also allowing my pansexuality, which has always been part of me as well, to come out and express itself and find its way. 

It’s as if my gradual changes and growth had finally led me to say “Fuck it!” to the whole of heteronormativity. 

My entire life, as far as I can remember, I have been fighting or resisting or at least questioning norms that have always seemed artificial to me. But I have also stuck to some of them — heterosexuality (or the semblance of it), for instance. Maybe because it was so easy for me to be in romantic/sexual relationships with (cis) men… Or maybe because I felt the unconscious need to hold onto something, at least one thing, that was (perceived as) “mainstream” or “solid”. On the other hand, though, I’ve somehow always been peeling away layers of “mainstream” from my life and pushing my boundaries of exploration further and further, especially since moving to California. And now I feel like I’m finally letting go even of the last little shreds of “certainty” or “mainstream”. After embracing my own queerness — first in my polyamory, then in my non-binary/trans-masculine gender identity, and then in a romantic involvement with a non-binary friend — now I’m totally letting go of almost everything that I’ve known or done before in the romantic/sexual sphere and allowing my queer gut & queer heart to take the lead, at last. 

After having been a tomboyish & sexually oblivious girl, then turning into an attractive & (sexually) confident woman, I’m now in the shy, sexually/romantically awkward teenager-boy phase. Totally out of my depth. With hardly any idea of what I’m doing. Scared but excited. And fully relating to that favorite quote of mine by André Gide: 

“On ne découvre pas de terre nouvelle sans consentir à perdre de vue, d’abord et longtemps, tout rivage.”

(“One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.”)

How do teenagers get anything done at all??? 

How can they manage to get schoolwork done, maybe a side job, get chores done, and eventually graduate? How can they focus enough, for a long enough time, to get anything practical or sensible done? 

Somehow, the memories of my own “first” puberty, my own female puberty as a teenager, are vague. In many ways, I guess, it was masked or subdued: it happened gradually and really not dramatically at all (from the physical/physiological viewpoint), quite gently, so I probably was able to get used to the changes almost subconsciously; moreover, it entailed the “normal” or “expected” changes as an AFAB, so I guess that made it easier to take so much for granted; on the other hand, my own family of origin hyper-responsibilized me for almost my entire life, often treating me like an adult or older than my actual age from a very young age, while sometimes instead treating me like a child for longer than appropriate, so at the end of the day I was hardly ever treated in the “age-appropriate way” by them; finally, and very importantly I think, I was going through a “standard” or “natural” or “normal” phase for my age (& body or external appearance) together with my peers, so I had the subconscious, natural, spontaneous support or, at least, acceptance of the world around me. 

My only really distinct memories of disruptive puberty effects are from the summer of my junior-into-senior year & last high school year: probably late for a “biological female”, my sex drive awakened all of a sudden then and I can very distinctly remember several moments in which I really had trouble focusing on what I had to do because of my sex drive. 

My “second” or “chosen” puberty now is often totally disrupting and distracting. There are so many moments when I can get hardly anything done or have to struggle enormously to get anything practical/sensible done because I’m so enraptured by the changes my body & mind are undergoing. I’m fascinated by the hairs growing on my body, really liking some of them while having mixed feelings about others, but nonetheless fascinated by the process. A lot of my attention and concentration are taken up by adjusting my voice — its pitch, the intonation, and other “gendering” details — very often even unintentionally. Plenty of my emotional and intellectual energy are taken up by getting used to the new perceptions I have of the world around me and of the new ways in which the world — people — around me perceive me, interact with me, behave with me, address me. And then, last but not least, there’s all the practical hassles with all the time and energy necessarily spent on paperwork, offices, doctors appointments, phone calls, etc. 

Now I really get it, fully empathizing, why many of my students dropped out of college while “transitioning”. 

I still don’t like, or identify with, the term “transitioning” for this experience I’m going through. For me it still feels like a further, even more authentic, step in my own growth and self-determination; it feels like “coming into myself” (rather than “coming out”); and like my second puberty, my chosen puberty, my “correct” puberty. But still, regardless of how we want to call or define this process and despite it being a consciously chosen process and in many ways a wonderful, beautiful, joyful process, it’s a hard process nonetheless: it’s difficult, it’s scary, it’s disruptive, it’s unconventional. And it’s happening at a time of (my) life when neither I nor the world around me are fully prepared for it — which makes it even more disruptive, unconventional, and in many ways lonely.

If everything goes well, I’m exactly five weeks away from my gender-affirming, masculinizing mastectomy! 

Having gotten a negative (i.e. OK) result for the mammogram I had on Monday and given all the symbolism in today’s date (exactly five weeks from my planned surgery, winter solstice…), I’m going to start a gender-affirming countdown to my top-surgery, not only to prepare myself for the big event but also to celebrate its arrival.

When I was finalizing my decision about moving to Colorado a year ago, I can distinctly remember a particular conversation I had with one of my “sailing uncles”, one of my older friends who are also a sort of father figure for me. I was telling him that I just craved walking in the snow-covered woods. And he replied, “Well, then, I think your decision is made”. 

I don’t know where that craving in me was coming from, but it’s still present and getting satisfied and rewarded now. We’re getting one of the most beautiful winter days I’ve seen yet. 

Yesterday evening it snowed heavily again. And then overnight the temperatures plummeted to well beneath freezing (-20 degrees Celsius or -10 degrees Fahrenheit!). And today it’s sunny. Actually so cold and sunny that the rare (at these latitudes) phenomenon of “sun halo“ can be observed! Everything is coated in a soft, puffy white layer and the light is so bright that everything is glowing. It’s like everything is more alive than ever and rejoicing in this winter liveliness. 

I absolutely love the full range of seasons we get here in Colorado! I love the dry heat of the summer, being outdoors and sweating it all out or having to simply slow down in the hottest hours and then come alive at night and/or in the very early morning; I love the explosion of colors and smells in the spring, the flowers bursting, the birds chirping, the squirrels running around and mating; I love the palettes of colors in the autumn, that quiet liveliness shining through the reds and oranges and yellows against the clear blue sky; and I love the winter, the dry cold, the frost, the bright sunshine reflected off the snow as well as the quiet, dark days, the dark snow-storm clouds, the long and cozy evenings — I like both being outdoors and indoors in this type of winter weather. 

I know this cold is scary and can be a nuisance. I know there’s lots of risks involved with it when I’m going on my outdoor adventures in the mountains or even just trail running in the snow and icy weather. I know that my car might not start tomorrow and that it will be a hell of a job to get it clean from the pile of snow. Just as I knew how risky it was to be outdoors in the summer heat. And yet, I truly love this all. It reminds me of all the weather variations I experienced when I was growing up and living in Europe and makes up for the “flattening out of the weather” in California.

And it makes me feel so alive!   

It’s snowing hard outside and the temperatures are dropping drammatically again before plummeting well below freezing tonight and tomorrow. Everything is coated in white and I’m glowing inside. Today I got picked up at the climbing gym. By another queer person. 

I haven’t experienced this kind of simply fun, uncomplicated mutual attraction in so much time… and with a queer person very rarely. And it feels so damn good! It would be nice if it led to “something” but it’s also fine and fun and welcome even if we just go out only once and realize it’s not going to go any further. It’s wonderful to see that this kind of thing can still happen to me. It’s really reassuring and relieving for me. And healing after all these years of complicated or impossible relationships and heartbreaks. 

I’m also reveling in the pleasant novelty of the circumstances and feelings of something like this happening to me with — I think I can safely assume — a lesbian. 

Since my own changes and shifts in gender-identity and gender-performance, since the ways I have been presenting and behaving have been changing more and more explicitly, the reactions or behaviors of the world around me have also been changing towards me. I’m no longer getting that “male gaze” that I had gotten so used to — whether I liked it or not. Within the social circles that I am mostly in, straight cis-men now seem to fall in one of two behavior groups towards me: they either (pretend to) ignore me or they connect with me more easily/spontaneously like a buddy, like one of them (this is the dynamics that I’m experiencing and loving so much with my climbing buddies). On the other hand, though, there’s a whole new world of people who seem to find me attractive and to whom I’m also more and more attracted myself: other queer persons. It’s as if my “queer radar” had gone on and I were exuding a “queer vibe”… And honestly, I don’t mind it at all. I realize that the more I’m coming into my own masculine, queer, and non-binary gender identity, the more my own “gaze” on men is changing. I’ve always interacted a lot with men, my entire life, and enjoyed it and very often sought it out. But my relationships with men have rarely been completely platonic (except for mentors, father figures, and professional situations). Whereas my exposure to, and involvement with, the queer world had always been quite limited and restricted mostly to gays and lesbians with whom my relationships were totally platonic. I have had a couple of crushes on women, which I’m pretty sure were mutual, but nothing ever came of them. Now, instead, while I still feel some kind of almost visceral or primordial physical attraction for some men or for some “types” of men, I often find myself looking at them more with a genuine and detached curiosity, wondering whom I will/would resemble thanks to my HRT — or wishing I could resemble this or that guy. Wishing I could resemble them, wishing I could look like them: not wishing I could go to bed with them. My romantic and sexual desires or curiosities are turning, instead, more in other directions, more towards queer, trans, and non-binary people. 

Before starting the medical steps of my masculinization process, some of my trans/non-binary friends who were ahead of me in these processes had warned me, “Your dating pool will very likely change”. And in fact, to be honest, that was one of the things that worried me a little: that nobody would feel attracted to me anymore or that the people to whom I usually seemed to be attracted (cis-men) would not feel physical/sexual attraction for me anymore. Now that I’m getting deeper into my masculinization process and more and more comfortable with my multi-faceted, non-conforming, queer identities and preferences, the changes in the “attraction landscape” don’t scare me as much anymore. I’m actually finding them interesting, fascinating, and in some ways very welcome. It wasn’t until today, though, with the teenager-like excitement of that mutual attraction, that I felt the sheer glee of all the new possibilities opening up to me (forgetting those that are closing down).

A good omen on Winter Solstice?!?

I had years, over three decades, to get used to my female body, to make compromises with it, to put up with it, to try and love it or, at least, appreciate it — whether I liked it or not, with a mixture of positive and toxic messages from society. 

As I was washing my hands last night, hairs that appeared a little longer, a little darker, and a little thicker than usual on the outer side of the back of my hand, from below my pinky finger towards my wrist, caught my eye. And I honestly freaked out a little. 

So far, I’ve mostly enjoyed being on testosterone these past months and HRT has been very good for me: I’ve gotten even stronger and, especially, my relationship to food and body shape/image has gotten healthy, at last, after having been unhealthy for almost two decades. However, my feelings towards the increase of body hair with testosterone have always been mixed. 

I stopped plucking my eyebrows and shaving my legs & inguinal areas long before starting HRT: those were just spontaneous actions I took as I gradually started acting more and more authentically towards myself and caring less about society’s (& partners’) opinions, which I find to be extremely biased towards body hair on women. 

Since starting HRT, changes in my body hair have been the slowest and most recent. Other changes like my voice deepening, my body getting stronger and leaner, and my sex drive increasing even more, came sooner and almost immediately. Lately, however, the changes in my body hair have been getting more and more noticeable (at least to me): the little blonde mustache above my upper-lip has been thickening; a few little hairs are appearing on my chin, although they’re so sparse and, especially, so fair as to make them hardly visible; the hairs on my shins (which have been happily growing since I stopped shaving them over two years ago) have started getting longer and a little thicker; longer, darker hairs have been making their appearance around my groin and on my upper thighs, which are definitely completely different from the short, extremely sparse and very fair, almost invisible, hairs I’ve had on my thighs my entire life until recently. I’ve been noticing these changes and registering them. Accepting them, for the time being. Not necessarily liking them but taking them in a positive sense as proof of HRT working in the direction that I’ve chosen: to uncover the boy that I feel I am. And maybe also accepting them more easily because they’re visible only to myself but not to the outer world. 

But what about these few new hairs on the back of my hand and outside of my wrist? Are they really new, or am I imagining it? Either way, they’re visible — or they might be soon enough. Do I like them? Do I like myself with them? 

I know for sure that I don’t want to turn into a hairy man. I’m neither attracted to that type nor do I see myself as one. I don’t want a hairy chest nor a hairy back. I probably won’t take HRT that far, but anyway I know that electrolysis hair removal is a viable option and until now I’ve imagined having to think about and/or deal with extra body hair as something very remote in the future. 

But what about these little hairs on the back of my hands now? 

I don’t mind hairy forearms on men. I can still picture, in my mind’s eye, the golden hairs on the forearms of one big crush of mine: they were beautiful. But they were beautiful on those forearms, on his forearms, on the forearms of a 6-foot tall, strong and athletic young man with a matching beard — someone that I had never seen or known as anything else than a (handsome) cis-male. And, I must honestly admit, the hairs on his forearms were blonde, golden: had they been just as thick but dark, I might have not liked them. 

So what about myself? Can I see myself, like myself, with hairy hands and hairy forearms? And would I like it even if those hairs turned out to be darker than expected, darker than my ideal? 

[Trigger warning: explicit language about mammogram and, especially, breasts.]

Today I had my first (& hopefully last) mammogram ever. 

I had it done three hours ago and I’m still feeling all emotional and confused about it. 

I cried a little in the clinic and wish I could cry some more now: cry more fully, more deeply, letting it all out, although I don’t know exactly what “it” would be. 

Somehow the mammogram felt more upsetting than the gynecological visit I had ten days ago. Probably because of my upcoming top-surgery and my complicated relationship with my breasts. 

I’ve never liked them. I’ve never hated or disliked them, either. I’ve always sort of ignored them or put up with them and acknowledged their presence only because of society. 

I developed relatively late and slowly so at age fourteen I was still running around without wearing a bra (& dressed in boys clothes), ignoring my small breasts that were definitely there and had gotten to a point where they could have used a bra but not enough to make it absolutely necessary. They never really got to a size that made a bra absolutely necessary. 

I started wearing bras in my second year of high school, at age fifteen, but only because of the social pressure I felt. (Same for shaving the hairs on my legs, by the way: I didn’t start shaving my legs until age seventeen, I think, and even then only because of the social pressure I felt, and I always only limited myself to shaving below the knees, never my thighs.) Social pressure coming both from the girls in my class — more directly, I think, from comments in the locker-rooms — and boys — more indirectly, I think it was the eyes I felt on me as I started realizing that I was attractive to boys. But it took me years before I really went out to buy myself bras: at first I just used hand-me-downs from my mother; and when I was left to my own devices and choices, I always instinctively went for sport bras — which anyway were more practical for me since I was an athlete already back then. 

It’s been the same as an adult: left to my own devices and choices I’ve always defaulted towards sport bras or simple, comfy bras, and then since moving to California more and more often going completely bra-less. 

When I was a teenager and in my early twenties, I got to have enough breast to benefit from using bras. But for over a dozen years now my breasts have been small enough for me to not really need a bra except for when I exercise. And since bras have always felt so uncomfortable, so constricting to me, why wear one if I don’t really need to? 

I’ve always defaulted to going topless at the beach and wearing bras as rarely as possible and as sporty and flattening as possible. It was boyfriends, and one partner in particular, who forced me into very “girly” or feminine or even “sexy” bras — something I really really hated. 

But I don’t hate my breasts — “my tiny tits”, as I call them affectionately. I came to put up with them, especially because they weren’t much of a nuisance, they didn’t “get in the way” too much, and they actually could (& still can) give me some pleasure to the touch. On the other hand, though, they’ve always felt somehow alien, extra and out of place on my chest. Which is probably why doing masculinizing top-surgery was the first “active” procedure I decided to undergo when I fully acknowledged my non-binary/trans-masculine gender identity. Once I realized that having a flat, “empty”, masculine chest was an achievable reality, it made no sense to me to have to continue putting up with “my tiny tits”. Indeed, for months now I’ve been feeling that I cannot wait to have a flat masculine chest, I cannot wait to go around bare-chested like my buddies, I cannot wait to see my fully masculine torso, my fully masculine upper-body, in the mirror. 

And yet, I know there will also be a sense of loss, at least at the beginning. And I think it was partly also that sense of loss, or a taste of it, that I felt at the mammogram clinic today. A sense of loss, almost of betrayal towards “my tiny tits”, mixed with gender-dysphoria. As I sat there in the examination room waiting for the mammogram expert to come in, I almost felt like I was doing something mean to “my tiny tits”: getting them squeezed into the mammogram machine, almost tortured, to just chuck them off in less than a month and a half. 

Also, this mammogram felt like the first real Goodbye to “my tiny tits”. When I had the visit back in August with the surgeon who will perform the masculinizing mastectomy on me, all I felt was excitement and exhilaration. And it still felt like a dream, almost unreal, probably because the actual surgery was still almost six months away. Now that the surgery is less than six weeks away, though, and that I’m getting all the balls rolling in order to get it done, now it’s really hitting me that it’s actually going to happen. 

Last Thursday I got my pre-op assessment and “green light” for the surgery from my primary care physician. Last Monday and then this past weekend I talked about it from a more practical and logistical viewpoint with two of my non-binary friends. Moreover, both my counselor last Tuesday and my non-binary friend this past weekend started to gently, nicely bring up the more emotional aspects of the upcoming procedure, poking me to think about how I’ll feel about it, what I’ll be looking forward to, and how I’m feeling about it now, in a gentle way nudging me to start preparing myself for this. To start to really think about it. 

And I agree: now, maybe just as of today because of the mammogram, I realize that a new, important emotional phase has started for me: the “pre-top-surgery” phase. Which is happening in parallel with the phase of uncovering what kind of boy I am and want to be. And I don’t think it an accidental coincidence that these two phases are coinciding…

I think that one of the biggest, or most important, phase of my “gender journey” is starting now… 

Despite my recent concerns and waking up feeling really worried and lonely yesterday, at the end I had an absolutely wonderful weekend. 

The first aspect that made it so wonderful was that I spent both days, almost wholly, in company of very good friends: a relaxing afternoon & evening going for a walk, enjoying downtown, and then chilling and chatting at my place (my housemate was away) with one of my non-binary friends on Saturday; another fun and physically strenuous (in the good, satisfying sense) adventure with one of my best climbing buddies all day today. 

This it itself would be enough to make it a lovely weekend for me. 

But there’s more. It’s not that I “just” saw and hung out with good friends and did relaxing and fun things — I’m not saying that this wouldn’t be good enough, I’m just saying that there was even more! 

Both of these friends are extremely affirming of my non-binary/trans-masculine identity, each in their own way, and both in ways that are extremely important and nurturing for me. 

Both of these people made time for me, to spend basically a whole day with me, both of them making it clear that they enjoy spending time with me as much as I do with them. 

Both of them made space for my needs, the practical/logistic ones as well as the emotional ones. I’m still afraid every time I state my needs, I’m afraid it will make people — even friends — turn away from me, so it always requires a big effort or a lot of courage for me to ask for what I need. With both of these friends this weekend I did so, worried that it might make them change their mind about making plans with me, but fortunately it didn’t. And their availability, their forthcoming generosity made me feel so heard and so held...!

For example, my non-binary friend confirmed their availability to be with me around my top-surgery and helped me brainstorm ways to coordinate with other friends and/or acquaintances in the local trans/non-binary community who could offer support. 

My climbing buddy, instead, took me ice-climbing: I had never done it before but expressed some interest when he told me about his many fun adventures ice-climbing; so he lent me not only ice-climbing gear but also extra clothes to keep me warm; he came to pick me up and drove us to a beautiful National Park. And when I said, “I might not be able to climb anything on ice”, he replied, “Oh no, I’m pretty sure you’ll love it and be great at it” — and indeed, I loved it! 

In addition, with both of these friends through in-person interactions (which are so vital for me), I had the opportunity to reconnect to, and express, some of the most important parts of my identity: my non-binary/trans-masculine identity with both of them; the roles of power, my dress-style preferences and the “hippie me” with my non-binary friend; the strong, adventurous athlete with my climbing buddy. 

Finally — last but not least — the activities and time spent with my two friends this weekend gave me proof of the recovery and good health of my respiratory system. While there undoubtedly is some real asthma (I’ve also received confirmation from several medical doctors that many people have been left with asthma after their COVID infections, i.e. it is a REAL permanent “side effect”), a lot of the chest tightness and/or shortness of breath that I often experience is due to a specific type of anxiety due to loneliness: in fact, as soon as my non-binary friend came over yesterday and we started on our walk and I was able to talk with them & listen to them, the chest tightness that I woke up with in the morning was gone; and with my buddy today, apart from climbing ice for over three hours at an altitude of 10,000 feet, we hiked in & out for a total of at least 6.5 miles with over 1,000 feet elevation gain, a lot of it in fresh snow or ice and carrying a 20-pound backpack of gear, at below-freezing temperatures, and I hardly had any shortness of breath. 

More proofs and good reminders that I don’t need a pill to keep me off anxiety or depression: I need human interaction, preferably in person and as much as possible with good, sincere friends; I need to be physically healthy so I can be physically active (& thus express the athletic, adventurous part of my identity); and I need my non-binary/trans-masculine identity to be seen, appreciated, affirmed in words and actions. 

I guess like most of us, I need to be seen, heard, and held. And I need to feel and see that I’m not always doing it all on my own.

Once again this morning I was awake at 5 o’clock and couldn’t fall back asleep — same as yesterday. What is worrying me now, and thus disrupting my early-morning sleep, is my upcoming masculinizing mastectomy. 

On the one hand, I can hardly wait to do it and can’t wait to go bare-chested at the swimming-pool and climbing outdoors as soon as I’ve healed and it’s warm enough. 

On the other hand, though, I’m also starting to get really worried for many different reasons. 

First of all, I’ve never had surgery in my life so I simply don’t know what to expect and I’m terrified of the risks/side effects. I’m also very concerned about the recovery, the forced inactivity, and what all that might entail for my (mental) health. 

Moreover, with this particularly bad flu season and COVID rampaging again and all the other illnesses going around, I’m extremely worried and afraid — reasonably — of getting sick again, which would not allow me to have my surgery at all. 

But what has been keeping me awake the past couple nights is another concern: it’s the worry of not having the support that I thought I would have for my surgery. I’m afraid that the friends on whom I was counting for practical, logistic, and emotional support might not be available or as fully available as they were a few months ago. 

When I first made the decision and started all the legal/practical procedures to get my top-surgery done, I had a solid support network of three local friends and one or two very close friends who could have come in from California: i.e. a total of five people on whom I could have counted to actually be with me, at my place, at the hospital, before, during and after surgery. On top of all my “remote” friends, of course, who are there for “online” emotional support. 

Apart from one exception, all my “remote” friends are still there and I know they will be available on the phone, via email or to video chat. But for my local friends and the two who could have flown in from California the situation has changed and for different reasons none of them will be able to actually come and stay with me before, during, or after my surgery. And I haven’t found anyone who will be able to do so. I don’t even know who will drive me home from the hospital after the surgery — which is something I absolutely have to figure out because I won’t be allowed to drive myself home after the general anesthesia. 

There’s two aspects of all this that is keeping me awake in the wee hours. 

One is practical: who will drive me to and back from the hospital on the day of the surgery? Who will help me with the practical things like food and lifting things around the house in the first, hardest days of recovery (when my housemate will be away on vacation)? Who will stay for the night after the surgery to make sure I’m okay?    

The other is emotional: how can I have failed to have a support network around me? How can I have failed at this once again? How can that support network that appeared to be present a few months ago have disappeared now? What did I do wrong? What do I do wrong, time and again, when it comes to close relationships? Or maybe it’s simply one question — the same old problem of mine: I do have plenty of wonderful, loving, supportive friends; but each and all of them have other more important things and/or persons in their life, other things and/or persons that they have to prioritize ahead of me: they have their own families, jobs from which they cannot take time off (or from which they understandably don’t want to take time off for my surgery), or their own issues and struggles. For each and all of them there is something/someone else before me. Understandably so because that’s how they have built their lives, based on their choices, and how I’ve built my life based on my own choices. 

But this lack of support for my surgery now brings back the question to me: have I been making the “wrong choices”? Where do I keep failing at close relationships?  

(And of course I have similar worries for the upcoming holidays, too, in particular for New Year’s which means so much to me, but those worries are “just” emotional, not practical.)