Continuiing to read my old diaries, I am up to the first entry after my surgery. It marks an important milestone: the end of body dysmorphia.
Wednesday, January 28, 1998
On Monday, January 19, 1998, I was reborn – I finally had the surgery and the old male genitalia are gone and replaced with what is, at least to appearances, female genitalia.
It’s about time!
It’s been such a long journey getting to this point, and at first I didn’t really react. Perhaps it was the pain medication which kept me mostly asleep and drowsy while I was in the hospital over the next few days (until Friday), but I never even thought to look at myself in the mirror to see what I looked like, although if I had looked at that point all I would have seen would have been the outer bandages.
Those were removed on Friday when I returned to the residence, but it wasn’t until Saturday that I actually looked at myself in the mirror for the first time. The stent was still in and the vagina sewn shut, but I could see the vulva at least (extremely swollen) and my reaction was more of a non-reaction – “It’s just me”.
“It’s just me.” For the first time ever in my life, I saw my naked reflection in a mirror and recognized it as being me and only me with no qualifications. Always before that I saw someone I didn’t recognize as myself, or I saw me, but with an alien Thing dangling between my legs like some sort of parasite feeding off my body. But the Thing was gone. There was nothing alien about my body any more. It looked right and it felt right, a feeling I’d never known before.
I was surprised at not being more emotional in my reaction. It seems like I should have been experiencing ecstasy at that moment, but instead I had a brand new feeling: normalcy.
“It’s just me”
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