Waiting Mode

CW: talk of top surgery

I have spent so much time waiting.

I often do this thing where if I have an appointment later in the day, I cannot get myself to do anything but wait for that time to arrive. I call this feeling, where I can’t move on to the next thing because I know something else is coming, Waiting Mode.

When I received my surgery date, I entered a type of Waiting Mode. Once I knew it was actually going to happen, there were activities that I couldn’t get through. I began to lean on the fact that someday I wouldn’t have to just push through tasks uncomfortably. Somewhat subconsciously, I decided to wait until I was comfortable.

I felt it the most when opportunities to swim came up this summer. The feeling of water soaking the tank top I would wear with my swim trunks became my personal hell. Instead of wanting to spend my time at the beach in the water, I focused more on walking the shoreline looking for rocks. I would simply wait to swim. I would get there eventually.

It became easy to recognize that I had been in waiting mode when part of it ended.

The realization was gradual, beginning the moment I opened my eyes in the surgery recovery area of the hospital. I was groggy from anesthesia and immediately in pain, but I could already feel how different my body was. My heart rate accelerated. It was a moment of release and relief. It was also terrifying.

For Christmas, I was given We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan. The other night, while reading in bed, I found myself at the entries written about Lou’s top surgery experience in the early 80s. Lou describes the change as “coming out of a fog”, saying “I look so good, I’m still in a dream.” He repeats his disbelief through several entries, though quickly begins to feel content in his body. As he adjusts to the change, he muses about being shirtless in his apartment and with a lovers. The euphoria he felt is so clearly described, and it’s impossible not to feel happy along with him.

I have been reading this book at night while lying in bed shirtless. As I read, I hold the book against my skin, pressing it against my stomach. As I turn the pages, I feel the sharp edges of the paper brush across my upper abdomen.

There are so many moments now that are ordinary and extraordinary at the same time.

In the forward of We Both Laughed in Pleasure, Susan Stryker highlights a part of Lou’s diary written at age 13 where he says “I wanna look like what I am but don’t know what someone like me looks like. I mean, when people look at me I want them to think — there’s one of those people…that has their own interpretation of happiness. That’s what I am.” She goes on to say those words have stayed with her for decades and she has “still found no better way of expressing what it means to be trans.”

I am no longer waiting to become one of those people. I am no longer waiting for my body to feel the way I have always desired. I have arrived at a type of alignment. I look like what I am, even though I didn’t know until now what someone like me looks like.

I have cleared out some mental space that I didn’t have before. Over the month I was recovering, I began to feel it. Slowly, I gained room where it was lacking before, and I found myself able to think more clearly. And best of all, I felt at peace.

It hasn’t been easy. It wasn’t as if I was able to see this right away. The recovery post-surgery was hard mentally and physically, which is something I didn’t really see reflected in Lou’s entries.

I read about a lot of people’s surgery experiences before my own but it did not fully prepare me for my experience. I’ve wondered if it’s that we all want to protect each other from knowing the hard parts. Most stories I’ve read are only the best moments, intending to inspire and provide hope to whoever might be reading. It was helpful to read those stories because I was less afraid going in, but I think it would have helped me to have known more of the hard parts.

I want you to know that I struggled. From the physical pain I felt to the mind/body disconnect that I experienced up until recently, I did not find it to be easy. I didn’t have that moment where the bandage came off and I was immediately free. At that moment, I was struggling not to pass out or have a panic attack. I didn’t burst into tears when I looked in the mirror for the first time like every trans* depiction in a reality show. I just feel like me. It simultaneously feels like a big thing to celebrate while being an average thing about me. Does that make sense? Of course this has changed my life and it is my chest, the one I’ve always known, looking the way it once did before puberty. It isn’t unfamiliar. I have the same nipples and the same skin. These are all parts of me modified and rearranged. It is ordinary and extraordinary all at once.

I went through all of the waiting to come out of it into the unknown. I have things I’d like to do and places I’d like to go, but I still don’t fully know what life looks like on the other side of this dysphoria that I have known for at least the last 13 years.

Right now it feels like I’m standing on one side of the water and I get to cross the bridge soon. I don’t know what is on the other side. I can see some trees but that path could go anywhere and I am noticing that the forest is on fire behind me. There is no turning around, only going forward. Only moving on.

Reading Lou’s diary, my first book of 2022, I find myself less scared of what comes next. There is a moment in Lou’s entries, where he is camping and sees who he assumes are a group of gay men sunbathing at the campsite beside his. He writes, “I thought — we have always been here. I always wondered where we were.”

I am not the first person to go into this version of the unknown. I am also not the last. I can walk forward, there are people waiting on the other side, ready to greet me. They have been there and they crossed over the bridge, too. There is no reason to wait.

“I was so obviously beautiful, laying there… I took special pleasure in being alone… I was beautiful and alone and sexy and happy.” — Lou Sullivan