For me, there came a time when such thoughts ceased.
It was a couple years after SRS. I was (and still am) practicing non-disclosure, and I was a couple years into a long-term romantic relationship. Now, mind you, there were certainly times in that interval where I was distracted enough, as someone else put it, that I wasn't thinking about what I'd accomplished. (And there were times, lying in bed, exhausted from lovemaking and full of endorphins, where I couldn't think about anything.) But then I'd be driving somewhere, or out walking, or even in the midst of conversation, and this second line of thought would thread its way through my consciousness and start wondering about whether this was all real, was it really happening, and what would occur if disclosure suddenly happened, stuff like that.
But anyways, it was after a couple years, getting deep into my new life, and something like an entire week had gone by where I didn't have such thoughts. I was just a woman moving on. And I know it was an entire week, because I had a weekly lunch date with another woman of transition (whom I've called "Raquel Welch" elsewhere on the boards, because she was such a beauty) and it was so strange, we were halfway through our Chinese takeaway, sitting out in a park, when the realization suddenly struck me. She too, by the way, had had such experiences as well, though at the time it hadn't been for as long as a week straight, because she was still at her same place of employment as when she'd transitioned and such environments are too rife with triggers.
I tell you, over the years, living a woman's life and not actually getting into regular conversations about things like transition, it creates distance. I've gone years and years without thinking about it. And now, when I do think of it (and I've been thinking about it a lot the last few months, since coming back to the boards), it's with a kind of detachment, as if I'm looking back at the life of someone completely different. Someone who isn't me. It's kind of like the faded memories of surgery, and recovering from that very specific pain. I know it happened, I remember it, but I don't feel it anymore. There isn't anything resembling dysphoria from those memories.
But then, so many of my memories have already changed. A process I'm happy to let continue.
