I just want to recount the changes in my dysphoria after surgery because it's interesting how it developed. And also because writing about it will let me blow off some steam.
Before surgery I frequently read that for some, bottom dysphoria (or hip dysphoria) gets worse after top surgery. I hoped that wouldn't be the case for me because I already hated the area with a fervor.
For me, in the first weeks after top surgery, I was too tired to give a (....). My body required all the energy to recuperate. Once I started feeling better, and I gradually eased back into my normal rythm, I found that I had no dysphoria.
The feeling of having achieved (more) masculinity and in some ways having "defeated" * the presence of feminine attributes, gave me a stability and confidence that allowed me to not mind the thing over there, even accept it and its ways temporarily.
I'm now back to my old dysphoria, and it isn't worse, but it is now The Thing that claims all my attention, and in those terms yes it's worse. I can easily see my life starting to revolve around it and having it removed - dealing with it'll require nerves of steel.
Then again, once I had my chest removed, it pretty much felt as though it had never been there in the first place, and my entire history of dysphoria had never happened.
* I like to phrase the relationship between me and my body in an epic, knight-beats-dragon kind of way, much like Don Quijote believed in the glory of his fight against the windmills.
