Post-SRS adjustment? That was an exciting time for me (back when the earth was cooling LOL!).
I had been fighting tooth and nail from about age 14, first to convince my mum (or anyone!) that I needed medical help, then struggled for years to find that help. The first stage was to get someone to believe me (that I WAS a girl) and not lock me up for being delusional or shoot me up with testosterone to "make a man of me". I lived part time en femme through my teens, enough to know that I was WAY more comfortable there but not enough to really know who I was. In one's late teens, sexuality comes into play and I was totally stymied in that regard because of my deformity. I found a doctor who prescribed HRT at 17 but SRS didn't become possible until I was 24 and I spent the last few years in deep depression and on the verge of suicide. Even when SRS suddenly became available, getting there was like an adventure story, what with being disowned and thrown out on my own, bad weather, troubles crossing international borders, and so forth! It all hung by a thread right up to the pre-surgery interview with the doctor (where he would say yes or no to doing the surgery). When the anaesthesiologist put the mask over my face, all I could think of was "It's over. One way or another, it is over."
When I woke up from surgery and realized it was complete, all I felt was a tremendous sense of peace! My life was finally my own. After a decade of fighting and clawing, of scheming and planning, of trying to find an opening in the fence, I was free - I had been liberated from Auschwitz!
At 24 and "newly minted" I
knew that I knew nothing of life, that I knew next to nothing about who I was, and that I knew little about actually
BEING a girl. I was, for all practical purposes, a 12 year old. I thought that the momentum of a decade-long struggle might be a problem, but it wasn't. I was quite content to just enjoy my freedom and let life unfold as it would while I grew up, discovered who I was, and let circumstances show me who I was becoming without having any specific goal(s).
The first two years were quite remarkable! Having surrounded myself with female friends I found I just naturally slipped into womanhood as easily and comfortably as an old slipper
and I began to realize who I was as a person, someone remarkably DIFFERENT than I had ever suspected. I became the polar opposite of everything I had been: from solitary to gregarious, from reserved to outgoing, from solemn to funny, from serious to mischievous, from shy to brash - EVERYTHING changed. I looked at myself one day and realized that I had far exceeded even my wildest dreams about WHO I could become - and it all came from "letting go". I didn't plan any of those changes, I wasn't even conscious of changing - I just let go and then sat back in amazement at how MUCH I changed. From a lifetime of severely negative self-image I became very proud of who I had become. The transition was remarkable! As much as I thought "I must be a girl" before surgery, I didn't know for sure but with the transformation there was no doubt about it.
It would not have mattered how much I had lived en femme before surgery, I could NOT have become completely myself as long as I was deformed. After surgery, I KNEW I was a girl, I was complete, no question about it. The missing part (being female) became reality and the rest was just growing up. The most astounding thing (aside from the polar shift in personality) was how FAST it happened. Within the first two year, the concept of ever having been otherwise was totally unfathomable and no one would have believed it. Many women commented and said how much they admired me and how they wish they could be like me ..... they had
NO IDEA!
