Yes, post-op life. I had it all figured out after SRS. I first saw myself naked in the full-length mirror and cried with so much relief and happiness it surprised me. Then came the mechanics of post-op maintenance. The dilating. The dilating. The dilating. I got myself a vibrator to make it more interesting because wow, nothing kills an afternoon like sticking a cold dead unyielding piece of plastic into your snooch!
But it got better. Sensation returned in fits and starts, and sometimes painfully, like having needles jabbed into me. Not a great experience when driving on the highway, I can tell you! My HRT actually got more effective, no longer having to fight against the yarbles. (I hope my euphemisms aren't offending anyone.) My boobs kept growing. My hips rounded more, and my fat distribution began to shift more quickly into preferred areas. I'd dieted diligently for years so I was pretty slim, at least for me. Enough of my hair had not waved goodbye that I could grow it out. And I had an excellent and very experienced electrologist who treated my skin kindly while zapping those wires, leaving me peachfuzz. So I passed pretty well, at least visually. I was still in my awkward colt phase in terms of movement. And my voice was barely passable and helped by my appearance. (The phone was not so easy.)
I had in effect been fired from my job where I transitioned (after being told that "of course" there would be no problem). And I was no Laura Jane Grace, but I was in a garage band and got unceremoniously kicked out of that by the guy with the pierced nipples and the other guy with (I was told earlier) a Prince Albert piercing. "Our fans couldn't handle it." That, and the fact that out of some 70 or 80 friends I came out to, I received two mocking replies (with quips about going clothes shopping) and one sincere inquiry and otherwise complete radio silence, meant that I was moving into post-op life with very little connection with my prior life. Oh, that was so painful at the time, but I tell you, that was a blessing because it opened an entirely new life to me, not a life of transition (which itself was a liberation from pre-transition hiding), but the life of a "normal" woman.
And I found that I really wanted to start dating. And I found I was profoundly attracted to men! That had NEVER been the case before. My orientation flipped with my gender morphology. (That happens to a lot of us. I think the idea makes some people uncomfortable. If it happens to you, you probably don't want to tell any guys you knew before. There's a fair chance some will get fairly creeped out reimagining innocent buddy times of the past into encounters with salacious desires.)
I got onto a dating site. I dated some guys. I hooked up with one. And we had sex. And that opened a new world to me. It was something I'd fantasized about (always me as the woman, so it was never something that bled into when my body was all wrong) but the reality was something else. Then I figured I had crossed the threshold of post-op womanhood. (And no, I did not disclose to any of these guys.) I also was date raped. Another threshold for womanhood. I was a feminist before, but now I felt it in my gut. I was the angry feminist. I still am, but the anger doesn't own me anymore.
I'd been told that you don't really know what post-op life is about until five years after. That was true partially. When you live day to day never even thinking about trans stuff or that traumatic pre-transition past, it changes you. Or it changed me. It helped me heal. And I needed healing. (Don't we all?) Just living a normal life—normal in not being burdened by that awful weight, that horrific pain, that desperate despair just from being in the wrong body, the wrong role, the wrong reality. I found new work, met hundreds of new people, made some new friends, all just as another woman with opinions and an inner strength that comes from having survived a horror that I would never wish upon my worst enemy.
And with more years comes more healing. More perspective. And as the worst pains fade and scars heal, you start to notice more subtle ones, the ones that were obscured. (The old joke: One person says their foot hurts. The other person hits them on the head with a stick. "What did you do that for?" the first one demands. The other answers, "You're not thinking about your sore foot anymore, are you?") And I'm coming into work dealing with my ->-bleeped-<- having to do with having been so damaged mentally and emotionally all those years, my bad habits and self-defeating thinking that were conditioned into me when I was trying to cope pre-transition.
And then, just this year, I read a couple of trans novels that had me in tears and I was finally able to grieve for the life not lived, for the loss of never having lived a cis life at all, for how that nearly broke me, and how much remedial work I'm having to do on myself just to try to catch up somewhat. (And I'm talking all inner stuff, mindfulness stuff, spiritual stuff, setting aside of the effects of having a sledgehammer taken to my career and friendships and most of my family.)
So life after transition? For me, it's been finding ways to heal. Finding ways to be a better person. Finding ways to reach out beyond my own pain and truly see others. And you know what? So many people are damaged, not just people with a trans background. Cruelties have been visited upon everyone around us, and they are hurting, too, in their own ways, and maybe that's why so many have a hard time seeing us.
I'm going to stop here. This is only my second post. (My first was in the Introductions board.) I'm glad to be here and "meet" you all.
Amy
