Friday night, midnight. And what am I doing? Writing. Because I’m so anxious, so excited and nervous and my mind can’t stop thinking but can’t focus either. I’m wired. So I’ll take this opportunity to let it out. I’d be going all over this in my mind anyway, while attempting to fall asleep, in vain. I have a huge headache from all the anxiety. I’m shaking, getting hot flashes, cold sweats. My sleep has been deprived all week, yet it would be impossible for my brain to turn off right now.

Time for Lasts

Today was my last day at work for a little while – I’ll be working remotely, but I won’t be in the office for at least two weeks, maybe three. My last day at work with boobies. It felt monumental, like something I should write down. It almost felt like when high school graduation was approaching – you start counting your lasts. My last week. My last physics class. My last homework assignment. My last test. Then you turn your head and it’s over. Fast forward to a few years and it’s waaaaay over, and you hardly remember any of those moments, how you felt or what you were thinking. There’s a vague inkling in the back of your brain, stored somewhere but too faded to distinguish. That’s how I’m going to feel about all of this in a few years, and that’s why I’m writing it down.

What was there before?

Last night I was discussing with my significant other how I don’t really remember the days before the confusion. Or even during the confusion. Clearly through confusion I have been. However, once you know something, you can’t un-know it. So my pre-trans-knowledge days are fuzzy. My pre-asexual days are long long gone, seeming so childish, like a youthful memory where one was barely gaining consciousness of the world. You don’t remember anything of the times before you could remember something (your pre-conscious days). Every time I make a discovery, it’s like a re-birth. Every conclusion makes me gain consciousness of something while crippling my memory of pre-conscious days, as if those memories had never formed in the first place.

What is there now?

I am thinking of everything and nothing. The anxiety has been mostly slipping through my unconscious, slowly seeping into aspects of my life, subtly affecting my sleep, my concentration, my procrastination. Curiously enough though, the surgery itself has not been consuming my thoughts. I have been a frantic, last minute search for any information I can find. Desperately I’ve sifted through dozens of transgender related blogs, trying to find someone out there, something that can quell this thirst for… for what? I don’t know for what, but I’m information hungry and my brain feels it. My interests have been newly awakened, again, but this time with more force.

The Hunger

It’s probable that, for the first time, I feel a need to connect to someone. I’ve sifted through forums online, forming an indirect conversation with anonymous avatars. Usually I end up too put off to comment, the conversation has de-railed into something irrelevant, and/or there’s really nothing new being said. Reading blogs is mostly a one way conversation – I can’t up and ask the blogger something about how they feel, then get a response, and do a nice back and forth, like a real tete-a-tete. I can only hope that they will post something today, now!, that I’ll read it, and I’ll feel satiated. Except I don’t. I want to reach out and say, hey, I’m like you, sort of, let’s talk! I want to ask questions for which I don’t know the answer, and they might or might not, but at least we can commiserate in our misery of the unknown, or celebrate in the euphoria of a eureka.

As desperate as this may seem, I do in fact have real people to talk to. I have my significant other, whom I trust with every single molecular thought that crosses my brain. But it’s not the same, because I’m transgender, she is not. And while she can read my mind, well.. that’s exactly the problem. After a while we have a limited experience (my experience mostly) and there’s only so much we can know and learn by just talking between us. So there’s this unfulfilled need of mine to talk to someone about this, someone other than me and my other me (that’s why she’s my significant other).

Let it out

If you feel this way in any way, take a moment to email me. Say anything. In fact, here’s a template: “Hi! I’m bla bla (real or fake name). I read what you wrote on your blog, and you told me to contact you, so I am. [disclose as much information as you’d like]. I really don’t know what else to say, but that’s that. [And then ask me any questions if you’d like. Really, anything]”. Of course, nobody really reads this blog anyway, except my significant other, and as I mentioned, we already talk to each other too much as it is.

Time for Firsts

And as my body approaches its last days as a fully featured female, I will begin to encounter my first firsts. My first time in surgery. My first time seeing my chest. My first time taking off my shirt. My first time of feeling rid of this burden that has haunted me throughout the years. My first time feeling like a big weight has been taken off my chest. What does that feel like? I’m about to find out, and I can’t wait.