Sunday, February 28, 2016

Top Surgery LOG Day 1 & 2

POST OP DAY I: A Reflective Sleeping fish
Feb 13, 2016 12:00:06 PM.jpg

Relaxing into it

The night before my double mastectomy ( with so-called “chest masculinization”) was a night of broken sleep and future reflections. I lay in the bed of an AIRBNB studio we found in a municipality of Denver, called Lakewood, Colorado. By “we” I refer to myself and the incredible feminine soul I call my friend, lover and, sometimes, “baby lady”. Her name is Megan Joy. She lays next to me, her body warm, heavy, and golden with attempted rest. I don’t sleep much, but feel at ease and in a surrendered state to the impending surgery. A mexican prayer candle of the Virgin d’Guadalupe blankets the room with her light and her strength. I watched the light dance on the cream walls around our cocoon and release myself of all my old ways, making room for the newness that whispers to me from a mere six hours away. I breathe into my chest, which still holds gently two docile mounds of mammary tissue and fat. I imagine what my life post-knife feels like. I calmly anticipate and accept the pain and constriction that only time (and a good surgeon) will afford this chest.



As I sit here now, post-surgery fatigue curling all around me, I can admit that my intimations of the future were pretty spot on. The pain is mostly dull and low, prickling here and there as skin tissues reach forward to reunite with their fellow kin. The constriction from the bandages is so similar to the chest binding I have implemented for over a year that the tightness feels reassuring and protective. I find myself now, a sleepy and well-wrapped Piscean blob, absorbed wholeheartedly into the couch and gingerly typing this here record. I feel, succinctly, reborn.



It all reminds me of this wonderful song by Antony and the Johnsons:

One day I'll grow up, I'll be a beautiful woman.

One day I'll grow up, I'll be a beautiful girl.



But for today I am a child, for today I am a boy.

For today I am a child, for today I am a boy.



One day I'll grow up, of this I'm sure.

One day I'll grow up, I know whom within me.

One day I'll grow up, feel it full and pure.



But for today I am a child, for today I am a boy.

For today I am a child, for today I am a boy.



POST OP DAY II: Water Purifies and Cleanses  ▽

Family and All that it Evokes

My parents and brothers came in for the first two days to see me after surgery. I was both thankful for this gesture and overwhelmed at the idea of navigating their energy after such a tremendous opening. I felt sweet and soft and sugary after top surgery. I felt feminine in this bizarrely ironic way. I knew a Truth in a way of perfect clairvoyance... that this surgical intrusion, this incision and removal of the mounds that marked “Womanhood” for so many, had released pain for me of 10 long years. The irreversible visit into the dark tunnel of the OR  had broken me into an unlikely wholeness. Now, it was strange and awkward to interact with my family. I felt starkly different, surrendered to my pain and the delicious release that that pain marked. My family was all very much themselves, loud and boisterous and masculine-minded like so much of society is taught to be.

And here I am, cut wide open to release so-called feminine body markers, and I feel the most tender and sweet and relaxed I’ve ever been. I feel feminine, and what’s even more profound: I feel the infinitely penetrable depths of feminine strength. Strength in pain, strength in vulnerability. Such strength in breathing, pulling inward and surrendering to the every moment. To respond instead of to react. And now my family comes for support, and they are all subtly dumbfounded by me. I know I feel different to them, they’ve smelled the tweak in my disposition. And it’s not because I’m a wounded animal. Its that I’m a wounded healer. I’m stepping into a mysterious sense of Grace; and surgery was a spiralling staircase I knew necessary for my ascension. I simultaneously ascend up into the higher parts of myself, the ones cleansed of fear, as well as ground down into my earth--my body, this vessel of mine that I know to be magic. I disdained this holiness for so long, and know I come to cherish it in this soft motherly way. I am quietly and wisely rejoicing this event. As much as I anticipated the actual physicality of surgery, I could not have previously comprehended this incredible sense of gentle freedom that pervades my being. I am so proud of who I am. Never before have I known this with such transparent honesty. And neither has my family.

As I change in ways that disrupt and even destroy my daily persona, as I travel into my subconscious and even poke around the edges of my unconscious, I affect those close to me. I reflect for them the places where they are afraid to go inside themselves. The fear of being one’s authentic self is perhaps the greatest fear we as humans grapple with. Top surgery was a physical manifestation of a larger hidden journey of my soul. Landing outside of the gender binary is a small but important part of my soul’s purpose. Teaching others by example that it is okay to be soft, vulnerable, and loving is my soul’s desire. Because of this, I do not fear the feminine, as many assume of those who seek top surgery. I have cleared the way for my feminine, taken great and sometimes calculated risks to reach her, and believe in her energy as she heals my broken-to-wholeness body. I do not fear her. I know, resolutely, that the feminine is the future.


That which is Feminine appears inside all bodies of all expressions, and does  not demand any constricting labels to satisfy her. She is within all of us, regardless of our self-definitions and personal stories. Her gentle power sits inside all of us, often dormant but with patience unsurpassable. She can work through all of us; be gentle and kind and open us up to ourselves. This feminine nature will heal a sickly world of fear-based limitations, spawned from of a false sense of control. The collective schizophrenia brought about by a masculine imbalance of “do, do, do” “make, make, make” “conquer, conquer, conquer” will dissolve under the warmth of her embrace. I reclaim the feminine. I reclaim love over fear. I reclaim my body.   

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