TagazielWriting always helps me compose myself and today, well... The past two weeks have been a hell of a ride. Eurofurence is one thing. The second is lining up the first step in surgical gender affirmation. As I appear to be unable to do anything in a prepared, well-organized manner that's easy on the nerves, I got to pick appointment dates in the middle of Eurofurence, sitting in the CCH front yard, then over the past four days we were lining up the financing. I was anxious, as anyone following me may recall, but we managed to keep everything travel-wise under control.
That was yesterday. Today I hoped to focus on work to keep my mind off things, but veered into Facebook, whose algorithm "helpfully" served me a post from my father, sharing one of the most common and hateful jokes about queers (basically, bearded guy in a dress as a children's teacher, funniest shit ever, I can provide the original on request). Something broke in me, because I held out the dimmest, faintest hope there might be something salvageable about my family. But if, after two years, knowing full well you have a trans daughter married to a most wonderful queer woman that's the shit you share... I realized that I hoped in vain. I broke down. I'm still coming to terms with the realization that I come from a family full of domestic violence, but I had yet to realize that they will not listen. I won't, ever, get through. I broke down again.
This time the realization might actually stick.
Then I started to worry that any delays in financing might cause me to lose the booked orchi slot. You know, that primal, low-level dread that something will go wrong, a fist clenching around your guts and twisting them, rubbing against a panic? I jumped at every phone notification, managing to get only a little bit of work done. At least two times I had to dump electronics and go to the opposite side of the flat, sitting on the floor to avoid a full-out panic attack I have not had in ten years. Then we get an email that our insurer has pre-approved 100% of the surgery costs and asks for the contact details to the hospital/clinic.
I help my Tigress compose email replies. It's hard to do when your hands are shaking and you're crying because of the tension experienced for the whole day. Now we're waiting for final confirmation on both sides, with twenty-six days to go, and once I have that, I guess I'll collapse in bed and finally have some rest.
Someone might wonder why this was so emotionally intense for me, why this surgery has taken on such meaning. It has surprised me as well, but writing helped me narrow it down. I'm not a spiritual person, not in the usual sense, but I believe in the power of stories - and nobody's story is more important than your own. This is the final push at the end of a year of tremendous change, a coda following all that transpired, and more challenges and fears overcome than I thought possible. Like a Trial of Grasses. Something ends, something else, something beautiful begins.
Why beautiful? My mother is a medical doctor. While I joke about how that should be another ICD code, for much of my life things were done to me. I was a slab of meat, at best, livestock to be fixed up. Even as an adult, things were dictated by what happened to me previously. Now I'm deciding for myself, reclaimed my agency. And once everything is lined up, I'll be breaking the last tie to who I was, focusing on who I am and who I'll be.
The only way is forward.
TechnoTenshi 
MerlinMystique