A Poem, and Thoughts on Waiting

cw: this post contains mentions of self-harm ideation.

TO THOSE WHO HAVE ALREADY HAD TOP SURGERY
a response to KB Brookins’ poem

today there is a deep ache edging on nausea
sitting heavy somewhere between my heart and stomach.
today i cannot watch certain shows that i otherwise love
because that ache turns into a consuming pain
that i cannot ease with, what was it, “a
marketplace of self-alteration”—in this case
binders and hormones and haircuts.
in fact, i started hormones after the first setback (or
maybe the third or fourth, depending on
which way you count), but that doesn’t make the
raw and burning pain, buried deep, fizzle away;
the rottenness swelling in my abdomen and the
sickly, oozing inflammation expanding my chest
remain, grow. no, today
i am living my life, safe in my body—for i am
making it my own even when i
feel it has betrayed me—and yet yearning for more,
unable to grasp that more-ness because of illness and lack of funds,
a hope smashed by mundanity, bureaucracy.
today i need a poem that acknowledges my pain,
not empty words painting an image of
a future that i fear, increasingly, is impossible.

KB Brookins’ poem “To Those Awaiting Top Surgery” appeared on my Instagram feed a few months back, and I remain haunted by it. Perhaps the timing was some potent antonym of serendipity; perhaps it was around the time when I had to decide whether to cancel the top surgery portion of my gender-affirming surgery, or shortly after I made that decision because I felt financially unstable (grocery prices skyrocketing, rent teetering upward), mentally unstable (OCD flare-up that finally led to a medication that helps, somewhat), politically unstable (increasing proposals and passages of anti-trans laws in my country and region).

But whatever the specific circumstances of my own life, reading that poem felt like hell. I know all of that stuff; I know glasses and shapewear are body modification, and as a result, the poem leaves me saying, “So what?” Those kinds of affirmations and validations don’t offer the soothing salve I need and that only surgery can apply. And then, last week after I had to postpone my surgery due to illness, I experienced a ferocious and distracting and downright terrifying urge to self-harm. (Please be assured that I did not hurt myself; I am safe. My partner and my cat both helped me get through and to a healthier and safer mindset.)

Two months minimum of wait time.

It felt like a death sentence to hear a late July date spoken across the phone line when I called to reschedule. I scrambled and schemed—maybe I could xyz—but in the end that was futile, and now all that’s left is to wait. I have been waiting for this procedure since September 2023 when I scheduled my first surgery consultation. But also, I have been waiting since before September 2023, since the fall of Roe v. Wade made me seriously consider sterilization, since the growth of my chest in middle school, since my menarche, since that day in third grade when I first learned about what it means for someone with a body like mine to become a grown-up. I didn’t know these surgeries and treatments were possible, at the time, yet even then I was still waiting.

So for someone else—whose stars aligned much sooner and more efficiently than mine—to try to ease that pain and longing by tossing out some vapid affirmations and then concluding that I will forget what I now feel, as if such oblivion would be a comfort to my current turmoil?

No. No, I hope to god and Satan, I hope to my dead childhood pets whose bones are slowly crumbling into dirt, I hope to the heron fishing in the river down the road that I never, ever forget my impending “rebirth.” I yearn for it. I need it. And I will remain grateful to everyone who helps deliver me into it—

and I will also remain angry at the systems and politicians and overworked humans living like automatons who all put up obstacles, obstacle after obstacle, intentional and not, for me and countless others to navigate in order to arrive at our rebirth—rebirth?

Liberation.

Mental health helplines and resources that will not contact the police can be found here.