and still

I don't know if it's happening with the coming of the spring, or as a natural next step, or if it's just on some kind of cycle, but the urgency of my transition is intensifying again, like it did last spring. Lat spring was the first period of intensity, when things started looming larger and more intense than ever before, and seeming to speed up, and becoming un-ignorable. If that's a word. Which it's not.

In some ways, that intensity never died down, and it's what has propelled me through the last half year or so. The need for change finally overcame the inertia of fear- reached escape velocity, if you will- and has been maintaining that speed for a while. Except now I feel a subtle acceleration once again, and I'm wondering what that means for me.

It's been very subtle, but definite. I'm being vague, I know, I can't really explain better except perhaps through examples of its manifestation. Like last week, when Amy called in sick and cancelled our therapy, and one of my first thoughts was about how that was going to impact my 16 session minimum for starting T on March 20th.

Woah there, turbo. Since when have I been counting the days til I could start T? Sure, I've been greatly anticipating the start of my puberty, but in an abstract, general sense, greatly tempered with streaks of nervousness and uncertainty and non-committment. But last week was the moment of "oh. I really really want this, and I've got it in my head that I'm going to on March 20th, despite what I've been telling people about 'still deciding' and 'talking to the doctor next week' and 'well, i've been thinking maybe I might possibly start hormones sometime soon.'

so, uh, wow. It feels good to have my mind made up, but it scares me like hell, too. It's okay to be scared, right? Isn't it normal for boys to be scared of puberty? Isn't that why they even have those "what's happening to my body?" books? I only ever read the girl version, though.

and chest surgery is feeling more and more important, and I'm getting more and more impatient. Because what if I can't get the money together for this summer? What if I have to wait, til Thanksgiving, or next summer? That didn't seem like such a big deal until recently, but now that I've got the possibility within my reach, the prospect of not being able to do it after all is downright scary.

Spent this morning trying to cull information online about Dr. Ngyuen, the SRS guy in Portland. He does mostly MTF, but I found a few folks who say he does real good FTM top surgery, too. Can only find one not very helpful picture, though. Hopefully some of those guys from the Yahoo surgeryinfo group will write me back, because if he does good work it'd be real nice to be able to be in Portland and not have to travel to CA. Plus, the few mentions of him say that he does a pedicle technique that preserves nipple sensation which, hey, sounds pretty good. I wish I could see some more pictures so I could have a sense of how the scarring turns out. I'm banking on being able to build enough muscle and grow enough chest hair to help ameliorate the visual impact of my scars, but it wouldn't be a bad thing if they were small and well placed.

*sigh*

This is all tied into some of the major things that the group brought up for me last week, about what does it mean to be trans. I have these not at all well formed but enormous and crucial thoughts about being trans and the body, how it's a body thing as much as anything else, and how I didn't start really feeling urgent about this until I grew uncomfortable with my body, and now the urgency tends to manifest itself mostly through body dysphoric feelings.

The academic in me wants to deconstruct it all (the "body") and part of me wants to figure out where this is all coming from, what's it rooted in, and part of me is terrified that no matter what I do, it'll never be enough, I'll always be busted, and then part of me is perpetually uncomfortably surprised at how strong my dislike is for [parts of] myself, and...and. I don't know. This entry is veering away from what I wanted this blog to be (a space for my brain to gnaw and worry at the gender thoughts in my brain in an articulate, focused fashion) and into (dare I say it) emo, spill-yer-guts territory. Which, that persistant self-aware part of my brain is piping up, is totally valid. But I should probably stop here nonetheless.