When I saw the endocrinologist, he was alarmed that I listed lithium (a mood stabilizer) as a medication I took. I explained that I had mood swings (I would later be diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder) but that I had full consent from everyone to begin hormones. He was uncomfortable and wanted letters from my parents and psychiatrist, but ignored these when submitted. When I asked him about hormone blockers, he told me at my age, this would be pointless as I had already undergone female puberty.
I spent the next year continuing to save all my spare change and every dollar I received. Some time during this period, I dragged my mother to the probate judge to change my legal name. She sat there, looking desolate and defeated as I assured the judge that she fully consented. He told me he could not in good faith assist a minor attempting to change her sex.
A few days after turning 18, I returned to the endocrinologist, having never seen the gender therapist past that first appointment. On the basis of informed consent, he "could not" and did not turn me down. Did I understand the medical risks of what I was doing? Sort of. All of the side effects meant nothing to me because I had been told online that the alternative was a life of misery and eventual inevitable suicide.
I left with a prescription that I filled that day, and over a few months the changes began. The taunting at school even stopped as the bullies who mocked me suddenly heard my voice crack and drop and saw facial hair sprouting. I was still binding my chest, sometimes with very frilly/cutesy custom-made binders (a cupcake print one comes to mind). My A cups were damaged from long-term binding at a young age, and so they were sagging badly.
While I had swore to everyone up and down that when I moved out of state for college, I was going to begin lying about my sex and presenting myself as a masculine "man," this never really happened. I entered college being very open about the fact that I was female, yet wanted to be a man, and I frequently wore makeup and sometimes women's clothes, because I was able to "express femininity as a man." I was on every transgender student panel and did my best to "educate" everyone on the intricacies of people like me.
I gained a lot of weight on a very tiny campus with buffet dining. I liked this because I had a new underdog identity (fat) and because with my saggy A cups, I just looked like a hefty man. I was able to get away with being shirtless at pools and outside at will, though I got some double takes at times... In hindsight, we cannot change our skeletons, so it was probably obvious that I was a very bold woman.
Slowly I started to leave behind my former nonbinary identity as I found it to be ridiculous, telling myself that I could still have a "man's brain" even if part of me "did not feel like a man"... I got a large tattoo on my chest to mask my breasts, thinking I'd never be able to afford a mastectomy anyway.
I remember at the first appointment the tattoo artist asked me, her deaf client, "How do you sign, MY BODY IS AMAZING?" I showed her, and she turned it into a dance. It was the dance of another woman who has struggled her whole life to love her body. I had begun to love mine, but was still obsessed with ambiguity and not looking completely like either sex. This made romantic endeavors difficult, because I insisted on trying to be with gay men despite not being male and no longer making an attempt to look male.
I had been seeing a therapist on campus, who helped me tremendously with issues such as my eating disorder, but never questioned my desire to try to change my sex. I frequently showed up to her office wearing women's clothing and makeup, but she never strayed from her acceptance of my "male identity." At one point, when I had stopped wearing women's clothing and had begun to dress in exclusively men's clothing, I explained my decision by telling her that I realized I could enjoy the way some clothes looked without wearing them myself.
I found out that my student insurance covered gender transition related surgeries, so I made a consultation for a "simple release," feeling this would make me feel satisfied in a more androgynous body. I had a lot of fantasies around ambiguous genitalia – having a body neither wholly male nor female. My therapist was ready and willing to write a letter of support that stated I had legitimate gender dysphoria that would be alleviated through surgery.
At the appointment, I had no sign language interpreter and did my best to understand the doctors and communicate what I wanted. The surgeon asked me if I wouldn't prefer a more linear path, involving a mastectomy first. The nurse "shook" her own breasts at me while looking at my chest, eagerly smiling to indicate that he was right. I took off my shirt, slightly uncomfortable. The surgeon assured me that my tattoo would remain totally intact, and that because I was so small-chested, the mastectomy could be done with the keyhole method, leaving me without scarring. I was torn, but this path would also mean in my mind that I could pursue weight loss without my breasts giving me away. I no longer bound my chest since I had gained so much weight, but that would "need to change" if I lost it.
I made the appointment for surgery.
The day of surgery, I kept wondering if something would go wrong. If my insurance would suddenly fall through. If my ride home would cancel, thus necessitating we reschedule the whole thing. But... Everything went very smoothly, and everyone assured me that when I woke up, I would be happy.
Before surgery, I had to take out all my facial piercings. At that point I had stopped dyeing my hair crazy colors as part of a new year's resolution to keep my natural hair color for a year. So, there I was on the operating table, looking very typical.
When I woke up, bandaged, it was all so surreal. I got back to my dorm and a few days later saw myself unbandaged. To me, it was like my chest had never looked different... always flat. I could hardly remember having breasts. I thought this meant it was the right thing to do... in hindsight, it was trauma. I had just lost body parts that would never regrow.
I had no idea that my breasts would not grow back if I stopped testosterone – this was the popular myth online at the time. I had seen so many references to "chestfeeding" that I had no idea that my mastectomy was not different from one given to a woman who has breast cancer. I can never breastfeed now if I decide to have a baby, which is not something I received counseling on, yet a desire I expressed to my therapist at least once prior to the operation.
I became more masculine-presenting after my surgery, often wearing blazers to class and keeping my personal uniform "business casual." I lied about my sex to the extent almost no one remembered who I had been. I mostly lived under the radar. With my mastectomy done, I was able to get a vaguely worded letter from the surgeon expressing that my sex had been changed, and that I was now physically male. My birth certificate and driver's license were amended to reflect this.
I was not unhappy, per se, but little did I know, health problems were exacerbating. Taking a cross-sex hormone is a bit like trying to install a Windows operating system onto an Apple computer. You can certainly do it, but the machine is not equipped to deal with that... some things are not going to work.
I had already been through female puberty. My bone structure was never going to look male, and although I desperately hoped for it, I was never going to be able to gain muscle like a man. There were so many impossibilities at play.
The female brain is not designed to handle male levels of testosterone, for example. Mood disorders can get worse, ADHD can get worse, and we are likely to struggle with dementia much earlier. I began struggling with my eating disorder much more severely following my mastectomy, because I saw my stomach sticking out so much farther than my now-flat chest.
Vaginal atrophy is an inevitable part of taking cross-sex hormones, and while I always thought that I would get a total hysterectomy and genital-mutilating surgeries at the "appropriate time" in my transition to "avoid complications," I was never able to follow through. I had seen women pretending to be men who had their own biological children, and lied to myself that that was a sustainable way to live, a real goal to strive for. Waiting so long caused vaginal atrophy and cervical problems, which I am only just now beginning to have treated because I avoided gynecologists for so long due to dysphoria.
I got married to a man in 2019. My husband was always uncertain about how it was possible for me to "feel like a man," but never said anything despite my very clear feminine tendencies. However, he did admit that he was terrified about the medical experimentation being done on my body, and felt that intimacy would likely be ruined between us if I were to go through with some of the more extreme surgeries to create a fake penis.
He expressed what my family was afraid to: how long would I live, being a medical experiment?
