The Post-Op Blues (or gimme my harmonica)

Shuffling around the cold hallways my bare feet hit the hard floor, numb. The new-fallen snow outside the wide windows glitters under the parking lot lights like a pristine, fresh and frozen world completely separate from me in my hospital gown. In my hand is the cherry Jello cup I had managed to snag from the nurse’s station—the readily-available gummy dessert has to be the best part of the post-operative recovery. As I sweetly suck down the fruity gelatine, feeling the immense weight of the pressure packing around my surgery site, I realize that I can wear a bikini without tucking. The realization that my first thought is of swimwear, while outside it is snowing, quickly follows. I raise an eyebrow at my own reflection in the dark window, and continue to imagine how now this lengthy journey is over, the quest is over. I thought, “This is it. I’m now officially a girl.”

Two years ago, the realizations I had while walking the halls of Mount San Rafael Hospital didn’t really touch on the real complexity of emotions I now have about being “officially a girl.” So much of my time and energy over the last several years of my life has gone into either repressing my gender dysphoria, coming to terms with my transsexuality, striving for acceptance (both from friends and family as well as from myself), or trying to secure all the necessary resources for transition. Along my journey I also became interesting in the science and social activism surrounding the transgender community, and so I additionally donned the hats of an advocate, and activist, and an educator. Through it all, transsexuality has been a dominant force in my life for at least the last nine years. Maybe some part of me back in those hospital halls imagined that being in that post-op recovery ward meant that my transsexual identity struggle was over—that now I was just an average girl like any other.

Those thoughts are problematic. On one hand being an average girl was pretty much the entire point of the transition: I did not embark down this road to be a boy, or a transsexual—I did this to be a girl. What’s the purpose of doing this if that was not the inevitable outcome? On the other hand, I shudder at the thought of being “average.”A lot of transition websites talk about the reintegration of trans people into society post-transition. When I first read these sites I admit I was a little offended at the choice of words. “Reintegration”? What, are we prisoners being released on parole? We’re supposed to find our niches back in the world of men and women—essentially re-insert ourselves into the oppressed gender roles as before, willingly limit ourselves to the restrictions of our “new” sex? But these sites do make a good point. After years of dealing with being trans, might there (logically) come a time when we simply deal with being men and women, when our gender become less a consuming force of our energies and time, and we re-allocate all those resources to just living our damn lives? Indeed.

It leaves open a major question, though: What now? After spending some much time and energy to make my outside match my inside—after transitioning to being a girl—what kind of girl am I?