Daily journal: facial feminization surgery

The feelings and emotions that help and distort

January 11, 2024. What I would unofficially officially call day one of the facial feminization surgery process. Sure, I thought about it every day leading up to know but until this I never let myself think it could happen. Hope is sometimes too hard to hold onto.

But one night at home I got a message from Andrea with a link to an article about a new gender clinic in Ottawa that could help and I made an appointment with my doctor for a referral and Hannah set up a consultation with the clinic, it all changed, and hope became reality.

So now the process is underway and I'm excited and happy and scared and anxious and I can't wait to share how having access to this changes my life. I’m still very reluctant to hold out too much hope, as access to this care is one thing, and getting the care is another. I am extremely fortunate to have consultation one booked, but it brings up the next series of worries that hope brings up.

What will the cost be? What are timelines? Will what I want be what I can get? Will it make a difference?

Lip lift

Browlift

Jaw surgery

Rhinoplasty

Little cuts and lines and scrapes of bone along the face that don’t make me any more or less of a woman but that help me see myself a little more clearly and help show myself a little more smiley than usual.

These are big things that even child me has thought of. Maybe as a kid in the mirror looking at myself and wondering what I’d look at with lipstick. Or as an adult wondering what things might look like if I didn’t hide my jaw with a beard.

Now that they are actual procedures I can envision living with, I have no fears at all of the physical pain or the possibility of regret of them. I fear only the idea of losing them or having them slip away. Of having the importance of them minimized to a point they no longer happen.

The night I had the consultation booked, while out with my oldest, we got buddied, and bro'd, and sir'd a lot and I've grown used to putting up a polite face to these so that the offending person feels no discomfort, only that I do. I'm resolved to stick up for who I am in these cases, I want to enter this era of me with that.

Were nothing to come of this, I would be incredibly upset. I would feel defeated, again. So, having that ability to speak for the person I am now is something I can give myself. Asking someone to call me by my name and to make this a priority is a gift for me.

Day one, it feels like a lot and like nothing and like something I have waited for for a long time.