After many years of wondering if it would happen, I had gender affirmation surgery (vaginoplasty) in February of 2020. The road to full recovery took a full three months, and it was much more painful and difficult than I expected. From speaking with women who have given birth, the experience seems to overlap in many respects with recovery from having an episiotomy or significant tearing during birth. Recover aside, the experience was fascinating from a psychological perspective, at least to me.
I had expected to feel at least somewhat physically disoriented after the surgery. It’s such an alteration in physical, and to an extent neural, anatomy that I expected to have at least some feelings of unease or discomfort. Even if one doesn’t particularly like one’s house, it’s not unreasonable to expect that moving will cause some distress after having lived in it for 44 years. But the strangest thing to me is that when I woke up, with Jo by my side, the first feeling I had was one of deep body contentment and rightness. Even as the anesthetic wore off, and my mind began to clear, the feeling persisted. I felt whole and natural in a way that I had never experienced, except perhaps when I was very young.
The suddenness of this feeling astonished me even in the moment of waking. With a vacuum cup over the surgical area pumping away blood, bruises the size of plates on my thighs, and two stitch lines running up my abdomen, I felt great! Well, maybe not great, but whole. It has been six months since the surgery, and the feeling has only grown deeper and stronger, like a parched and inhospitable lakebed filling with fresh cool water. I wish that I had an answer for this feeling. The idea that I was always a woman, so of course it feels right, isn’t really an explanation at all. What about my neurochemistry and psychology would make such a dramatic surgical alteration “feel right”?
As of now, we are only scratching at the surface of gender identity, but I have hope that the coming decades will bring new discoveries. In a way, the trans experience might help all of us understand our relationship with gender better, and providing care for trans folks may in the end be a form of self-care for everyone.