Rough draft (really, really, /really/ rough draft)

There's been a lull of activity on here lately, I know... especially from me. I made, what? two random, slightly chaotic posts and was never heard from again? Haven't felt inclined to write but this is a story I wanted to share. And while I don't want the positivity in it to be overlooked, I don't want the negativity and the effects they're having on me right now overlooked either. Both matter.

In March of 2014 I was living in Southern Illinois, which is not a very helpful place in any way, definitely not when you're transgender. I had plans to move here in June but I wanted to make progress, I couldn't stand still and wait for things, I knew if I wanted progress I had to push. I set up a ridiculous and dangerous way to get to and from St. Louis to see a doctor willing to do informed consent on HRT there. She was incredibly nice, and I left that appointment with the answer, "if all your labs come back fine, there's no reason you can't start your next appointment", Being rather healthy overall, I heard the word, "YES." Yes, I was starting testosterone. I remember documenting it at as the first time I felt genuine happiness. Sure, I thought I had before, but that moment changed my perspective on what happiness, at it's purest, truest form, felt like. It was easy and free and I didn't know I hadn't been breathing for twenty-two years until the moment I got that "yes".

I got a letter not long after that saying something in my levels was off - something hormone related - and I needed to return for more tests. It hurt and it threw me off of my high of that "yes" but it still was a "no". So I returned to the neutral emptiness I had felt in the first place, all my life really, and made a follow-up appointment, which was again, ridiculous and dangerous to get to. My doctor informed me my prolactin level was too high and she wanted to redo the test, and if it came up high again, she'd said me for an MRI, worried I might have a cyst in my head affecting the level. Yes, my level came back high again so yes, I went for an MRI, and waited for the her to call me with the results. I got the call while working (at a gas station at the time) and since I didn't care much about the consequences of taking the call on the clock and there was also someone also (my best friend in fact) on the shift with me, I ducked outside to answer it.

What I was told did take my freeing, blissful "yes" to a world-shattering "no". My doctor said, yes, I did in fact have a cyst pressing on my pituitary gland and in her opinion I needed to follow up with an endocrinologist before starting HRT. My next question was something along the lines of it still being possible to start though, right? That this /wasn't/ a no, just a setback probably? That if I got the okay from the endo I could just come back to her office and start hormones? And her answer was... no, probably not. That it looked bad from her diagnosis but it was out of her hands and following up with an endo and having them take care of the HRT, if I /could/ start, was the way to go.

I had already started sobbing before we ended the call. When I could pull myself together enough to speak, I went back inside, tracked down my boss, who's first question is why I wasn't at the register helping my coworker (friend) and I told him our supervisor had just gotten up there to help as I was coming to speak with him and then told him I was leaving for the day because I got bad medical news. He was confused, and the awkward type, but didn't argue. I was crying and logging out (or trying to with shaky hands and a muddled brain) and he didn't know what to do or say so he just let me leave.

My best friend left her register as soon as I resurfaced and followed me outside and I sobbed, for the first time to her, about what I was told and how I couldn't live the rest of my life like I currently was at that point. I knew I couldn't. I /needed/ that yes and it had been taken away from me. I saw a future, for the first time in twenty-two years and it was pitch black again. There was nothing but emptiness. She hugged me and comforted me the best she could and I told her she'd get in trouble and she said something like I was a million times more important than her crappy minimum wage gas station job - that's the kind of thing she would say. That's the kind of amazing best friend I have. She brought me back inside, me being a little calmer now, while I waited on a taxi to come pick me up.

From there on I went into a downward spiral  for three months - I drank myself to the point of blacking out, I started smoking cigarettes and weed, and I relapsed on self-harm. Once the weed came into play, the other stuff stopped mostly. There were a few cigarettes here and there socially, there was a club night I got so drunk I fell a lot, peed in the parking lot, and lost the debit card that had all the money I saved up for moving on it. But I calmed down. I packed up my shit, and I moved to Chicago.

My first month was spent in overwhelming depression and relapsing on self-harm again. But then I got a job at a dog daycare and it made me happy. A different kind of happy that the purest, truest form of it I mentioned earlier but I loved that place with my heart and soul. I wanted to be there more than anywhere else. I used to stay and hang around off the clock. I spent a lot of my lunch breaks napping in a play area with any of my favorite dogs that were there that day.

That gave me motivation to try again - and I went to see an informed consent doctor in the city at the Howard Brown Health Center, which is well known for it's LGBT+ care. He also wanted me to see an endocrinologist and I had very little money and time was ticking to me, on how much longer I'd survive in my depressed state of having the wrong body that I decided to asked, can I choose to start anyway, being fully aware of the potential risk? He. Said. Yes.

I am happy to inform you all I am eight months in on HRT now. No complications, my current doctor is keeping an eye on my prolactin level just in case, but that has all been going very well.


Now we start over, with a different situation. There's even one I'm skipping in the list of "things I need to do as a transgender individual to feel comfortable with myself" that the same yes-wait-no thing happened with but that one got sorted out, too, and I now legally have the right name and gender marker on my driver's license and am working on getting it updated everywhere else. The one I want to relate to the previous story is my battle for top surgery.

I decided it was time to get that taken care of. It's not a matter of being ready - I am ready for all of the changes to take place right now this very moment, to step out of this body, shed this skin, and be the person I was supposed to - and it's not a matter of having the money, because I don't, still. But there comes a point where I realize, as I do try to save and fail because I don't even make enough to pay an actual share of rent in a place with three people, that I won't survive much longer unless this change is made. That's when, no matter the circumstances, I make a move. I try to be patient, I try to do it what people would consider "correctly", but survival instinct is much stronger and when I feel myself fading, I decide I burn out or I relight the fire.

I scheduled a consultation with a well-known Chicago surgeon for transgender individuals and thanks to my dad, I have great insurance. So after a horrifying intake where I had to undress and have photos taken of my current body that horrifies me, what they actually called "the easy part", I had to get a letter from my physician and psychologist to submit to my insurance for approval of the surgery.

It's been a month and a half since the intake, a month since my letters were submitted to my insurance, and this morning I woke up to my phone vibrating but missing the call. It was the surgeon's office, and I assumed it was to give me my "yes" or my "no". This was around 9AM and I something in me said, don't call them back... not yet, So I went back to sleep.

I never dream as the current me... I always dream as the me I "see" myself as. A cis-male, I suppose, or maybe just what I wish I'd look like "fully transitioned". This dream was as the current me. This is the only dream I remember having like this. Set in reality, with even me being the real me, just as I look and exist now. The dream was me returning their call and getting the approval for the surgery but them being scheduled all the way out to December and me being incredibly upset about having to wait so long. I keep imagining what summer would be like, if I could get this surgery done relatively soon. I keep imagining being able to be as active as I crave to be, because I wouldn't have the restraint of a binder holding me back. (If you don't know, a binder is the term for what a lot of transmasc individuals wear in order to give the appearance of a flat chest. They are relatively safe if you buy the right kind but always have negative affects, such as breathing problems, movement limitations, pain and soreness, and long-term affects on your chest/ribs/torso.) That is what was so painful in the dream... missing another summer of my life. Being in what has become almost unbearable pain at this point, for six more months. It was a yes, but it was a yes, after six more months of agony. Better than a lifetime of it, better than seeing the pitch black emptiness ahead of me again, but still painful nonetheless.

I woke up from that dream not too pleased of course and figured, it's time to call because, it'll be a yes or a no and I can move on from there. What I got was... neither. My insurance company did approve the procedure (so a yes then!?) /but/ not in the specific wording and accordance with my surgeon's request. On the insurance side, this is how the handle things and everything looks right to me them. On the surgeon's side, they need more guarantee from the insurance that I am, in fact, covered on all the expenses. Insurance says that's what the letter says. Surgeon says it does, but not forcefully enough. I called my insurance and the surgeon's office back and forth from 1PM when I woke up again until 5PM when they closed and it ended with no answers.

I have a yes, and a no this time. I have a yes, that I can't do anything with. I have exactly what I need, but no way to execute it.

I was frustrated and drained and broken and... had errands to run. I own three binders - one relatively safe and comfortable, one pretty harmful and uncomfortable but just as effective, and the other is the most comfortable because it's adjustable but the least effective so I only wear around the house or for exercising. However, I was preparing for a trip this weekend and my other two were in the wash. So I wore the adjustable one and tightened it up and took my trip to the store, which is half bus and half walking. The walking distance is a mile there, and a mile back to the stop once I was finished. Plus some walking around the store. Not too bad, right? In the first store (I had two to stop in) I started to feel the normal tightness in my chest, the trouble breathing... used to it, it comes with wearing the binder. I ignore it and get my things and check out. The second store I start to feel a bit ill, I'm pretty overheated, and this is also rather normal. On my way out, I shed my hoodie, and it's a rather nice cool temperature out so I figure I'll cool down enough. I do, but my chest is hurting more and more and my breaths are getting shorter as I make the trek back to the bus stop - I tightened the binder too much. I overdid it, with the fear it wouldn't flatten my chest enough to fit the affirmed look of being male. I got dizzy and incredibly nauseous and knew I had to duck somewhere to fix the problem, which was a dark alleyway because where else was I going to be able to adjust something covering my chest? I velcroed it closed slightly less tight and continued on to the bus stop, the damage already done for the time being and my chest throbbing, my pulse racing, and now crying.

Putting the binder on in the first place today was mortifying. My insurance said /yes/... how much longer am I going to have to put myself through this? Is this the rest of my life? Am I looking at the pitch black emptiness again? It is all I see. A yes, stolen from my grasp. A yes, I cannot act on. A yes, that still leaves me in dysphoric-ridden emotional and physical pain every day. I slipped it on over my shoulders today and before even velcroing thought, today could have been the day I thought, "soon I'll never have to do this again". Instead, it was a reassurance that I will continue to suffer in this way until further notice.

I am always told yes before I am told no... always given hope and having it taken away... and it's true, in most cases, at least the ones that turned out to matter, I end up getting the yes back. I end up with yes as the answer and I survive. But the time between having the hope given and ripped away to having the actual, real, freeing "yes" nearly kills me each time. One of these days I'm afraid it might. I'd always rather be told no from the start than given hope and having it ripped away. I start with no, so being told no can't hurt. But being told yes, changing my perspective, giving me hope, and having it /then/ be a no, reverting back to the hopeless, empty, pitch black, is the most painful thing I've ever experienced. Hope should never be taken away - only given.

So I continue, to try and sort this one out, to try and get the yes to align with the other side of it, but I only have so much fight in me, my chest being compressed and barely being able to breathe. I can only throw a couple more punches before I hit the ground, gasping for breath. How much time is there? How much time to fight, how much time to suffer? I /hope/ there is very little time of both. I hope there isn't a lot of time /needed/ to fight, and the time of suffering is over soon enough for me to have my first adventurous, pain-free, dysphoric-less summer.