just another nonbinary journey

[anotherenbyjourney]

Got my final total through for my surgery. It’s like £7200 plus change. Ouch. So yeah I guess it’s either pay around 8grand in total with around a years wait, or wait 4-5 years and maybe get surgery through the NHS. Maybe. Amaze.

[anotherenbyjourney]

So this has been sitting in my drafts for a while: ------------------- Surprising nobody, the “don’t feel you need to stay with me if you don’t want to” conversation with your partner really sucks ass. These little journeys we all take, all of us, are entirely unique and personal. There are some aspects and experiences that we have, which can match up to those of someone else, and therefore you can appreciate, understand, empathise with that particular part of their journey. And they yours. But at the end of the day, each person is on their own course.

Coming out as nonbinary to my husband, especially after coming to the conclusion that I wanted to pursue top surgery, has been one of the trickiest aspects of all this.

There is an expectation for this sort of thing, that the partner or the family or the friends, SHOULD fully support the person. SHOULD accept and embrace and be proud of them. Should love them NO MATTER WHAT. In an ideal world, absolutely.

One thing to consider, and that I’ve been endlessly considering and factoring somewhat into my decisions to do ANYTHING, be it starting to use they/them pronouns, wear a binder in public, live more openly as a nonbinary person, is how this will affect the lives of those around me.

Absolutely I have to do what’s right for me. No doubt about it. Nobody should have to live a lie in order to spare the feelings of others. Especially when they’re pretty confident that the people around them aren’t violent bigots who are extremely unlikely to disown them, attack them, or be intentionally insensitive or malicious. I’m absolutely extremely lucky that my family have always been accommodating and supportive. Same for my friends. Particularly, same for my partner.

But my decision, and my feelings, should never invalidate another person’s feelings. It’s very hard to do all of this and pursue all of this when it has a very large and direct impact on the life of someone else. I can’t get mad when their response isn’t what i wanted it to be, or expected it to be. It’s hard not to feel incredibly selfish, or guilty, that me choosing to improve my own life may be directly affecting someone elses. And not necessarily in a positive way. Its all just.. hard. Very hard. I’m rambling but there’s a lot going on with all this and it’s hard just putting it into words that make sense. And I don’t want answers, or solutions. I’m really only just looking for a place to rant out into the void. Because this sucks and it’s something that I have to just deal with on my own.

[anotherenbyjourney]

Life update

Following on from the process update I just posted regarding how things are doing with my surgery timeline etc... it’s been interesting to sit and take stock of the little things that have changed in myself as this has started setting in.

I’m out with most of my family now. They know about me being nonbinary, and about my desire for surgery. For the most part... they don’t really “get it”? But they’re all supportive. They’re rubbish at remembering pronouns. Went out for my birthday with my sisters and mum last week and had a discussion on  gendered language and how you start to notice it a lot more once you’re aware of it happening. How it’s a pretty much constant thing with me. About how it doesn’t -really- get under my skin and I’m not going to correct every shop assistant and wait staff who “gets it wrong” because its literally SO much energy and its not personal. I appreciate my inability to pass, and I appreciate that society genders its language so heavily and casually, that I bear no ill will towards complete strangers who “get it wrong”. But I also explained that, over time, like if its been a particularly heavy day of people getting it wrong, or when friends and family are getting it wrong a LOT over a long day etc, it does wear me down.

I’m always gonna be slowly, calmly and patiently pushing and supporting the use of gender neutral language. It’s entirely possible to address a group of people and not include “ladies” or “lads” or address someone without “sweetheart” or “love” or “miss/ma’am” or “mate”. It’s just how society works right now, but it can change. At no cost of effort to anyone, either. It’s not rude, it’s not hard! Nobody is going to think “omg do they not think I’m a woman??” if they aren’t addressed with female gendered language. And you can successfully avoid making people feel uncomfortable if you get it wrong. You can never be sure of what is going on with someone, so why bother “taking a gamble” or judging them for what they look like when you can just... not? I appreciate that it’s hard! I’ve gone 30 years speaking a certain way and using certain language, it’s tricky to correct yourself and re-align your way of thinking and speaking at a base level. I get it! But it’s worth making the effort.

I try not to constantly bring people up about it, I really don’t want to be “that guy” who is always harping on about this sort of thing, making people roll their eyes. “Here we go again, another lecture on gender and society and pronouns omg just go back to tumblr..” And no, it’s not my job to educate people, and no I don’t feel it my “duty” or “purpose” or my “right” to go around “englightening” or teaching people. If I see an opportunity to bring it up though, where I’m not going to make someone feel bad or stupid or singled out or attacked... I’ll consider taking it. And if people want to have an honest to goodness open, calm and reasonable discussion about it, by god I’ll try to help and join in as best I can. How can folks expect society as a whole to change, to alter its language and its biases etc, if we can’t sit down and CALMLY try to help explain it with our own unique perspectives when they are open to that discussion? It’s not gonna happen overnight. And it’s gonna suck and yeah I’m probably going to have days where I’m misgendered repeatedly, even after surgery etc, and it’s gonna be hard. But by god I would rather have those few bad days, than the Bad Life I’d been working my way through, trying to make sense of why I felt AWFUL just... all the time. Regarding my perceptions of myself... I’m not getting as dysphoric as I was. It could be that the glimmering prospect of surgery so close on the horizon now, the fact that I -am- getting things fixed, that I don’t just have to deal with it for the rest of my life, is helping. My boobs still suck. I still hate them. A Lot. But they’re a lot more manageable from a mental perspective now that I know their days are numbered. Interestingly, I don’t wear bras anymore. Well, I do. But they’re 2-sizes too small sports bras that I bought like 10 of, from Primark. I’m done with binders outside of costuming and I’m done trying to look how I want to look in this short interim period before surgery. I just want them out of the way, strapped down, immobile. The sports bras are uncomfortable. They’re very hot, they make me short of breath very easily, they are SWEATY AF. They give me uniboob like theres no tomorrow. But I tolerate it all because it’s not for very much longer. Meanwhile I don’t really want to put a bra back on. :( Not at all. I cleared all of them out of my underwear drawer. Every last one. They’re on the floor in my bedroom until I figure out what to do with them. I suppose donate them to a charity somewhere? My time spent “freeboobing” it around the house has gone down a lot too. It’s rare I’m not wearing a sportsbra, even on the days I  have no plans to leave the house (I work from home). It’s a special kind of bleak suffering, but it’s mostly just a physical discomfort rather than abjectly hating my own flesh etc, which is a step up. And it’s hopefully not for much longer at all. I had my first little wobble about surgery the other night which was disconcerting. I’ve never had surgery before or really been to hospital for.. anything, really. The process is a bit grisly and unpleasant. I’m scared about being in hospital alone. I’m scared about the possibility of pain. I’m scared in case something goes wrong. I’m scared in case I heal and it doesn’t look how I expected/wanted. I’m scared because it’s a big deal and thats just... scary??? It’s hard to explain. I just need to focus on the endgoal and why I’m doing it.

[anotherenbyjourney]

Process update

So I’ve not been keeping the best diary style entries on here, but this was never gonna be something vigorously enforced. Still... apologies. I’m gonna split a life update out into its own post, so here’s “where we’re at” and “how we got there” regarding my surgery at the moment. Following my diagnosis coming through from Dr Lorimer, a copy of which was sent through to my chosen/preferred surgeon - Dr Kneeshaw in Hull - I followed up with the hospital to pursue a surgery date, costs, etc.

Extremely impressed with the response time from the hospital. An extremely lovely and helpful member of staff (who was just pleasant as heck in her email responses and when I called them to discuss further on the phone) and very understanding of the situation and process. I felt very comfortable discussing things with her, like this was all just day-in day-out business. Which I suppose for her, it probably was! Just, refreshing tbh.

Now, I appreciate my privilege in being able to pursue this process privately, and yes this probably had a lot of bearing on things, but I got a surgical consultation date for the 16th! 3 weeks from opening up discussions with the hospital! A lot sooner than I’d expected. I’d presume then, that surgery will not be far behind.

I’m going to Hull this thursday then, with a copy of my diagnosis letter, ID, and all the filled out forms they mailed me, and we will go from there.

I also got final confirmation of the cost for the process -  £7128.

This is not including the fee for the surgical consultation -  £165 - The fee for obtaining my diagnosis - £300 -  and the various costs involved in travelling and such.

So, yeah. It’s not cheap. But it’s a darn sight better than waiting 4-5 years approx for this.... More info as it happens. :)

[anotherenbyjourney]

why now?

Something I was asked by my doctor during my assessment was: Why now? Why look to pursue surgery now? Why come out to everyone and make these changes now? I turn 30 in just over a month. I’m not a kid, or a teen anymore. Far from it. I suppose I should know who I am by now, should have had that figured out, but honestly do any of us ever really know who we are? Ever?

My entire life I’ve felt just... Odd. Weird. “Other” a lot of the time. Not just because I’m a nerd (that’s not helped lol), but I have never really fit in properly with the majority of your average girls or women. I felt the “odd one out” amongst my family who were predominantly female. In offices staffed with majority women, I felt like a complete outsider. I’ve very rarely “clicked” with girls and I get along a LOT easier and faster with guys. Any age, any background, any education level, getting along with guys was much smoother.

I put it down to “they just don’t “get” you”.  I didn’t get the same feeling with my friends, male or female. We shared enough of the same interests, had the same sense of humour, liked the same things etc. But that’s how it works right? The people you click and vibe with, you make friends with. Age was maybe also a factor in “not gelling” with other women. People also come from different walks of life. 

“You're not just a big weird freak, you’re just made from entirely different moulds, right? You can’t get along with everyone?”

It’s only within the last few years that I started finding out about gender issues, nonbinary specifically. The more and more I read into it, the more stats and facts and studies I absorbed, the more little bits of information, the more RELATABLE AS HELL the stories I was reading were getting... the more I started to consider; Hey wait a minute. This is all making FAR too much goddamn sense.

It took a while for things to start adding up to the point I started making changes in my life or thinking differently about myself. All the things I was learning, and how they related to me and the way I think and feel, started to change my outlook on myself. About 2 and a half years ago, I started thinking to myself: “Right. I’m Nonbinary. This is me!” I tried it on, entirely privately, non-verbally. It’s how I thought about myself. And it... fit. It worked. It felt right.

Some time later, I told my husband and a few very close friends “hey I think I might be nonbinary” or at the very least “I’m having very weird Gender Feelings you guys...” The ability to talk it out and bounce ideas and feelings off my friends, some of whom are trans themselves, has been utterly invaluable. Last year I made more baby steps towards accepting this strange new-but-not-new part of myself, that I’d managed to finally put a name to. I told a few more people. I would drop it into casual convo. I made posts around pride week and national coming out day. The binder I’d bought to wear for cosplay purposes, I started wearing on a more casual everyday basis. I -embraced- my masculine swings a lot more often and dressed how I wanted to dress, moved how I wanted to move, spoke how I wanted to speak. The way that felt most natural at that time. I stopped worrying I “looked super butch” or “like a lesbian” when I looked and dressed more masculine.

And it all felt - really good-.

Imagine you’ve gone the majority of your life, thinking like.. “theres just something not quite right here.” It’s nothing causing you physical pain.  There are no real symptoms you can put a finger on. “Not fitting in with women”, “not being into girl stuff”, “having body confidence and body image issues”, “liking to wear boys clothes/have short masc haircuts/wearing cologne/etc/etc/etc” were all just weird little facets of yourself you’d had to live with and feel weird and “other” about.

And then suddenly someone goes: hey that weirdness you’re feeling? There’s a name for that. You’re not just a freak! You’re not different all of a sudden, nothing has changed, but aaaall the stuff that made you “you”, makes a heck of a lot more sense now that you can put a name on it.

This is not “Who I Am Now”. This is Who I Have Always Been.

It all started to make sense. Everything. I wasn’t just weird. I didn’t have to worry about “looking like a man” anymore. My dysphoria made SENSE. It sucked ass, and still made me feel like shit, but it made sense! I’m not broken.

The biggest “click” and the thing that lit a real fire under me was New Years eve 2017. It was a themed party, and people were all in costumes. I went as a male character and wore my binder (I’m going to talk a bit about costuming as male characters later because this is also Important I think). I’d had a few drinks, and when it came time to take the costume off and get into something a bit more comfy after midnight (and because I was coming to the end of my binder time. I like to bind safely) I found that it was HEARTRENDINGLY UPSETTING... to take the binder off and “go back to being girl-me again”. I’d always been really sad after a solid weekend of dressing as a man for male costumes and having to “go back to normal” but this was like an intense version of that feeling. That I’d spent 29 years doing this, living with and putting up with “girl-me”. Like that version of myself wasn’t the real me at all. That I was facing another year, approaching thirty, and that this was going to be how things were for the rest of my life unless I did something about it.

January 2nd I sent out an email to my chosen doctor (I’d been researching it all for months at the back end of 2017 but done nothing about it) to try and book an appointment to pursue top surgery, which I told my husband about and we had a long discussion around. 

February 4th I came out to my mum and my two sisters who had a lot of questions but were incredibly supportive. They told me that “actually that makes a lot of sense...” considering my childhood, and while they were worried for me from a “this is a surgery you cannot come back from, I hope you’re sure” point of view, supported me there too.

Last month I went a lot more public with my gender and I’m trying to make more and more people aware of it, since I interact with large groups of varied people as part of cosplay and costuming. I’ve literally faced nothing but support (and questions of course, but I’ve got all the time in the world for supportive people who just want to understand things so they can better help and support their friends and others like me.)

It’s been thirty years. And I still have a long way to go. But I’ve honestly never been more comfortable within myself and with every babystep I’ve taken towards hacking my way out of this shitty little “desperately trying to conform to gender standards” chrysalis I’ve been trapped in for my entire life, the better I’ve felt.

[anotherenbyjourney]

why private?

There is a LOT I feel like I wanna cover, and it’s all jumbled out of order since I’m about 2.5 years in with all of this (more, if you consider that it’s been something I’ve been confused about/questioning my entire life) so I’ll try to keep things in order but it’s hard when the most recent stuff is happening RIGHT NOW and its exciting and fresh. However context and knowledge of what came before is also useful. I’ll probably be doing posts in a few ways:

- Journal type posts of things as and when they happen.

- Journal type posts of “hey lets talk about the past” which I’ll try to slot in where I can so that all the up to date stuff makes a little more sense with context.

- “Big Question” posts, with their subsequent answers. Such as this one!

So, why did I decide to pursue this privately?

I’m a saver, by nature. This might come as a surprise to some who know me, because I am also a lover of “stuff and things”. But I work hard at my job, and I enjoy the comfort and security of healthy savings. Just in case. You never know. So, the first part of my answer to “why private?” is because I can. Literally I’m in the very privileged and lucky position to be able to afford to do so. The UK does have NHS systems and processes to support transgender people through gender reassignment and all sorts of other things. However, it’s VASTLY underfunded and the demand is phenomenal right now. Wait times just to get into a gender clinic here can be around two years. Wait times for top surgery are 4-5 years in some places. So the second part of my answer to the question is, if I have the ability to avoid wait times like that (don’t get me wrong, I’m under no illusion that going private will mean I’m sorted asap, there are wait times there too) it seemed like a no-brainer. And also, why take up a slot that someone else who is unable to pursue private care could make use of instead? It just made sense.

[anotherenbyjourney]

So, I have to get this out there before I explode, but:

I had my top surgery assessment consultation yesterday (long story, will elaborate in future) aaaaaand I’m being supported for top surgery. :)

Next steps from here are, I get my formal diagnosis report, which I then proofcheck, before it gets forwarded on to my GP (lol SURPRISE GUYS - I’ve literally never discussed a jot of this with anyone, went straight to private assessment) and to my chosen surgeon of choice. It’s all very exciting. :) I’ll do a writeup regarding vast chunks of the story I’ve just... spectacularly skipped.... but yeah for now I just. I needed to get that out there.

It’s actually happening. It’s real.

<3

[anotherenbyjourney]

Hello world :) So I’ve started up this tumblr as a means to post up information and experience log type posts as I take my journey through the process of getting top surgery. A few basics first: - I’m UK based

- I’m nonbinary (I will probably go into specifics later regarding how I figured this out, what it means for me, how I’ve dealt with it, etc.. later tho)

- I’m pursuing top surgery entirely privately

Feel free to follow along with me, ask me any questions you might have, however please note:

- This blog is purely my own personal thoughts and feelings regarding nonbinary, gender, surgery, etc. Additionally (and VERY likely) your mileage may vary, everyone’s journey is different. Therefore, while I can elaborate on stuff relating to me and my journey, I am uncomfortable giving out opinions and advice relating to gender issues and surgery. I’m even more uncomfortable discussing hormones, speech therapy, etc etc as I will have literally no first hand experience of this.

I encourage everyone to do their own research THOROUGHLY as part of their own specific journey. Being as informed as possible, will only bring positive things. You can factor all the information, first hand experiences, reports, reviews and advice through your own filters and hopefully this will help you come up with your own conclusions which you can then feel a little more secure about.

I noticed as part of my own research, that a lot of people when it came to top surgery, transmen and nonbinary both, tended to extensively cover two parts of the process. The beginning (often lamenting the difficulty of actually GETTING to an operating table) and the results afterwards (we’re talking a while afterwards). While this was all still useful. there wasn’t much out there for “everything else”. Nobody really talked about how their assessments went, what was covered. Nobody talked about their diagnoses. There were no detailed logs of the week before, and immediately after, surgery. So, I’m going to try and record my journey as best I can, warts and all, in the hope that it can help someone out there.

It’s going to be scary. And by god it’s going to be expensive. But if my little story can help reassure anyone that they’re not alone in all of this. Helps explain a little bit about the nitty gritty of what to expect, so it’s less of a scary unknown. Then that’s pretty cool I guess. <3