So I'm officially seven weeks post surgery!
My transition has always been driven by my own comfort in my body, with passing being an afterthought, but something I fell into when my NCAH symptoms increased. It's always been centered around my own feelings around my hair, my chest, my genitals, social life etc. I never really cared if someone found what I was doing aestheticly pleasing, which is good, cause no one ever approved of the changes I made.
I never wore a bra, not because it would make my chest look more feminine, but because I genuinely never saw a need to structure my chest in a way that someone else would approve of. I went through years of sports bras, followed by binding as looking down and seeing flesh hanging there made me want to vomit. The only time I thought about someone else's view of my chest was worrying that people would see a change and try and strike up a conversation about something I was trying to tune out.
The assymtery of my chest was weirdly pleasing to me, the world is obsessed with women having perfectly syymetrical, smooth, hairless tits. From a kid mine have been uneven, riddled with acne and hairy - I fucking adored it. The ugliness of my chest was an amazing safety net to learn to be comfortable with it, and through it I learned how much I loved my chest being touched and adored, but the constant reminder of the extra tissue would put a stop to any meaningful interaction.
Going into surgery my surgeon warned me that she could make my chest more symmetrical, but there would always be a slight difference. I remember telling her I couldn't give less of a shit, as long as I can't feel my chest move with each step and that horrible dragging feeling of tissue attached to me. We had a long conversation about how euphoric I found it to have a uneven, 'ugly' chest. My failure to female beauty standards gave me a lot of power, and I would always be thankful that my body did that for me.
I went into my last post op appointment today feeling pretty confident, yes I've dealt with an infection and two post op tears, but all in all I'm happy with how my chest feels and behaves. It's flat, I can bend over and feel nothing move, t shirts lay so well over me. But during surgery something or other must have happened to my right side, and left my scar to squiggle at the start in quite a harsh way. At first I panicked a bit, having expected two straight lines. But within a couple days of getting used to it I loved it as a reference to the uneven body I had lived in for so many years, and after chatting to other trans people we started exchanging pics of all of our unorthodox surgery results that we'd all fallen in love with. Later on I attended Diesel Leather night, with only a fishnet top and a harness on top. I adored it, and struck up so many conversations about the beauty of trans bodies. The uneven line suited me - I've never been a smooth even person, I've always been a bit abrasive.
Then I go into the appointment. This will be the first time a cis person sees my full chest post surgery, something I've been nervous about doing, even around friends who've seen plenty of results before mine. I take my shirt off. My surgeon stops, and immediately apologises for how the right side of my chest looks. She examines me further, while telling me it wasn't her intended look, that she must have made an error on the table and how she hopes it will fade, and if not she will do a revision for me to straighten the scar up. Not once does she ask me if I'm happy with it, or what I even think about it, beyond her negativity.
She goes on about aesthetics and the looks of the scars, not how I feel, not the new sensations I can now experience post op. And while I'm sitting there I realise she has absolutely no idea what transitioning means to a person, let alone to me. My goal in life was never to be attractive to someone, or to have an aesthetic chest. It's always been to find peace in a body I found so uncomfortable. Her goal was to make me conventionally attractive and more visually appealing - disregarding that my dysphoria is mainly physical over visual when it comes to my chest.
I've been offered a revision appointment for six months time, and she wants to operate again. All of a sudden I've become dehumanised, turned into her canvas and artistic project, instead of what I naturally am, an uneven and lumpy mess, something I treasure so much