Hey y’all, this is a bit of a personal rant and maybe a space for other people to share their experiences in the comments. I’m just looking for some advice on how to make the wait for bottom surgery more bearable.
Mine is probably about 6-8 months away, though I don’t have an exact surgery date yet. There are some days where it’s really fine and I don’t even notice my parts down there but then there are others where it’s unbearable to even get out of bed. Sometimes I just want to cut the damn thing off myself, I feel like I can’t bear to lug it around for even one more day.
I know that I’m a woman (ish) no matter my genitals but it just pisses me off so much that I’ll forever be an experiment for people (especially men) when I try dating as long as I don’t have a vulva. That I can’t go to women’s changing rooms without having a complete breakdown (I did it once and have avoided them since in the last 1.5 years). That I can’t go swimming in the same clothes all my friends can. That I can’t enjoy buying nice underwear because it always looks so horribly wrong. That I feel it every second of every day, that I always have to cover it up when I wear tight bottoms, that I always have to worry and think about it. I hate it, I really do. Every time I touch it, it feels more like a tumor or some kind of demon that has manifested in my body. My bottom dysphoria has become worse and worse the better everything else gets. You win some, you lose some, I guess. All in all, life has gotten significantly better in the last two years for me. I feel like I still have the same amount of dysphoria as I did before starting HRT, only now it’s concentrated more on this part of my body.
Okay, rant over, haha. Hope to hear some of your experiences and what helped you through the wait.
I sympathize with these feelings, and I’m sorry you’ve had to wait so long to get this taken care of. Be confident that it isn’t that far in the future.
As for my experiences, I can personally relate to gender dysphoria but not genital dysphoria. I missed out on a lot of gay experiences when I was younger because, while I’ve always liked dicks, I’ve never seen masculinity as a positive trait, and the one gay guy I knew in high school was very masc and went to the gym and stuff. I’m dating another transfem with a similar background to my own, and (perhaps because they look more feminine than I do and have stronger dysphoria) they’re asking me to boymode, which I hadn’t done in about a year. I do it because I care about them and desperately need that relationship. (Abandonment issues.) Plus it’s just something different.
My suggestion, beyond taking solace in the fact that you have a surgery planned, is to spend time with a partner, be it someone who is trans or someone who understands the trans experience more than a completely cis person. Intimacy with someone you’re attracted to and know and understand can be therapeutic.