One night in Bangkok — waking up from my surgery
There are few moments in my life I remember as vividly as waking up from my gender confirmation surgery. Maybe it was the morphine, but it was the most serene, calm, and centred experience I had ever felt. I felt right, that self-knowledge that my body was my own. This was something more than gender euphoria, it was a completeness of being that had taken 26 years to achieve. From that moment on my wholeness was not at odds with my biology.
Twenty four hours before I was in my hotel nil by mouth, having a relaxed evening with my fellow gender travellers. I had flown out to Thailand by myself from the UK a couple of days before, knowing no-one in-country, so finding this group of folk helped relieve my tension and nerves. Being amongst soon to be friends was a balm to any anxiety building up, and sitting down to my first proper Thai meal was a relief.
Even 15 years on I still hold a candle to the night before, because it was the end of one mode of being before the leap into the hopeful future. Being young and confident was part of my self, being able to articulate fears and anxiety was a lot harder. That last meal was full of compassion and kindness, though it had a finality to it that was hard to put my finger on. In the restaurant’s low light was discussed all the world and its issues, a pre-cash 2008 full of promise and opportunity. This was a time of optimism and frivolity.
Things wound on, time Jackaloping in a rhythm of its own. I did not want to be alone on this night of all nights, and while I do not remember her name, she took me under her wing for one night. Together something magical happened between us, a tender bond of unspoken kindness and kindred joy. Her arms felt right, her compassion was an ecstasy all of its own. There was a rapture, a salutation to this body of mine, the thing about to be renewed by knife and surgeon skill.
I did not get that much sleep. It was a night of drifting in and out of her embrace, her security. It was something I never forget, the tenderness of all her being wrapped up in this body of mine. I was not lonely that night, and as the dawn rose over the city I padded back to my room with those memories to prepare for the renewing day.
There is something about mirrors and gender confirmation that is almost cliché, a ritual of passage acknowledging the old self becoming the new. I remember seeing myself in the mirror naked one last time, taking in my form and figure. I never hated my prior form, it was the skin on my bones, but it never really sat well either. People ask why go through the transition and surgery, and the best answer I can give was on that morning: in my deep understanding of myself this body of mine was not me, not the form that say right within the core part of my being.
Hours later I was in the hospital waiting room ready in a gown, with plenty of time before they took me down. On the wall a clocked ticked by, second following second, a sense of time passing. In the moment I meditated, calmed myself, slowing my breathing to the slowest I have ever recorded. In no sense was this the wrong place to be. If I died on the table, then so be it. I have had multiple non-gender related surgeries before, and this was the most serene I have ever been.
As they took me down on the trolly, lights passed overhead, and then into the theatre we rolled. As ever, I was curious and chatty, talking and waiting. It was not long, for soon the drugs entered my system and things became black.
Just as quickly my mind awoke, renewed body, completely serene.
When people talk about trans regrets, suggest that we will never be whole or complete, that going under the knife is a butchering of our former selves, I hold my peace. I know deep within that what happened in those 24 hours in Bangkok was the perfect solution for me. In the 15 years since I have maintained that sense of peace about myself, not had the slightest regret or doubt about who or what I am. My womanhood is as centred and grounded as the form I inhabit. I live in a perpetual state of self grace, granted to me by the surgeon’s knife and the compassion of those around me.
For me, the surgery switched off a gnawing dissonance, like tinnitus, that perpetually resonated in my core being. Morphine or not, the bliss of knowing that this body of mine is still and quiet is as profound as revelation. It is the serenity of sitting by the water, watching the ripples and waves. Nothing can truly capture what it is to be fully at peace after the dissonance stops, only that for the first time in my life I was still and at one with all that I am.
In the mirror months and years afterwards I see the smile every time I look at myself, the grin that comes from just being myself. There is a pride and joy in existing as who you are without the clarion call of an ill-fitting form. That it took a surgeon to get me to this point in life was a step I needed to take. That the self-understanding of womanhood flowed from a young age to that point took time to fully work its way through, though waking up as the full actualised version of myself was the starting point of the rest of my life.
