By the time this arrives in your inbox, I'll likely be unconscious.

Under the knife.

What a menacing phrase. Such a moment, when it feels like everything is menacing. Such a moment, when everything feels to be under the knife. Our ways of life, our systems and our supports, for some of us, our very existence.

Something is happening to me in this very moment as a result of the current crisis, and I need you to know the context, because so many of you think that we simply need validation and people to respect our pronouns. If only it were that simple.

If you read this as soon as you receive it, I am in the middle of a surgery I didn't want, but felt forced to have. I feel a constant swirl of anger, despair, gratitude, and at times, joy. I feel tangible guilt for not having enough gratitude. I feel like I want to scream for having any joy for something that feels forced upon me.

I won't discuss the details of the surgery, that's not the point of what I'm trying to relate. Suffice it to say, when I awake, my body will never again be able to produce testosterone, it will never again have the capability to betray me as it has my entire life. I will never again have the feeling of venom coursing through my veins that it afflicts on many of us for whom it does not belong. For this, I am grateful. For this, I have cried in joy and connection.

Joy and beauty

For thousands of years, my sisters have had this same surgery. For many, but not all, they would perform a ceremony. They would dance and laugh and cry. They would smoke and feel connection and embrace with all the syncretic forms of the goddess Inanna. They would feel connection with sisters who had come before, as I feel connection with them, as well. It feels a responsibility to remember them in their beauty and humanity, in ways that history has simultaneously erased and slandered them. Last night I took part in my own ceremony, simply in their honor, and my own.

There is extreme beauty in what I am experiencing in this moment, under the knife. I am forever grateful. With my entire heart, I am grateful.

Not all of my sisters have desired this surgery, and this is completely valid. Not all of my sisters have been able or been afforded the opportunity for this surgery, despite desperately wanting or needing it, and for that I grieve for them.

Needing more

For years, I have been working toward another, more extensive surgery, that would have done what today will do, and so much more. It has taken so much work. Letters from a neurospsychologist, a therapist, and my hormone provider, written within specific guidelines and specific timeframes. I had to make insurance work. I've had to spend endless hours and cost to have electrolysis done for a full hour at a time, with no method to numb or alleviate the intense pain because of my own medical condition.

I researched extensively. I found the right surgeon for me. I've spent time on the wait-list. I've spent time in training. I took a road trip in order to have my consult.

I lined up a required support team to be with me at all times in the weeks after surgery. I created a meal plan in order to prep every single meal required to feed myself, my family, and my support team, for six weeks solid, which I would label and put in the deep freezer, with an associated calendar.

I took every cent I earned in a side job just to pay for all of this, still coming up short, and feeling guilty and selfish every moment, but with the support and encouragement of my spouse.

Forget about the effort, pain, and cost it's taken.

I have cried about this since I was the smallest child, feeling physically wrong. I have memories telling myself when I was tiny, "This is impossible to change. You need to forget this. It's dangerous to think about this because if you think about it, you'll never stop crying your entire life. You have to forget it. You must forget it or else it will be unbearable."

I finally began to feel hope that finally, I would finally, finally, finally feel liberated.

And then the election happened.

In short order, I lost hope.

Back-up plan

In the US, they are already forcibly detransitioning trans people in prisons, forced bodily modification, simply by taking away their life-saving medicine. They plan to arrest and imprison us over nothing. I'm aware that I can't survive forced detransition. So, I had to make backup plans, as my surgery date is too far out. As opaque as the future seems, with how quickly we descend into fascism, months seem as distant as centuries. Luckily, I had done all the preparations.

I found a surgeon who happened to have worked with one of the members of my surgical team for my more extensive surgery. I made sure that this surgery would not adversely affect my more extensive surgery. I advocated for myself. My letter writers all delivered me new letters immediately, understanding how critical this timing would be.

They couldn't fit me in before January 20th, but got me as soon as their schedules would allow, squeezing me in, seemingly during a lunch break between other surgeries.

I'm grateful to all of those who have made this possible. I'm grateful to my surgical team.

I have so much gratitude. I have joy that my body can never betray me again in this way. I have joy in the connection I feel.

It should not be this way

I want you to understand, my life-saving medicine was working. In another world, I shouldn't have needed this surgery. I'm not having this surgery due to medical need. I'm having this surgery for political reasons. I'm having this surgery because if I don't, if I'm arrested simply for the crime of existing, I will not only experience extreme agony, I will likely not survive.

I am repeating this. I am having this surgery because I would not survive being physically tortured by my own government for the crime of existing.

In another world, I could simply continue with my medicine until my more extensive surgery, and this would be taken care of.

But I have lost almost all hope that it will be legal, safe, or that there won't be other barriers I won't list for me to access the surgery I have been working toward for so long.

And I despair at this thought. I am under the knife right now for survival. But I don't want simply to survive, I want to live. And I don't know how to describe the lifetime of pain I have felt to get to this point, and how many tears I have spilled and will continue to spill at having this taken from me. To know that my body will still feel wrong to me, but that at least the parts of me that finally feel right won't be lost.

When I wake, I should be feeling such joy, and I hope that I do, but I can't shake the feeling that what joy I have will inevitably be overshadowed not for what has occurred, but despair for what I feel may never happen, that this is not enough, that this will be as much as I'm allowed in this life, and that I will simply have to do as I've always done. Cope with the pain.

I was forced to choose between an unnecessary surgery, and the very real possibility that I would have my body forcibly modified against my will, and that I might not survive it.

And what adds to this is the feeling of guilt and selfishness, that I should feel happier about this. That I should feel joy for something that so many others haven't and won't be afforded. The guilt and shame that I am upset about this, while also worried about greater existential issues that are happening to my own family and to people all over this country and this world right now. But pain is pain, and this pain is real.

I never planned to publicly discuss any surgery of mine. It feels aggressive to share and invasive to have it shared. But I need you to know that, in this moment, while I lie on this table, under the knife, I feel the need to put my life under the knife, open and on display.

Our existential struggle in this moment is not with validation or pronouns or sports or whatever you see it reduced to in the news– these are just entry points that they use to create a wedge they can drive deeper. We are dealing with existential crisis. We are dealing with pain, the threat of forced bodily modification, and death. We are dealing with the threat of our children being taken from us. We are dealing with a legislation that would codify all trans people as sex offenders for their existence on one hand, and a legislation that would create a death penalty for all "sex offenders," in other words, tandem legislation intended to create a death penalty for being trans.

Trans people and families are fleeing this country, if they're able. But most are not able. Where can they go that is safe? Where can they go and get a visa to stay and work? Asylum is not an option.

And here I lie, under the knife. In this moment and the next, day after day. We all do. Open. Vulnerable. Bleeding.

Please, see this. Please get others to see this. Forward this post with them if you need to.

We can't stitch our own lives back together. We can't excise the source of the pain ourselves. We need help. We need help from someone.

You're someone. Do something.

I'll end this one by saying, I appreciate anyone who wants to share in celebration of this moment with me, and I welcome well-wishes. But please know, there is so much left unsaid. Even here. Even now. Even under the knife.

And my tears will forever be mixed with joy and anger, celebration and despair. But friendship, love, and solidarity are healing and always welcome.

no ends, only means