Hey Everyone! Sorry for the people who’s been following my Journey posts on here who’s been waiting a bit. I made some posts that in the midst of dealing with pain and trying to work on moving around a little bit ended up being put on the sidelines. BUT with that being said, I’m going to try and work on making a little schedule for these posts. I don’t know why but it’s just fun making these! So this post I’ll be talking about everything up to this week, which is currently the 3rd for me. If you guys need to look at the previous part I have it here for you!

Week 2:

Oh, MY GOD. This was honestly the week of HELL for me. When they say this week and the next is the rough ones, ITS NOT A JOKE! I got back from D.C. from the surgery on the 1st. I woke up the day we were leaving to get stuff packed and since I’m a stubborn bean I didn’t allow my fiancée and my sister help me since I was assuming they would get an attitude helping. (Looking back at it now I just realized that DEFINITELY could have been my hormones just ALL over the place since I had to stop it 2 weeks before the surgery. 🤦🏾‍♀️) This of course lead to me being in a good chunk of pain. I also had just discovered that I would be still bleeding from the surgery every now and then, I was putting clothes away in my bag when I felt what I at first suspected was me peeing on myself until I noticed it DEFINITELY wasn’t pee, I instantly started panicking and ran to the bathroom and broke down sobbing thinking I ruined the surgery until my sister and fiancée helped me clean up and finish packing and calmed me down. That’s when I found out while cleaning that it was just from a clot that came loose inside and caused a bit of bleeding but it had all completely calmed down. I finished helping pack and we finally got into my car to head back home. My sister got the backseat set up where I could lay down and I got the rest of it set up for me to be comfortable, after getting settled in we headed home. I was in a considerable amount of pain still from overdoing it a tad and took some Tylenol and napped. Not too long after waking up from it we were only 30-ish minutes out from home and that’s when my OH NO alarm went off. The roads that far out from my house is TERRIBLE, so the entire time I held myself up for dear life praying we wouldn’t hit a bump because we already did before I took a nap and I DID NOT want to deal with that pain if I could help it. We got home finally and got settled and unpacked and that’s when I worked on setting up a good little space for me to rest up. I decided to do two places after a while to be able to enjoy company if someone were to come see me, so one spot was a corner of our slightly uncomfortable couch in our living room, another in the bedroom. After that I was just mostly recovering, pain being usually RIGHT at 4. Cycling through Tylenol and Ibuprofen was my LIFELINE for the rest of the week. Other than that. I just took it easy for once. I’m not one to really be able to just “take it easy “ so I had to definitely learn then. After getting used to it though it made me realize I definitely needed to do it more often.

Week 3:

Leading up to this week I found things here and there that made recovering easier. What I’ve been dealing with this week is mostly my nerves reconnecting and OUCH! I got used to my dilating schedule and I’m currently on the last dot of blue #2! When I was doing my first rounds of dilating my sister and I had a deep conversation about it. “So, I’ve always wondered like what it felt like having the opposite stuff down there, like the use the bathroom and stuff. If you’re comfortable talking about it, like, how did it feel?” I pondered a little bit, realizing the question she was asking and trying to find the right answer that would fit how it felt. I assured her that it was something I was willing to answer as now having bottom surgery it just felt like a past experience rather than giving me dysphoria with the old parts still being down there.

“It felt like it always wasn’t supposed to be the way I peed if that makes sense. When I was younger I always peed while sitting down. My mom first showed me how to pee and stuff and she told me to stand up to do it and stuff but I was confused as she would sit down to use it obviously. I just didn’t get the reason I really had to stand up. So if I was somewhere comfortable and could do it, I would just sit to use it. I always had a set of directions, if that makes sense, that I would follow to use it that way. I would sit down, kind of fold my length downwards into the toilet seat and just go that way. Of course if I was erect it would be harder for me to do it, so in those cases especially as I got older and more aware of why I didn’t feel comfortable standing, I would just wait for the erection to go away on its own and THEN go. But now that I’m peeing with the right parts it feels natural for it to just come out the way it does now vs having it being almost directed through one path that would go one direction coming out. Yeah it was cleaner, but it just made me feel uncomfortable, ESPECIALLY when I had started making up my mind that I was trans.” She nodded most of the time in agreement and to ensure me she was paying close attention.   After that I told her how now it feels so euphoric to be able to use the bathroom the way I’ve always felt like I should use it with the right parts to do so. And that before bottom surgery I always felt 4/5 of myself and the bottom surgery finally got me to the complete whole. I finally reached the point of being myself in all aspects and I never wanted to go back.   Before I went to bed I started just looking back at all the pain and misery and trauma I went through to end up at this point of my life. From non-stop trauma and abuse from my family, to finally finding myself and also during that time finding out what it was to be in a very serious relationship with someone that was also an abusive relationship, to what feels like was the lowest point of my life for two months where I finally made the choice coming out of all that went on in those two months that I was trans and finally set up the appointment to start hormones. And then finally meeting the woman of my dreams who I just got engaged to who’s been by my side since I finally made the decision to start healing and living life the way I wanted to and what felt like I should have from the beginning. And now having bottom surgery. If that was the only way to get to this point again in all the possibilities of how my life could go. I would do it all again.