diff --git a/content/gender/surgery/02.md b/content/gender/surgery/02.md index 5c899aa..7b416e9 100644 --- a/content/gender/surgery/02.md +++ b/content/gender/surgery/02.md @@ -1,9 +1,46 @@ --- -#date: 2019-10-30 -#weight: 2 +date: 2019-12-21 +weight: 2 --- -I don't think it hit home that surgery was real until six weeks beforehand. Not that I thought it was not going to happen --- though there was some of that, of course --- but that it was something truly surreal. Some unknown and unknowable procedure would happen, and then I would be on the other side. It was almost eldritch: I would close my eyes to miss the madness and awake changed. +
It is surprisingly hard to think something real +when every indication, every word, all you feel +tells you that that must not be the case. +There's no easy way to make yourself face +that which your emotions continually deny, +no matter how true you know it to be. +                 But why +must all these contradictions claim events +that mean the most to us? What prevents +them from taking the unimportant? The small? +Is the import just to big? Can we not fit all +of the thing in our heads? Are we too weak? +Is the life-changing too fast to explore, to seek +out every corner? +
Have you considered that your constant seeking +may be the problem? That your anxieties leaking +all over may be what's preventing you +from recognizing what's actually true: +you can do things for yourself. It's allowed.
+It also doesn't help that there were so many delays. +The scheduler losing my application, and me counting days +after those who consulted after me got their dates; +The mishap of the letters, and me rushing past gates +and their keepers; countless thoughts of countless regrets — +regrets which hadn't yet happened — as mom frets +that maybe I will wind up hating my new body. +And why not? Why not fret? Surgery! How gaudy. +I fight with myself enough over how this surgery +is plastic, how I'm just doing something sugary +to somehow make myself somewhat more appealing. +How trite. How selfish. How lame. How revealing +of my bottomless shallowness. +
Your saving grace being, as always, dysphoria: +more than any cough or cold, more than your chorea, +it provided you with a problem. Something fixable. +It gave you a tangible solution to something integral +that plagued you.
+