---
date: 2019-12-21
weight: 2
---

<div class="verse">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.
&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp; 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?
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>
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 &mdash;
regrets which hadn't yet happened &mdash; 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.
<blockquote>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.</blockquote></div>

<!-- 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.

I say six weeks because that, specifically is when I got a call from my surgeon's office reminding me that I needed to bring my approval letters in with at the pre-op appointment so that they'd have them on file.

"But I already gave you them," I said. "Don't you still have those?"

"Well, yes, but they expire after a year."

> Fuck.

Yeah, fuck. Thus began a two-week scramble to find new doctors to write new letters to send in to the surgeon's office. After all, I'd moved states since I'd gotten the first letters written, and even if I hadn't, one of the doctors who had written one had retired.

I wound up getting four additional letters, as there were some questions about the validity of some of the therapists' statements and credentials.

> So it felt real then?

Yes, coming to terms with the fact that the surgery might have been canceled is what made it seem as though it was something real and tangible. Real things can be canceled. Real things can be destroyed. -->