I realize that I sent this blog address out to a large number of people. Many of whom, I don't think have ever seen me in shorts, let alone without a shirt on...
So, for those of you reading this blog on an ongoing basis, I hope these pics, and others I am soon to upload aren't too freaky for you. If so, screw it!
Trying to take up enough space so that as this posts, and people have been amply warned about the shirtless post-op pics below, they can sign off if they so choose.
These pics were from the first moments I saw my new chest for the first time. I had just gotten to my parents' house in Connecticut, and had waited until they went to bed, so that I could try to take my first shower (after sponge bathing for a week, with the compression vest and bandages still on.)
Upon taking off the compression vest, and trying to take my own few snapshots in the large mirror, I started to feel whoosey. I saw my scars and stitches for the first time, and my sense of shock kicked in, and overwhelmed me. The unfortunate part is that compression vest if obviously tight, so once I cancelled all attempts to shower, I literally could not get myself re-dressed. I freaked out, feeling nauseous, and dizzy, and tried to throw on some loose fitting outer clothing, just in case I ran into my parents in the hall wall of their very small house.
I went back to my room to lay down in the dark and refrain from passing out, but i was not feeling any better. I called my friend Melanie in the middle of the night, and before I could even explain how badly I was feeling, she said: "I'm coming to get you."
When she got there, she got me dressed, and drove me to her parents' house a few miles away. I was so relieved to have had her patience and assistance with me during my most embarrassing fumbles.
While at her parents' house, she drew a bath for me, and retrieved my friend Jules' number from my cell phone, wrote it down, and placed her mom's cordless phone next to the note with Jules' number on the floor near the bath tub. I undressed myself again, and crawled into the warm, sudsy bath, and just slipped under the surface. Looking down, I was forced to be witness to the carnage that looked like my torso. All bruised, and stitched up, while my aureoles were still covered in sterilized tape that had been discolored from the blood.
I was unprepared for this...
Slowly, after washing my battered body, I tried to stand up to let the water drain off my skin, as I reached for a clean towel, hoping that my stitches hadn't opened, to release fresh blood on someone else's innocent linens. I seemed to be safe. I dried off, and Melanie softly spoke to me through the closed doorway.
I was there. Seeing my body in the large, lit mirror, I was stunned. I put my jeans back on, and just stood there, as Melanie crept through the door, to see if I was okay. She stood behind me, as I stared at my unrecognizable chest. I turned to face yet another mirror to my right, and saw a different angle, of this still unfamiliar body.
We picked up my clothes that littered the bathroom floor, and went back into Melanie's childhood bedroom. A place that we hung out in, and gossipped, a decade and a half earlier. Suddenly, this room I hadn't seen in years was some odd incubator ~ a place for me to warm up to the idea that my body was now different.
Melanie picked up her camera and asked what I wanted to do. Out of no where I just started sobbing. It was not a specific sense of depression or sadness. It was a more primal reaction. I was at a loss. My mind was vacant of all conscious thought. I just cried. Because she knew I had been trying to take pictures of the first sight my new chest when I was back at my parents' house, then thwarted when I began to feel ill, she asked if I wanted her to take photos now to document what I was feeling and seeing.
I nodded. Still crying, I sat meekly on the floor next to her bed. My shirt was draped over my thighs, and I just sat there, with tears rolling down my face and hitting the bare skin of my torso. It was such an unusual feeling for me, who was used to be bundled and covered up in the past.
Having been trans my whole life, and having always hated this feminine chest of mine, I would cover it all times. There have been people I have dated that I have never seen me fully naked, for this very reason. And yet, here I was, with my best friend, and not even flinching to cover up this formerly private part of my body.
Seemingly instantaneously, my instincts had changed. I no longer needed to divert people's attention away from my feminine curves. Instead, I left myself open to the possibility of being seen, without even realizing it.
And here was my friend documenting this whole metaphorical shift at the precise moment it happened. Melanie reached out to me, and touched my scars. Something that would have never been possible just one month before. It was clear that more had changed than just simply the shape of my body.
We took a dozen or so photos that night, and here are just a few. (Might up load others soon.)
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