Wednesday, June 18, 2008

2 hour phone call

(The following entries were delayed until Jodie and Julie finished their SRS trip.)

Two of my good friends, Jodie and Julie, had SRS earlier this week. I talked to one of them for 2 hours Sunday night...the night before her surgery.

She had a lot of last minute concerns. Unfortunately, I think a number of us try to keep these concerns out of our mind for a variety of reasons...to lessen the worrying, to keep the invalidating thoughts out of our mind, or because those thoughts simply weren't there until the reality of SRS finally hit.

I know I tried to stay busy...to keep my mind occupied with other stuff...in the few weeks before SRS. I also dwelt on the whole aspect of the surgery...the pluses and minuses of having SRS performed.

Some of Jodie's concerns dealt with her being an only child and no longer being able to bear children. She doesn't like girls, so, really, it would have been a difficult process anyway to meet a guy that would use Jodie's sperm instead of his in order to have children, let alone then find and pay for a surrogate mother.

Perhaps one of the hard parts of questioning things before any portion of transition is does that questioning actually imply non-validation. In fact, I think questioning each step ensures that you are making the right step...that you have weighed in on the consequences of transition.

I think she was also dealing with facing the final act, in a sense. It's sorta like a waterfall...you work your way up to this point in the river and then face an enormous drop-off. There's no going back, but there is a river ahead that can still be traveled.

1 comment:

Kelly said...

If you aren't questioning each step, I think it's a recipe for disaster. Transition is incredibly difficult and taking your time to make sure you are ready for each step is very important. I suppose that's why my transition has taken so long.