21 July 2009

Inside Out

I can't believe that two weeks have passed since my surgery!

Tomorrow night, I will have been home for a week. Charlie and Max are still treating me as if I'd just walked in the door: They can't keep themselves off, much less away from, me. Actually, I'm happy about that. Their cuddling and purring are even more relaxing than most massages.

Mom says they're afraid I'm going to leave again. Even though I don't think I'm going to venture much more than a few blocks from my apartment for a while--at least until my appointment with my gynecologist next week--I suspect she's right.

I can't help but to wonder whether they know what I've done. I can't help but to think that they know that I've changed in some way. Perhaps they're afraid that I'll change into something they can't recognize. Well, they shouldn't fear: I'm going to change into my nightgown. They've seen that before.

Seriously...I know that I am going to experience further changes. What those changes are, I don't know. All I know is that I really can't do anything but change, mainly because I am learning about myself in ways I never imagined.

More specifically, I am seeing my body in ways I never imagined I could. I first became aware of that last week, during my session with Nurse Phyllis.

She removed my catheter tube. Then she pulled the packing material out of my vagina. It seemed that there was no end to it: The blood-tinged white strand streamed out of me like one of those endless strands of spaghetti the cartoon characters would suck until there was nothing left in the plate.

It was the first time I ever saw something pulled from inside my body. That, I realize now, is the reason I insisted on watching. And, of course, it allowed me my first unobstructed view of my new female organs.

Those organs had once been my male organs. Dr. Bowers essentially turned them inside-out.

No one ever accused me of being unduly fixated on my cock. Truth was, it was the last thing in the world I wanted to think about. Of course, that meant that at times, all I could do was to think about it--or, more specifically, the fact that it was there.

Then Marci Bowers brought my womanhood from within. In that sense, my operation was the culminating event that I expected it to be: For the past few years, I have been bringing my essential female self--Justine--into the world, from within me.

That was my real transition. The hormones may have helped, but they didn't turn a masculine visage into a feminine (after a certain fashion, anyway) face. My jawline and other facial structures may have indeed softened and become less angular, but the real reason why I see Justine's face rather than Nick's in the mirror--and, I believe, why people who've seen old photos of me can't believe that I am the person in those photos--is that I am seeing myself from within me.

What I see now has always been within me. I have lately been fortunate enough--and am now tired enough!--to have seen it all coming from within me.