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After the pre-intake, I was given a series of tests, and instructed to write my life story. The life story could be the three to thirty pages, I ended up with twenty-three. Although retracing my life with my new discovery certainly gave me something in return, I did it all under intense pressure. I sometimes experienced the preliminary process and determination of the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, or rather gender incongruence, as a kind of trial. As in The Trial in Pink Floyd’s The Wall, which I listened a lot to during my difficult adolescence. It was a slow trajectory of six months, during which I thought a few times “now come the liberating words,” only for it to take longer again.
But finally that liberating moment came. The moment I was allowed to go to the endocrinologist at Maasstad Hospital to measure basic values of my hormone levels, and to get the medication prescribed. A week later I got estrogen patches, and after a month I finally also got triptorelin (Decapeptyl). It was in the waning days of Corona, so my family doctor indicated that she didn’t have time to have the assistant put the syringe in. I then asked her to give me instructions, learning how to stop my testosterone supply myself. Although I found it scary every time, I loved the idea of administering it myself.
After more than a year I also had surgery. By basically the best surgeon in the Netherlands in this field, Dr. Kanhai. I chose the combination of vaginoplasty and breast augmentation. In the period after the operation I had to get used to my new gender. I totally envisioned that “that appendage” would finally be gone, but simply had not yet imagined what it would be like to get something beautiful in return. And I was unlucky, because probably due to inflammation a lot of scar tissue developed. But regardless, when I realized after the surgery that it had actually happened I wept with happiness.
In the period that followed, I fought the scar tissue twice daily. It became a habit, a moment of rest in the morning and evening.
Partly with the help of osteopath Sary van der Hasselt, after two years, enough space had finally been regained, allowing for a repair surgery to take place with Dr. Kanhai. And this time it went well. I had virtually no pain in recovery, unlike two years earlier. And no scar tissue developed. That was a great relief, although I only really felt it four weeks later, after Sary diagnosed the same thing. She repeated several times, ““It’s so very good that you went for it.”
In those first forty-four years of my life, I regularly wondered what it would be like to live in a woman’s body for one day. I have the answer now. For me, it is heavenly! Despite everything, I am now where I wanted to be, was supposed to be, all along. There’s no place like home!
Also see the Making of..
The weave Assessment and Transitioning consisted of 246 frames, of which I photographed 86 frames also at the back. I made short loops of eight frames each time which I looped back repeatedly. Handwoven on 8 shafts with 8/2 cotton. Number of frames 192.
