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Depression Be Gone- How My First Step In My Gender Change Altered My Life

09/06/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
Today is Labor Day, and as anyone who follows the news cycle knows, unless there is something huge happening, the news tends to be pretty quiet. I thought I would take the opportunity to write about my personal experiences since my surgery on 17 August. I have already written one piece since I had the surgery, but I figured that I would discuss something a bit broader and a bit more salient to how things are going.

To begin with, on 17 August, I had a bilateral scrotal orchiiectomy. That is fancy talk for I had my testicles removed. I was surgically castrated. Now, my doctor did this particular surgery because of the pain I have been in physically. Since I started hormone replacement therapy, my testicles were swelling badly and causing major problems. Typically, this surgery happens later, and there are reasons that not all surgeons are willing to perform this procedure on someone making the transition from male to female that are not rooted in any bias towards transsexuals or intersexuals.

I have, however, come to know that this was the right thing to do at this point. I was probably going to end up eating myself to death before I could ever get anywhere near the final surgeries. Now, I am acutely aware of my habit of overeating when stressed or depressed. With the lifting of the constant, crushing depression, I no longer feel the need to over eat and am doing so out of habit. I am now trying to break that habit. Unfortunately, it isn’t like smoking. I can’t quit food cold turkey. Well, I could, but that would probably not be healthy.

I also find myself feeling as if so many of the pieces of my life that I have obsessed and worried about for so long have just disappeared. I no longer obsess about being able to call myself a lesbian, or to think about myself as a woman. I am a lesbian, and I am a woman. I am more comfortable letting those show through. I feel comfortable as a woman for the first time in my life. I no longer feel like I have to be on guard constantly in order to make sure that I am not going to slip up and someone see me as male no matter how I am dressed. I also gave up on wearing wigs except at formal occasions. Women can wear bandanas on their heads, and since I am growing out my hair anyway, that works just fine. I just make sure that they match my outfits.

As for being a lesbian, or at least expressing my lesbianism, that is proving harder to do, but I know it will come with time. That I am attracted to women is a definite. I feel so very strong in my sexuality now that I am no longer afraid of it, but at the same time, I am still going to be shy. I am still going to blush at the least little thing, and certainly tend to giggle and feel embarrassed at anything ‘off color’. Of our staff at LGR, I am probably the most innocent, and no matter how much I protest, I get a feeling that this is how I will always be. Still, first comes comfort with oneself and then comes the rest.

The only downside so far has been to my writing. I am no longer constantly bombarded by thinking and so I am having to labor over my writing more than I have in the past. I will get use to it. It is a small price to pay to no longer feel like I qualified as living dead.

It will be a while before I know how this surgery has changed me. I feel as if a whole new chapter in my life has opened up, so maybe it is good that I decided to deep six so much of the junk that accumulated in High School (my years at Brandon High School, FL were the second worst in my life following close behind the last decade.)

Everyone enjoy their Labor Day. I will post when I can and with what I can today. It is probably going to be quiet, so, unless Lady Gaga decides to become a nun or the Senate mysteriously turns into frogs (one can only hope), I doubt that there will be a lot of news to cover today. Drive safe, have fun, and enjoy yourselves.