Dear Family,

As many of you know, my house, where I have lived for longer than I can remember, is just a fence jump away from the woods. (Well, it’s less a “fence jump” and more a “gate open,” as our backyard fence does in fact have a back gate, but the former sounds more fun.) You can just head out beyond our backyard, pick your way downhill through some thicket, and boom, you’re on a wooded trail where you could, with a little imagination, convince yourself that you’re miles from civilization. 

I’ve been spending a good deal of time in those woods this past week or so, going for daily walks to get my body moving and my head clear. It’s the closest I can really get to an intense workout at the moment—which I have been yearning for for well over two weeks now, oh-so-conveniently at a time when that is forbidden. More on that later. 

As of late, my typical modus operandi has been to head down to the trail at a leftward-leaning angle, then continue left, heading north-ish. South-ish would only give me about a half mile of trail before coming to a busy road, shattering the illusion of retreat. Shortly after beginning my north-ishward trek, I reach a fork, where the left eventually leads to the local high school, and the right, deeper into the woods. I take the right. 

It’s at this point that my mind begins to meander in whichever direction it pleases. There aren’t any obvious alternative paths to choose from for about another mile or so, and by now, my brain has determined that it is safe to wander. 

It’s not like I can’t zone out anywhere else. In fact, I am an expert at zoning out. So practiced am I at forgetting the world and drifting into my own thoughts that I often find myself doing it in the middle of a task, or even a conversation! But somehow, in the woods, it’s different. Ordinarily, being alone with my thoughts is dangerous. It can be fun, sure, but it can also lead to overanalysis. Overanalysis of an unpleasant memory, or a regretted decision, or a confusing social interaction. That often leads to shame, guilt, even panic. That’s why I’m not a fan of being alone for too long. I’d much rather have a conversation with someone, multi-sided or otherwise, than work myself into a meltdown over a past that I just can’t seem to let go of. 

But like I said, it’s different in the woods. I don’t know how, I don’t know why; I just know that being there keeps my thoughts from wandering down dark, stupid paths. And if I do find myself overanalyzing, it’s about fun things, like if a character in the latest piece of media I’ve been obsessing over said something mysterious. Why did they phrase it like that? Is it foreshadowing? Could this super thief or interdimensional castaway or cartoon witch be hiding something?¹

Most of the time, though, as my mind gently drifts from thought to thought the way a leaf on the creek to my right may drift over ripples of slight turbulence, it is occupied with the world directly around me. Would you look at that, the trees are changing color! Oh hey, there’s that funky stump. Hm, the ferns are starting to go dormant. Dormant? Is that the right word? You know, when perennials die-but-don’t-really-die for the winter. I wonder how far we are from the bridge—ah, there’s that little path of logs going over that perpetually muddy spot. Just about a quarter mile until we get there, then. 

Most of my landmarks are between home and the bridge. There are many bridges on this trail, and I cross two of them before I reach the one I’m talking about, but for some reason, this is the one I think of as The Bridge. Perhaps that’s simply because it itself is a useful landmark for me. Or maybe it’s because the bridges close to home are numerous and clustered together², while The Bridge is the only one for about a mile in one direction and perhaps two or so in the other, depending on which route you take. 

Irrespective of the reason for its place of honor in my brain, it’s more often than not the place where I turn around and head home, making my round trip just over a satisfactory two and a half miles. A week ago, however, I decided to venture a little further. That’s not too unusual, though it was a bit of a daring move for my still-recovering, recently-surgeried body. (Again, I’ll get to that in a bit. Also, I don’t know if “surgeried” is a word, and I’ve spent too many hours agonizing over word choice to care anymore.) 

(That’s right, hours. Those first 800 words of the rough draft have taken at least two and a half. Curse my perfectionism.)

I traveled beyond The Bridge, traversed a short, atypically rocky stretch of path, and was greeted by The Divergence. Kind of a dramatic name for it, considering that “a fork” would do, but it popped into my head twenty seconds ago and I’ve since decided to use it until you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

The Divergence is the spot where the trail was rerouted and now deviates drastically from its old route. It came to be a few years ago, and while I do remember the time of its appearance, I cannot for the life of me put a number to it. I don’t know for certain why it was created, but I can hazard a pretty good guess. The old trail would get copiously flooded in a great number of places after every rainstorm, and it would often stay flooded for days. So, whatever mysterious, wonderful entity maintains my beloved trail decided to replace that oft-perilous portion with a new path—one that immediately takes a turn into an abruptly steep incline, leading the traveler a bit farther from the creek on a hilly detour. 

Immediately after being carved into the forest, the new trail was marked with blazes, and the old with a yellow sign reading something along the lines of “TRAIL PERMANENTLY CLOSED” and the instruction to go up the hill and use the other one. The awesome, enigmatic, trail-maintaining entity even planted and scaffolded saplings³ barely off the old, now-closed path. I imagine they would’ve planted them on the path but determined that the earth was too packed to serve as ideal growing conditions. Or something. I don’t know. 

So, yes. I, ever the goody-goody, obeyed the sign and started using the new path. I’ll admit, it’s more of a workout to follow than its flatter predecessor. It’s windier and much, much hillier. I’m also fairly certain that it lengthens the journey, taking a less direct route from A to B. I imagine those were contributing factors to the fact that virtually no one but me ever heeded the sign and made the switch to the new path. There was a time when I thought, “Well, that now-closed section isn’t being tended anymore, so surely, there will come a day when it will be blocked by too many felled trees to be traversable.” My thoughts can sound oddly posh at times. 

That day never came. Weeks passed, and people still used the old trail. Months passed, and they took down the yellow sign—though I couldn’t tell you whether that was because they assumed everyone would know by then, or because they realized that no one would listen. Years passed, and to this day, I see far more people walking on the old path than the new one. Which is bonkers, because I don’t even use the old path! And much of that path is completely obscured from view on certain stretches of the new one! 

And yet, more often than not, I will walk the entire three-quarter-ish mile stretch from The Divergence to The Convergence (where the reroute ends, causing old and new to become one) without encountering a soul on the new path. But there are places where the old and new paths are a stone’s throw apart—if you’re on the old path, and you’ve got a decently strong arm. You’d have to throw your stone twenty feet or so straight up in the air. If you’re on the new path, it’s less of a stone’s throw and more of a stone’s drop. So while a two-dimensional map would show them running right next to each other, there’s not really an easy way to get from one to the other at those particular spots. That’s not the point, though. The point is that I am far more likely to see people walking below me on the old path than adjacent to me on the new one. And now that I’ve thought up that clever little “stone’s drop” turn of phrase, I’m probably going to have to fight off a whole new assault of impulsive thoughts the next time that happens.⁴ Curse my own indelible wit!

Maybe next time, when I reach the end of the new path and come to The Convergence, I won’t turn back the way I came. Maybe I’ll take the old path back. See what all the fuss is about. 

You may think that the walk back would be less engaging than the walk out, since I’m retracing my steps along a path I just walked. You’d think it would become something of a slog. But no! It’s just as riveting, in that serene sort of way. Here we go, back over The Bridge. Thank you for your service, log path; I will always appreciate your valiant efforts to protect my shoes from mud. Hello again, funky stump—I can’t believe there’s just three-quarters of a mile left before we get home. Oh, look! It’s the pile of rocks that I only ever seem to notice on the way back! You know what that means: it’s time for the final half mile that always feels like way less than a half mile. 

Okay y’all, we are, excluding footnotes, 1,679 words in. 

That… that was supposed to be the introduction. 

I am so, so sorry for making you read through all of my woods ramblings, especially when I’m sure there are at least two whole people who have been anxiously anticipating updates on my surgery recovery! 

…Not sorry enough to go back and delete it, though. After all, it’s like I said—the excitement over my surgery will force people to trudge through all that. When else am I going to get such a golden opportunity? 

Surgery

Y’all, I spent literal hours writing that “introduction.” I don’t know if I’ll have the energy for this. I want to get this done tonight! Maybe I could just… post this as is… and skip the part where I talk about surgery…

Nah, I’m just kidding.⁵ Here we go:

Dad and I arrived at GW Hospital around 10am on October 11, two hours before the surgery was scheduled to take place. No matter how much “great confidence” my father proclaims to have in GW’s medical professionals, and no matter how many United States presidents those professionals have saved from bullet wounds (that was a clever little callback to Dad’s letter—read it if you haven’t already so you can appreciate my wit), it was clear that he was far more anxious about this than I was. I know this because of my excellent skills in reading human paralanguage, and also because he said “I think I’m more anxious about this than you are.” 

Obviously, the thought of someone taking a scalpel to your child’s body will always be nerve-wracking. The thought of someone taking a scalpel to my own body was nerve-wracking for me, too. But those nerves were all but drowned out by my immense elation. I had been looking forward to getting those weird blobs of tissue off my chest since long before I made the phone call to schedule my consultation back in February. 

I’ve tried to explain why, and most people struggle to understand. I get that. But I’m going to try again and again until you tell me to stop. I’ve used the robot comparison: If your consciousness was uploaded into a robot body with no physical indicators of your sex, how would you know whether you’re a man or a woman? You just would. And while that comparison sometimes seems to help my cisgender friends grasp the concept of gender identity being separate from biological sex, it doesn’t explain my need for physical transition. Again, I get it. It’s a weird hypothetical, and if I suddenly became a shiny metallic marvel of modern engineering, I too would have bigger questions on my mind than gender. 

So, why did I want my breasts gone so bad? 

I’ll do my best:

I had something of an epiphany about two weeks before my surgery, when I was discussing the matter with Rick Kemper. I tried, as I am now, to explain my personal feelings on the matter, of which he seemed sympathetic. At one point, breast cancer came up.⁶ I can’t quite remember how, but it seems logical that it would. Brother Kemper mentioned that many breast cancer survivors who undergo mastectomies find the experience traumatic, feeling as though they have lost a part of their womanhood. At the time, I thought, well, I imagine the fact that it’s cancer probably contributes to the trauma a lot more. But reflecting on it later, I realized something.

Breasts are just as much a sign of femininity to cisgender women as they are to me. And many of them want to hold onto that just as badly as I want to be rid of it. 

In my last letter, I used the word “dysphoria.” It’s since occurred to me that some of you might not know what that means. I was referring to gender dysphoria, which is a term used to describe the feelings of distress one experiences when there is an internal conflict between the sex they were assigned at birth and their gender identity. This can be triggered by various stimuli, for lack of a better word. For me, it can range from squirmy feelings of discomfort at being referred to as “she” or “her,” or by my old name, to perturbation or even panic when I have to come face-to-face with certain secondary sex characteristics in the shower. Hence, surgery. 

But here’s the revelation that came to me in my epiphany: Gender dysphoria is not necessarily a “trans thing.” Sure, there are plenty of cis women who would be perfectly content without breasts, and there are plenty of trans women who feel the same way.⁷ But that doesn’t diminish the number of women, cis and trans, whose breasts are important to them. The only real difference is that while trans women who experience gender dysphoria feel it in the bodies they’re dealt, cis women may not realize how dearly they hold their feminine physical characteristics until they’re gone. 

I won’t pretend to understand the experience of having breast cancer, or any kind of terminal illness. I do not know what it’s like to lose a part of my body that is important to me, even when that importance is pure emotional attachment. I’m not trying to insinuate that dysphoria and cancer are “basically the same thing” or something; they are most definitely not. Still, I think that if we consider how gender identity is important to more than just the transgender community, we can all understand each other a little better.

So, there you have it. I was raring to yeet the teet.⁸

The lead-up to the procedure went how I imagine it typically goes. A nurse took my vitals, hooked me up to an IV, stuck electrodes on my back, et cetera. I signed a bunch of papers, sloppily, because I was scared to bend my arm when there was a catheter in it. A plethora of doctors came through in turn to introduce themselves, give me the rundown on what they’d be doing, and ask me if I had any questions. Everyone addressed me by my preferred name and pronouns, which was nice. Dad stayed with me way longer than I’d expected him to—right up to the moment they wheeled me away. I really appreciate my worrywart of a father. 

I was, of course, unconscious during the surgery, so I don’t remember much of the operating room except that the table was narrower than I’d imagined. Next thing I knew, I was in the recovery room, dazed and content. I remember a nurse reaching under the compression vest I was wearing to remove the sticky electrodes from my back, and I even vaguely remember noticing that they’d left a couple behind. I didn’t mention it, possibly under the impression that it was done on purpose, or perhaps just too sleepy to care. 

(I then promptly forgot about that until about a week later, when I found one after my first shower after the dressings had been removed. And another one the next day. And a third the day after that. At that point, I considered asking Mom or Dad to check my back for more, but ultimately decided it would be funnier to keep finding them on my own. Sadly, there weren’t any more after that.)

I remember overhearing a nurse—possibly the same one, though I can’t be sure—gently correcting a coworker on my pronouns from the other side of the curtain. That felt warm and fuzzy, and not because there was still anesthesia in my system. 

Okay, I’ll stop there. You guys don’t need or want the play-by-play. 

Suffice it to say, I was so incredibly happy.

As difficult as gender dysphoria is to explain to people who do not experience it, gender euphoria may be even more indescribable. I’ll give it a shot, though.

Imagine, for a minute, that no one believes you when you tell them your eye color. Any time you say anything about your brown eyes, everyone looks at you funny and says, “What do you mean, ‘brown’? Your eyes are green.” And it’s ridiculous—you know your eyes are brown! You see them in the mirror every day! Maybe you’re deeply fond of your eye color; it’s even something you take pride in. Or maybe you don’t actually care about the color itself, maybe you’re more confused than anything about the whole thing, but you just wish everyone’s words would line up with the image in the mirror. And after a while, you even start to question even that. Are they brown? Are you just crazy?

Then, one day, your friend makes an offhand comment about your “beautiful brown eyes,” and you’re so surprised that they nearly pop out of your skull. Not that your eyes are brown—you already knew that—but that someone agrees with you for once. Your friend is finally validating the truth that only you seemed to know before. And suddenly, everyone has forgotten whatever mass misconception made them think you had green eyes. Another friend compliments how well that shirt goes with your brown eyes. Another notes that it’s difficult to tell where your pupil ends and your iris begins, because the shade of brown is so dark. Another says that it’s so unfair that all the love poems mention blue or green eyes and starts listing off gemstones that could be compared to yours for a change—dravite, andalusite, smoky quartz. 

You feel validated. And, even though it may seem silly to get so emotional over eye color, you feel loved.

I feel that love from my family when they use my correct name and pronouns. I feel that love from my friends when they say my outfit looks very androgynous, very queer, or in the words of a few of my (also trans) online friends, “very gender.” And now, I feel that love from my own body when I look down and see a flat chest. 

My chest. 

Recovery

  I was instructed to walk around a bit the day of my surgery to prevent blood clots. In hindsight, this instruction probably meant “don’t keep yourself on complete bedrest,” but I took it as “pace a lot more than usual”—which is saying a lot, because I am quite a pacer.⁹ I spent the first couple days with next to no pain, feeling great about how well I seemed to be keeping on top of my painkillers. I was invincible. 

Then, the lingering effects of the anesthesia wore off, and I realized how cocky I had been. 

It hit sometime late at night on the thirteenth (or perhaps in the wee hours in the morning on the fourteenth). The pain, which had been ranging from mild to moderate, became much less bearable. The prescription painkillers weren’t enough, even aided by as much ibuprofen as I could safely take between each dose. 

Still, I survived, even though it took a few days to realize that my non-stop pacing was making the pain worse at this point, and several more after that to actually admit defeat and make an effort to become less of a perpetual motion machine. 

I know that at least a couple of the people reading this are already aware of parts of this, and I’m certain that those individuals are currently shaking their heads, muttering “I tried to warn you.” And… yeah, you did. You warned me. And while I may seem ungrateful for that, I promise I am not. I’m just an idiot.

While we’re on the topic of gratitude, I need to thank all of you. Those who brought food and treats, those who texted me to check in, those who talked to me on the phone (which is always an ordeal, I’m sure), and every one of you reading this sentence. Because let’s be honest—you wouldn’t have slogged through nearly 2,000 words of purple prose about the woods and stuff if you didn’t care. 

In the weeks leading up to the surgery, I’d generated and written down a lengthy list of things I could do if I got too bored. I never touched it. I never needed to. Even after I finally surrendered to my body’s need to rest, I always had someone to talk to. I never felt alone, not for a moment. 

Thank you. 

Okay, sappy time is over (for now). I suppose I should actually talk about the medical aspect of my recovery process, too. Prior to waking up, I was attached to two Jackson-Pratt drains. During my pre-op, I had been instructed on how to empty them and measure the fluid output, and while I’m not typically super squeamish, the thought did initially turn my stomach a bit. Fortunately, the process was not actually all that icky once it came down to it. The only icky part was on the instruction sheet they gave me. Apparently, in clinical settings, the action of pinching the tubing and squeezing the fluid into the bulb is often referred to as “milking the drain.” 

Hey, Medicine? Please don’t call it that. 

It was determined at my first post-operative appointment, at which time my dressings were removed, that the fluid output had been low enough for long enough that the drains could be taken out. (Despite having been assured that it wouldn’t hurt a bit, I was expecting a bit of a pinch as the tubes came out. There was none. Just a bit of a tugging sensation. Weird, right?) My surgeon told me that any more fluid my body would produce should be minimal enough to be reabsorbed on its own, but he still instructed me to be on the lookout for signs of a type of fluid buildup called a seroma. 

The day before I returned to work, I felt ready to take on the world. I knew it would be a while before I could raise my arms above shoulder level or lift much of anything, but the pain was gone. I hadn’t taken so much as an ibuprofen in days. I was prepared. 

The day I actually did return to work, the pain returned. Because of course it did. 

At first, I attributed it to the fact that I had just slept three hours in total over the course of as many nights. (I’m a side sleeper, but surgery recovery necessitates me sleeping on my back. Somehow, every strategy I’ve learned from a lifetime of insomnia and nightmares—up to and including benadryl!—fall apart in the face of that, of all things.) Then I theorized that the increased physical and mental stress of work may be causing the resurgence. 

It wasn’t until two days later that it got bad enough that I could actually feel the sloshing. Sorry, I know that’s a gross description, but that’s what it was. Sloshy liquid in the left side of my chest, putting uncomfortable stress on that side’s incision every time I took a step. By that point, I’d become a master at holding my arm against myself like a t-rex to reduce the pain of motion without looking like I was… ugh, I can’t think of a family-friendly way to say it, but you get the idea. 

Anyway, I was ready to call the doctor and get this painful sloshiness drained. Unfortunately, it was a Friday evening, and by the time I got home from work, the office was closed. So I phoned the resident on call at GW, who said that it was likely a seroma, and that I could wait until Monday to make an appointment with my surgeon unless I started showing signs of infection, which she detailed for me. 

I did not get an infection, and I was able to get an appointment for the following Tuesday. Let me tell you, there’s something pretty amusing and almost vindicating about having a needle in your chest and hearing a doctor say, “Yeah, nothing’s coming out, it must be something—oop, never mind.” 

Okay, I’ll stop being gross now. Fluid is gone, and I am no longer in pain. 

Work

Having regularly worked with most of these kids for over a year now, I’ve come to recognize that almost all of them have a favorite counselor. Some of them are very open about it. One older girl, codenamed Sunset, recently gave me a full breakdown of each counselor’s rank in the leaderboard of her favor. (I was second, with which I am content. Silver ain’t bad.) Plenty of kids tell me outright that I’m their favorite or “best” counselor. I know the other counselors get that from their own admirers. 

Other kids are a bit more tactful than Sunset, but still make it fairly obvious where we each stand in their ranking. They show it in who they ask to play with them, who they come to when something goes wrong, and who can coax them out of a bad mood. 

It took me a stupidly long time to get over the fact that I will not be every kid’s favorite. I accepted it as fact fairly quickly, but for some reason, it still stung for those first few months. Logically, I always knew that the feeling didn’t make sense. But the oh-so-helpful rejection sensitivity that came as a complementary add-on to my ADHD package will never stop being an obstacle. 

But hey, at least I’ve overcome this one. And when it starts to rear its ugly head, I can always think back on Optimus’s regular declarations that I am “the best counselor,” Cashew following me around like a mischievous little shadow, Tadpole giving me high fives every time we walk past each other on the sidewalk, and even Sunset’s shiny silver medal. I have piles upon piles of gifted drawings to back me up. I am happy. 

Why am I bringing this up now, you ask? Well, there’s nothing like disappearing for two weeks to remind you of how much you’re loved. 

…At least, that’s what I’d thought. And I was mostly right! I got plenty of hugs and proclamations of joy upon my return. The part that didn’t come as expected was their source. A couple of the kids who I’d expected to be most excited to see me barely acknowledged my absence. Two of them casually asked a few days later, “So, do you still work here, or are you just visiting?” 

It didn’t hurt. Not when I had the soothing balm of the other kids’ excitement at seeing me. The perhaps most surprising reaction came from Cipher, a third grader who I honestly wouldn’t have expected to even notice I was gone. The first time he saw me post-surgery, he loudly demanded, “WHERE WERE YOU?! I MISSED YOU SO MUCH!” He also told me that his friend felt the same way, which was equally shocking. 

Kids, man. You never know when they’re gonna surprise you. 

Okay, everyone, I think we’re done. There were a couple other things I wanted to write about, but since we’re well over 5,000 words at this point, I think it’s about time I let you get back to your day. 

This letter has been the gauntlet. The crucible. The trial by fire. If you’ve managed to read this far, congratulations! You’ve proven your love for me, whether you want to admit it or not. So I’m just gonna say it right here: I love you too. 

With gratitude, 
Ari

1. Up until the end of this exact sentence, everything here was written on October 23, shortly after a walk in the woods. I know I was getting at something with it, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what that was. It’s a while later, and I remember chunks of what I’d planned to say, so I’ll keep going with those. Maybe it’ll jog the memory of whatever grand point I was trying to make.
2. My sisters and I actually did have names for these bridges when we were little, but I can’t remember what they were. I think The Bridge may have been The Wasp Bridge, named for the time Hannah got stung by a wasp while we were on it.
3. You know, like the… the things people put around young trees? To protect them? And like, train them into a… a good growing shape? Not a fancy shape; just like… ugh, I don’t know how to describe it. I looked up “tree training” and got ornamental gardening tips, and “sapling scaffolding” gave me Minecraft-related results. I’m just gonna leave it like this and pray people will get it.
4. I won’t drop rocks on anyone’s head; I pinky promise. Maybe I’ll construct tiny parachutes and drop nice little notes instead—Hey, there’s an idea!
5. I’m not kidding. I wish I was kidding. But I’m gonna push through and do what I set out to do anyway. Ugh.
6. In case any of you are wondering, no, I am not immune to breast cancer. The risk is greatly reduced, yes, but I still have about as much breast tissue as your typical adult cisgender male with my build, and even cis men can get breast cancer.
7. To clarify for any family members who may not be versed in this lingo: “Transgender” or “trans” means that one’s gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. “Cisgender” or “cis” means that their gender identity and birth sex are the same. So when I say “cis woman,” I am talking about a woman who was assigned female at birth, and when I say “trans woman,” I am talking about a woman who was assigned male at birth.
8. I cut out a piece here about how seals, sea lions, walruses, and that one male video game character all have retractable nipples. It wasn’t really relevant.
9. The FitnessGram™ Pacer Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues. The 20 meter pacer test will begin in 30 seconds. Line up at the start. The running speed starts slowly, but gets faster each minute after you hear this signal. [beep] A single lap should be completed each time you hear this sound. [ding] Remember to run in a straight line, and run as long as possible. The second time you fail to complete a lap before the sound, your test is over. The test will begin on the word start. On your mark, get ready, start.