The Sad Truth

It’s Sunday. I struggle with my thoughts and dysphoria. The pattern that repeats, even though I don’t want it to.

Truth be told this is one I struggle with each and every day. I wake up, go to the scale as a weekend of dysphoria has not caused me to overindulge, somehow dreaming my weight will have somehow dropped below that first milestone of 100kg. I step off and then go have morning coffee already dejected about the weight and fall into the doomscroll.

I sit there and scroll through the varied algorithmic bombardment of TikTok, trying to find something to make me feel better, while enjoying that morning coffee and a smoke. (One of those vices I need to put away for my transition.) I sit there with the audio screaming in my ear and as always the anti-trans rhetoric pops up.

I feel my soul plunge into darkness as I try as fast as possible to scroll past. I get to someone transgender I follow, first to think I am so happy for them and then to feel sadness for where I am still finding myself. I feel alone, stuck and frustrated at once. I obviously start a mini spiral of depression and anxiety, just as it wants to run away from me, I gather myself, sip my coffee and have a last inhale of the cig, before getting up and needing to go to the bathroom.

I put my mug down and walk to the bathroom and as I turn in, I get stumble into my enemy the mirror, just far enough to remind me that this body is not what it is supposed to be. My spiral resumes. How will I ever be the real me, how will I afford it, how will I do that and buy a house? These questions plague me every morning, but they are at their loudest at the end of a week, when the dread of a new week begins.

During the week I drown them with my two different SRNI’s and a generous, but expensive helping of vyvanse. It quiets my mind during the day. I remember that I am actually blessed, I have a job I actually enjoy even with it’s corpo red tape. I have a wife who decided my soul was more important than my packaging. I have food and a scrape by while drinking myself sometimes to a depressive mess.

My life is by no means one of struggle, I milked male privilege as long as I could bear it, I led and steered business for much of my life and I have had wonderful experiences both before and after transition started. I should be happy because there are so many that don’t have even that. I have a stable supply of my lifesaving HRT and mental health professionals, that at sometimes pull their hair out in frustration. Nothing to fret about then, maybe I am just being difficult.

I have interacted with so many other trans people over the years and I have been told I need to first find comfort and confidence in who I am now. These are the people of my age and yet I don’t identify with much of their outlooks on life. I see them and they seem fine with their existence and I wonder, are they truly happy, do they like me want more but South Africa is just not financially viable for most of us to get that care. Because I know I do.

It seems that the younger trans woman they still want FFS and the ones I find more in common with are 10 to 20 years younger than I am. Those who see the world from a slightly different lens. Maybe its because I have been on HRT for 10 years on and off, its only now after I first addressed my own mental health that I realize what I truly want and what I am allowed to want.

I don’t think it is wrong of me to try to reclaim some of my lost time, I have given so much of myself to others over the years, bled for customers who easily just turned their back on me after I was outed. What is wrong being 50 and looking like 30? Am I not allowed to have these feelings? Part of my mental health progress is being able to admit to myself first what I want.

The honest truth is that for most trans people in South Africa, surgical intervention is sorely out of reach. I don’t have the budget of a Kardashian sibling, nor do I have the confidence to lay my soul bare in video and photo’s? Writing is all I have right now, the only way I can express myself so my messy truth can be expressed. The sad truth is if I let my analytical, sometimes irrational mind, filled with anxiety and ADHD tell me the following truth. You will never be able to afford it.

Let me break it down for you, I am pretty sure every trans woman, has some sort of “idealized” version of ourselves in our mind. I cannot speak for trans men if that is the case. That perfect version where you would say, “yes, that is the real me”. I understand that that image evolves over time. But even that evolution can be costly to attain.

Let’s talk about HRT, the smallest of costs in our lives. Depending on what therapy you follow costs can range from effectively from about R350 per month for mono therapy injectable estrodial valerate. Mine is about R1000.00 per month. It can even get to where I was at R1500 to R2000 per month where I was about 10 years ago with a different therapy strategy. Results of that can vary, dependent on your genetic makeup, your age and various other factors.

Now let’s talk about surgeries, It’s “WTF” expensive and even though there is a public system to get it, the waiting list is years long. I thought about it back when I started. I did some maths and decided I would rather let someone younger have access to it and not go add my old ass in there, because odds are I will have to wait to my 60’s. The decision was made that I would go private, I was naive and did not really think about the cost implications. I did not start my journey of mental health yet and at the time thought I could “will” it into existence as I had done so many times with so many things before. At that stage I thought, lets just get the face done and voice train. I was 80kg and even though at the time, thought that a pretty face and voice would get me to where I wanted to be.

So before I go off script completely again, there are other pieces dealing with my own thought patterns, so let me break and rather explain the reality we trans folks face in SA. As far as I know there are two doctors offering Facial Feminization Surgery to us trans women in South Africa. Now let me know in the comments if you want me to do a deep dive on what that entails?

Costs for that here in South Africa, my ai Roxy, tells me its about R278K to R463K to get that done here. Turkey is next but with stays, flights and other costs I think it would be the same, Thailand is an option, Same price no flights or accommodation. Spain up to R833K. South Korea does such wonderful work on it, especially their lower third of the face work, but that can go up to R648K without the rest.

Okay that is the face done, now lets move a little down, reducing the adam’s apple. That’s another R74K, Boobs between R75K and R93K. Right now your top half is done, yay! Now you want some rib remodelling, lets add some a new minimally invasive approach that cuts the ribs and repositions it, results are truly impressive, but at R222K it’s also pricy. Tummy tuck and a BBL another R129K to R200K and then we get to the one I actually never thought I would want. Gender affirmation surgery is anywhere from R185K to R555K depending where you go and in SA it would be about R296K. Let’s add some dental work for another R100K and there you go, one 50 year old looking like she is 30.

Now that is not even putting things like upkeep in mind or any revisions that might need to be performed, but that would mean I would be worth as much as a house. Well not exactly, but at least a 2 bedroom townhouse away from Cape Town.

So in short R1.5 million to about R2 million to get to there. That is the number that pops in my head each morning when I walk into my bathroom. Is that something that makes sense, maybe not to you, but to me it does, that’s just how my brain works. Hence I tend to retreat into my mask or the thing it has evolved into over the last ten years. Maybe that’s also why I drown my sorrows and prefer to stick to world inside of my computer or movies, where there is a happy ending…..

2 Million bucks, yeah that’s a lot, there is a companion piece I am also doing about how I figured I could get that money. I have my ups and downs, sometimes, I forget about my male abdomen and bad teeth and I am happy, some days I am truly thankful, but there are these other days, the days where this question of money is always in the forefront of my mind, where the want burns so brightly, I can barely speak to anyone. It’s not that I am being awkward or bitchy, it’s just me dealing with the sad truth.