A bit off the top

If it were up to me this wouldn't be a political post, but it isn't up to me. I cannot recall a time when I could stop paying attention to the news or when what people thought actually didn't matter with regard to my safety.

I am writing this at a time in my life when I am the happiest and healthiest I have ever been while recovering from a surgery that will beautifully and irreversibly change my life forever.

I am writing this by hand because it matters.

After

Six days after surgery

My arm movements are restricted by my healing chest but I move to the dance music in my earphones and laugh with the joy of my body feeling right, like it has for days. I am fully clothed but hiding nothing, and my compression vest is a medical garment instead of a piece of armour against the world.

I don't have to pretend they aren't there, or count down the hours before I'm risking permanent damage.

Every day beyond my top surgery I will wake up closer to healing until I've fully recovered.

When that happens I will be able to move in any way I want and not feel them there, or worry about my shape, or calculate if the blisters or the tissue damage are worth a few hours more of freedom. I am never going back.

Three days after surgery

I'm sat in bed and realise that for the first time since my teens an alarm in my brain has stopped blaring. For the first time in more than twenty years I have gone more than a day without feeling fat or like my body is somehow terribly wrong. I know rationally that I have never been overweight, but this is the first time I have felt this degree of okay in my own skin. A pain I have been living with for so long that it became almost background noise, has simply stopped.

Two days after surgery

I go into central London for my surgeon follow-up appointment; this is the first time I will see my chest since the compression vest went on.

My surgeon beckons me to look in the mirror at the results and when I see my reflection I tell him "That's me". Even with the swelling and the dressings I am caught off-guard in seeing myself bare chested with no binding tape or "them". My abdomen is swollen too (a common side effect of recent chest surgery) but I don't notice or care in spite of hours spent working out, and years spent constantly scrutinising my food intake.

Moments after surgery

I send a message to my girlfriend and my sister from another mister - I tell them I am out of surgery and eating custard creams; I send both of them a terrible selfie.

I have no memory of these custard creams or sending these messages, clearly I was on all the good drugs.

Before

Moments before surgery

I tell my anaesthetist I hate cannulas and that I'll swear profusely when it goes in. He seems very okay with this and I do indeed swear profusely.

I feel something cold pour into my wrist and everything goes black.

One day before surgery

I celebrate six months with my girlfriend. I think we're both worried about how things will go in my surgery the next day but we also have a fantastic semi-anniversary.

I'm incredibly glad that I'll be waking up next to her on the last morning I will have tits.

Approximately one month before surgery

I go to my first consult for top surgery.

I know that waiting for the NHS will mean more than a decade of being on a waiting list with no guarantee of a surgery consult, or even an ideologically driven cancellation as happened to patients in Wales earlier in the year. I've set myself a budget for getting my top surgery privately so it can happen while I'm still on the better outcomes side of 40 and, honestly, because I'm scared the procedure might be banned for trans men in the coming years within the UK.

The surgeon's plan works for the results I want, and the quote the clinic provides is well within my budget range. They also won points for moving my consult to be sooner after a last-minute cancellation.

I say yes, and book in my surgery date.

Six months and one day before surgery

I head out to my first date in really ever. I'm giddy with excitement and infatuation, but also somewhat terrified that if things work out longer term then she'll see me naked at some point - which means taking off my shirt.

Six months and seven days before surgery

I've agreed to go to my first ever trans meet-up with my sister from another mister - I am anxious as fuck.

I carefully tape my chest before heading into central London even though I've felt able to bind less often since starting HRT and having the freedom to exercise more regularly.

That evening I meet a tall gorgeous woman with hair that smells of coconut - she seems interested in my arm muscles, I am too much of an idiot to figure out why.

Seven months and three days before surgery

I have my first dose of testosterone and am so incoherently happy that on the way back from a walk to the shops I sprint at full speed up a 300m hill and have energy left to run the rest of the way home. It is as if a part of my brain that has been broken down and powered off since I was a small boy has finally been fixed and switched back on - I can finally feel again.

Five years before surgery

I buy my first binder and seeing my reflection makes me pause for what seems like hours. From this point on I bind at every opportunity, particularly in public or in social situations.

Twenty two years before surgery

I have no real exposure to the idea of being trans but looking down at my body I know everything has gone wrong, and that this shouldn't be happening to me. Trying to stay underweight for two years in order to stave off the inevitable hasn't worked and now I feel like I'm being sentenced to prison in my own body.

I will try hiding myself under loose or thicker clothing, which won't work, or even pushing myself to show off my figure more in case one day things will suddenly make sense (this works even less). Mirrors and cameras have become more hostile, and looking after myself physically only seems to make things worse.

Knowing I'm not a girl was easier until this point even when I tried to pretend hard enough to make girlhood work. Puberty was an undeniable stab in the front from a body I clearly couldn't control, felt barely connected to, and had no sense of ownership over.

Why is this backwards?

When I started writing this I thought about how I didn't want this write-up to have a happy ending and with what the UK is like right now I'm feeling fairly bitter about the idea of happy endings and the access that trans people have to them. I am incredibly lucky to have the resources to pay for my top surgery, and get a lot of help from my employer in terms of cost cover and time off for recovery. This is not the case for the majority of trans people and for the average trans teen in 2026 I don't know how many get past that final paragraph, it's too few.

I didn't feel like giving readers a happy ending and I felt that leaving someone stuck with how I felt at age fifteen with none of the knowledge or power I have now was fitting. Like most people, I don't know how my story will end even if (like a lot of other trans people) I have tried to write my own ending in the past, and right now I find it difficult to believe that it will be in the quiet of old age. Sometimes it's hard to remember that we get to write our own stories because the world can be a harsh and unsympathetic editor.

I am glad that I am alive to experience the joy and love, and anger, that I have found in the past year. In spite of the way things are going I want things for my future in a way I never have before; after so many years of surviving I have learned to live.

I don't hope for a better future because hope is for people who are afforded the luxury of waiting for something good to happen (if you're familiar with the NHS then you understand where I'm coming from here). We have to make our own luck by sheer force of will and taking the chances we can to roll the dice. Finding community helps us shift the odds in our favour - without the friends who would miss me I would never had made it this far.