Help Francesca get Top Surgery!

Hello kind strangers,

I'm Francesca, a non-binary Italian person who's been cursed with a...voluptuos chest. As you can imagine, it causes me a lot of distress, both physical (back pain is no joke!) and mental. So, here I am, begging you to help me get some cash to yeet my tits once and for all.

I'm keeping the tone light here, but the truth is, I've been feeling quite miserable these few past years due to my chest. I've never felt comfortable being seen as a woman, even before learning what gender was. I didn't have much resources, while growing up, to help me learn about queer identities - I new about trans people, of course, but I couldn't fathom the existence of genders beyond the binary. I knew I didn't want people to read me as a girl. But I also knew I didn't want to be a boy. So I'm not trans, right? It took a meltdown over an anti-acne drug, in my twenties, to realize that...well, yes. I'm trans. I had even learned about non-binary genders, by then!

I still remember with such vivid emotions an episode from my teen years. One of the biggest joys I felt, as a depressed 17 yo living with an abusive relative, was when I bought three shirts in a man's clothes store. I displayed them on my bed and posted them on facebook as a middle aged american dad would display the fishes he caught at the lake. I was so exhilarated. Back then, as a scrawny teen, it was so easy to externalize my identity through clothes, even if I didn't understand what that identity even was.

But now, alas, everything in my body screams "woman". And it's clothes that make me suffer the most: when I dress up and see my body in the mirror, I feel such a bittersweet sadness. No matter how much I try to dress as me...I will never be able to. People won't see the person I know myself to be, they see "woman". Because I like makeup, and skirts, which I don't think are inherently gendered. But if you pair those things with the body I have, this unwanted and battered lifelong companion, there's no escaping the assumptions of strangers. I tried binders, of course, but they are awfully hard to find in Italy, and fit my sizes so weirdly - the effect is more like a giant mono-boob than a masculine chest. Also, summer heat in Italy with those on? Certain death.

Top surgery scared the hell out of me. It somehow still does. It's such a irreversible step, and the recovery will be a hell, and what if they dose me with too much anesthetic and I die? But as frightening these thoughts are, they are not nearly as terrifying as looking at myself in the mirror, and seeing a person that is me but not quite.

I thought I could have made my peace with that. That maybe, I could try and get breast reduction surgery via the national health system (AHAHAHAHAH) or I could have simply...endured.

But I'm at a point in which I can't endure anymore. I'm close to 30 now, and I feel the passing of time more keenly...and I think, when I will be able to be me? To have the body and the identity I want? The idea of spending five, ten, twenty years waiting for my reflected image to be whole is unbearable.

Top surgery in Italy costs around 7000 euros. I don't have the money for this kind of medical procedure right now. I won't have them next year, and the next, and the next (unless a kind decrepit millionaire wants to gift me some of their fortune! putting it here, just in case).

So, here I am. Begging kind internet strangers for money that would help me live a life that is a little better, a little...truer.

I put the goal at 4000 because ah, 7000 is such a big, scary number! But honestly, even if you give me 50, 10, 5 euros...that's something less I'll have to save for.

And it will make my wait to finally show the world who I am a little shorter, a little less painful.

So, thank you for every cent, really. This is the point where I shamelessly bribe you with a picture of my cute dog, by the way.