trying to afford top surgery

Tesla Kavanagh is organizing this fundraiser.

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So uh, about 9 years ago I started recognising that my identity as 'not like other girls' (gag) was uh, because I wasn't a girl. On some level I treated myself as if I didn't 'deserve' a successful transition. I hesitated correcting pronouns. I thought to myself, well, maybe someone else knows better? Welcome to depression - my autistic ass thought that I was just failing to perform right, and that I would never be able to perform right. I lamented being lonely, I felt sorry for myself, I stewed in it.

Turns out you can't run from things without them eating you from the inside out. At about 22, I came out as trans & NB - a demi-boy, I guess? Labels are hard and confusing. I bought a binder. I tried wearing different clothes, developed worsening eating disorders, hurt myself a bunch, and hated everything.
It took several more years to tell my family.
It took another year to start on T.

I stopped-started T because I continually told myself that I didn't matter enough to commit to it. So my mental health continued collapsing.

I was meant to be a shining example of success - an admitted lawyer with a comfortable office job and stellar paycheque.

In practice, I treated myself like shit.
I worked my ass off. I ignored my personhood.

In April, I left my job, disillusioned and distrustful of the way it wanted me to contribute to the world and whether I really was going to accept this as my life.

I spent most of July and August in the psych ward because if I didn't walk myself into emergency, I was going to walk myself off a bridge. I had no hope.
My room with a (parking lot) view.

I got my meds fixed up. I scraped some will to keep going, to try anyway. They let me go home.

I started talking to a psych weekly. I cleaned up my act and tried to care.

I'm not cured, but now I am telling myself what I wish I had told myself long before I was 29: I deserve not to suffer further, and I deserve to stand up for myself. I put off top surgery because I felt I was an "undeserving" trans person. Reaching out, and asking for your support, is my way of telling myself I am very much deserving of a surgery that I know will help immensely with my mental and physical health... god, I haven't even touched on the back pain from wearing a binder with G cup tits.

Christ just looking at this photo makes me want to commit several war crimes against my own chest.

I know top surgery won't fix my life. But it is symbolically a lot to me. If I'm real with you, I know I don't know enough people with money to get to 3k. So, half of the significance of this was telling myself that yes, I am someone that can ask for support, and that this is worthy of supporting.