Jamie's Medical Metamorphosis AKA Mountain O Debt

Shapeshifting is hard business. Werewolves make it look so easy and bone-snapping and breezy, but that's the magic of cinema.

The reality of transition is… slooooooooow. If you thought first puberty was a rollicking good time, permit me to vouch for second puberty as a bumbling slog of a sequel, punctuated relentlessly by both existential and actual flares of pain.

Hormones are definitely magic, but a study measured in months and bundles of months sometimes called years. This particular stretch of time, mid-metamorphosis, the awkward grow-out stage of my only human body, is the bit I feared the most, dreaded most. The only moments I am comfortable in my skin are the times I forget I am in my skin. And the world seems to delight in reminding me what I look like, and what I don’t. It’s something I’m always navigating, diving through the muck of, to get this endless “you seem not as you are” process running in the background of my mind, rather than the foreground it insists upon.

Then sometimes, through luck and circumstance and sheer inarguable privilege, I am afforded opportunities to surge forward in the process. One of those windows opened for me recently, so I pounced on it. I was scared going in and scarred coming out, and so deeply thrilled with the results.

Truly the most fortunate part of my existence is that I have so many exquisite people in my life who are constantly reminding me I am not alone, who always want to know how they can help, who heap kindnesses upon me even when I’m rubbish at accepting it. I don’t deserve any one of you, let alone the lot of you, so please let it sink in how truly thankful I am for each of you.

For those of you who have asked how and when you might help in a fiscal sense, this page is a humble home for chipping away at the impressive amount of medical debt I’ve recently amassed. There’s plenty more to come (because American healthcare), but this is all for transition costs that I haven’t quite figured out how to pay down yet.

I’m a resourceful cuss and am going to keep trying to find ways to pay this all myself, but please know any aid you can send me is zero percent expected, never ever taken for granted and infinitely appreciated. Honestly, just a quick note of encouragement is worth more than you’ll ever know. Merely having read this far makes you one of my heroes.

Also know that it’s my intent to eventually pay all of this forward to the next fledgling shapeshifter(s) I run across who could use a hand. So you’re definitely bolstering me in a time when I absolutely need it, but you’re also helping someone else down the road.

Please also rest assured that anything you contribute, even one dollar, will make me cry the good kind of tears. My therapist will confirm, asking for help is the single hardest thing for me to do. Receiving help makes me weepy. It’s not just the hormones. It’s also not not the hormones.

Life is weird. I love you all. Thank you, thank you, thank you. <3 Jamie