Time sensitive: Top surgery (mastectomy) fund

June 10th, 2022: The short of it is that I have only a month to raise funds for me to get top surgery. I can’t put it off any longer. This gofundme exists as my last possible resort. I am uninsured. I live in poverty. Complications involving my name change and other factors make it impossible to get unemployment despite my best efforts. I have no family (I was kicked out shortly after turning eighteen) and no friends I can depend on (years of abuse and isolation coupled with the pandemic made it hard to find any real life community).

If you have a TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, a community or platform you can share this - please do. I do not. I have no way reach on my own. This is in the hands of others. 

 

I’m twenty two now. No matter how hard I tried to save, no matter how hard I worked, I could never retain funds for me to get this essential surgery.

 

I’ve tried everything else before getting to this point, and it’s not feasible to do anything except to humbly ask for financial assistance, finally, after so many years trying.

 

Here’s a breakdown of the costs:

 

Surgical fee: $12,800

 

Anethesia fee: $1,500

 

Operating room fee: $2,000

 

Total cost: $16,300. 

 

I don’t even make that much in a year, according to my tax records.

 

I need help. Please help me.

 

____

 

I will lift a corner of the veil about my existential trauma and painfully give over a small piece of myself so you can understand better.

 

Being perceived as something you aren’t is a threat to the person's existence. It affects all layers of the human existence attitude: the physical, the social, the psychological, and most of all, it is an assault on the soul.

 

The soul is the non-material individuality of who you are.

 

Being forced to undergo trauma due to transphobia creates experiences that to rob you of your own individuality. You’re made into an object, programmed in function of goals that lie outside yourself. You become a utility or an un-object of negotiation.

 

The normal human arsenal of defenses doesn't fit in those situations. The only viable option is to try to survive. To survive it is often necessary to 'freeze' the individuality or to pretend that it is 'dead'. The less vulnerable and split pieces then take over: they are in the front line to face the firing squad.

 

I played the role of the woman I wasn’t, for years. It was never me. It never will be me.

 

I will not be the first trans man to be forced into the role of cis womanhood.

 

This destruction of your personhood is not something limited to being transgender. It’s just another aspect of being forced to live an existence as a marginalized person.

 

This all can be the result of long-term outside manipulation, such as growing up in an education system that destroys the personality, or is surrounded by people who apply a systematic form of brainwashing. Or it may be a brief and intense experience, such as a hostage situation or a war situation.

 

But it's always a threat of existence - the ground of existence is enemy territory. The system is hostile and the person's identity is destroyed.

 

That’s what it really boils down to; being destroyed, not being human anymore, not belonging anymore, having become worthless, no longer able to coexist even with your own family or community you grew up with. You’re definitively up to made an excluded object, and continue to feel that in the gaze of the other.

 

You become and remain ashamed. Shame is the acknowledgment of having become inhuman, which is made to be viewed and assessed. The gaze of the other destroys you as subject, and makes you become nothing. One is no longer a being, one no longer exists as a subject. The relationships in and with the environment are fundamentally affected as a result.

 

I had to wait until I was nineteen to start testosterone, even though the desperation to transition had existed since I was thirteen. Six long years. A long time waiting.

 

For me, hope has always had a strong relationship with time. I watched and waited for the window to open for me.

 

Every human being basically lives with three time-dimensions. Past, present, future. They form a time frame, within which a person their life story weaves. To understand a human experience, these three dimensions of time are essential. Together they form a holistic perspective in the consciousness of the human being within which are identity is built.

 

People have, along with being able to exist in the present, the unique ability to look back to the past and look ahead to the future.

 

Every person tries to create a central life story that gives life meaning and purpose. A central life story gives a coherence between all facts and experiences. A stone, just like a person, has a past, present and future. But it cannot give meaning to his existence. A human can.

 

We are able to rise above the present and look back as we look ahead.

 

In this way, people can interpret and reinterpret facts or experiences and make a meaningful whole of life.

 

Looking towards the future does not mean a negation or undervaluation of the present. It is fundamentally about the fact that the arrival is a structural part of the today.

 

Looking towards the future with hope is not escaping from the present, it is adding meaning to it. After all, the future gives possibilities to the present.

 

On the one hand, I am trapped in time. I can't stop time - the facts of the past do not change. All of my lost childhood and adolescence consumed by years of bigoted mistreatment will never be returned to me.

 

On the other hand, I’m also liberated through time. Because there is a future, there is opportunity for development, change, healing, freedom.

 

Whoever wants to understand a person must know what goals he has set himself in the future and why.

 

My parents didn’t.

 

My parents treated my transition like I was planning to kill their daughter. A door closed permanently.

 

But I was never truly their daughter, just like I was never meant to be a woman. Everything I had survived was to drive this point home – I would either die as a girl I wasn’t or hold out long enough to grow into the man I would inevitably become if I could just live long enough.

 

So my parents tried to erase this truth, as they couldn’t bring themselves to accept this immovable reality.

 

But for me, beginning my transition was never the end – it was just the point of departure.

Letting go of the darkness, liberation. Moving towards the sun.

 

Hope functions as a way of thinking, doing and feeling. So hope is not alone grounded in rationality, but also in emotion and action. That's why it's rather not equal to purely positive thinking or optimism.

 

Hope is related to time. It is connected with the future by the concept of expectations. In that sense, hope is an existential engine. It is not only future-oriented but rooted in the three dimensions of time. Hope exists because of events in the past, energizes in the now, and becomes powerful through the future.

 

Hope has the ability to transcend given context and rise from the ashes of temporary expectations, fueled by a sense of control. It’s gaining control on aspects of your pain, or on your attitude towards suffering.

 

Finally, hope is a relational process.

 

Hope is enhanced by meaningful relationships with others.

 

So – this is it. Years of loneliness being breached as I tentatively ask for assistance, for the first time in my life. No one I know in real life knows I am on testosterone, or had gotten a name change, or that I legally changed my gender marker. I went through it all alone, never saying anything, let them speculate on my changing appearance and presentation without a word.

 

But I cannot do this one thing by myself.

 

I endured and I survived. I’m tired of enduring and I’m tired of surviving. For once, I’d like to live.

 

I’m tired of the sadness and despair for the missed and unfinished.

 

There is a dichotomy between a vision on hope as a force that leads to adaptation, and a vision of hope as a mechanism that leads to flight.

 

I’ve always wanted to reach the stars.

 

But I’ll settle for one day being able to lie shirtless in a meadow.

 

One day, in the near future, I'd like to fall asleep with the warmth of the sun on my bare skin.

 

I hope this is not an impossible wish.

 

 

 

 

 

I really, really hope so.

 

Thank you for listening, and any consideration you may give me.

 

Wishing you all the best,