I didn't think I was going to tell you this, but here we are, three weeks away from one of the most important events of my life, and I just can't contain myself.

And I'm so joyous with excitement.

oh my goddess, I'm so excited.

Here it is, if the subject heading hasn't given it away:

In three weeks, I will have my bottom surgery.

It's taken years to get to this point. I've had to have mental health providers sign letters that I'm trans enough to get bottom surgery. I've had to prove that I've been on hormones long enough. I've had to have dozens of hours of hair removal for about a year and a half with nothing for the pain but maybe some acetaminophen/paracetamol or ibuprofen.

I had to find a surgeon I was happy with and do my research. I've had to wait, sooo much waiting. I had to find a way to get an insurance plan that would cover it. I had to figure out a way to pay for that insurance plan. I've had to figure out how to afford all of the extra costs, and there are a lot of them. We're still getting the bedroom moved from upstairs to downstairs so that I don't have to sleep on the couch for a month or two.

I haven't begun, but I'll stop there. Anyone who says it's easy to get bottom surgery is lying through their teeth. It's so difficult.

It's so difficult that I thought this day would never come.

And that brings me to what I really want to share today, because despite the title and announcement, I'm not really discussing surgery much in this piece.

Wanting

I've told a couple friends this story in the last couple of days, and it's the primary reason I decided to tell you about my surgery at all.

I don't want to get too dark here because this is a piece about joy, but let me do my best to discuss something uncomfortable for context, as briefly and gently as I can, because this story is also about the emotional healing that brings about this joy.

When I was a very small child, we had a rule in our house, "If Lucy wants something, she can't have it." This rule didn't apply to my estranged sister, just me, but it persisted. My (also estranged) father was very proud of this rule and I even overheard him bragging to others about how clever he was into my 30s.

If I asked for something, or if they even knew there was something I wanted without me verbalizing it, it was an automatic no. I was supposed to learn to simply be grateful for what I had or what I was given, nothing more, nothing less. Wanting would be selfish.

What I eventually learned was that I was never supposed to want anything. How could I? The wanting of a thing would make it evaporate. My wishes, my desires were nothing. The only thing that mattered was a god I reject and fulfilling the wishes or needs of others. And if I ever did want, it was tainted with guilt for my selfishness.

While I reject the god, and the father for that matter, I still believe in community and enjoy and find fulfillment in giving of myself to others.

The problem is that I was never able to fully discover and cultivate a self of which I could fully give. There are a multitude of reasons I didn't come out until my 30s, but a very significant one was the fact that I had sacrificed so much of who and what I am for the comfort of other people, I had sacrificed even the want and desire to exist, I had sacrificed so much that I almost didn't survive until what may very well have been my final days, I allowed myself to finally live, to exist in the world as myself and to come out.

Anticipation

I can't recall ever feeling the joy of anticipation that I feel right now.

I didn't look forward to Santa or my birthdays, in fact, I hated birthdays and Christmas. These days we celebrate the Solstice and I enjoy my birthday a bit more than I once did, but more than that, my spouse and I enjoy celebrating the day I came out to them. It changed our home, our lives, and our worlds.

I'm married. We have kids.

So, when I say that I've never felt the joy of anticipation, not really, I hope you know how bad it can feel to acknowledge this. But know it feels even worse to experience it.

Stay with me, I assure you this is a positive piece.

I've been with my spouse longer than I've not been with my spouse. I was 17 when we got together at university (I graduated a year early from high school). When we got married, I didn't get to do it as myself. I was a woman, but I wasn't a bride. We had awful experience with now estranged (they're all estranged) family members. I was so happy to be married to my spouse, but I didn't experience joy in anticipation for the wedding day.

We had issues with conceiving our children and while I had so much joy when our children were eventually born, I didn't get to anticipate the joy of becoming the mother I am. I had to anticipate a future of having to pretend to fill a role that I didn't fit. I love my children so much, and I always have, and they have always brought me immense joy, but there was something hanging over my experience of self, something that dimmed my joy in the anticipation of their births, something having nothing to do with their amazing selves in the slightest.

And quite frankly, I've always been the type of person to just wait for the other shoe to drop, for the rug to get pulled out. I wasn't supposed to want, anyway, right? So, when the rug did get pulled, it was always vindication that I shouldn't have wanted in the first place, I'm not supposed to want, I would remind myself.

However, something changed.

Self-Realization

Making the decision to live meant learning, discovering, and then asserting that I deserve to live as myself. I still have a difficult time wanting or believing that I deserve the things I want or even need; and in fact, I have come to discover that wants and needs are not as different as we are taught. You may need only food, water, shelter, and warmth to exist, but you need more than that to live.

I may not need that dress, or those event tickets, or that mandolin in order to exist, but I do need to wear clothes that make me feel comfort and whole, and I need time to have fulfilling experiences and friendship, and I need to have joyful activities in order to live. If I can't, I won't live and I won't exist, either.

A life without wants fulfilled is a life without needs fulfilled.

I didn't know that before.

I didn't know that until I made the decision to want to live.

I've yet to hear someone say it, at least in a way I could hear it, and so I'm saying it, so that you will hear it.

Deciding to live meant discovering what I want and what I need, and learning this meant understanding that what I want and need are, in essence, more or less the same.

The joy of anticipation

So, here I find myself, three weeks before such a joyful event.

Something happened this summer, I started to believe that this surgery might actually happen. Maybe the rug won't get pulled out. It still could, but I don't think so at this point, but even so, I'm choosing to silence the voice in my head that tells me not to get my hopes up. I've never been able to silence that voice before.

People who know I'm having this surgery have been asking me if I'm anxious about the surgery. Nope. I've had to deal with the hospital enough this year that I'm comfortable with the medical part, and besides, I'm so fortunate to be going to one of the top surgeons in the world for this surgery. It wasn't easy to make happen and it's taken years and a hell of a lot of strategy and finagling to get to this point, especially as a broke anti-capitalist trans girl, but here it is.

People then ask if I'm just so excited that I just want the day to get here already. Kind of? But weirdly, and very unexpectedly, no?

Don't get me wrong, I can't wait and I am bursting at the seams with joy, but also, that's kind of the reason I can wait?

Because that's the thing, I've never been able to experience this joy in anticipation. Something has been unlocked within me. Something is healing. I didn't know I was capable of experiencing the joy of anticipation.

Right now, the biggest, and most unexpected feeling I'm having is just this joy, overwhelming joy, to the point of happy joyous tears, day after day. Such gratitude to know that I can experience this type of joy and profound happiness in the anticipation of something, such joy in the wanting of something, something I so desperately need.

And so, yes, I want that day to be here, I want it so badly, but also, as I write through tears, all I really want in this very moment is to savor this feeling of joy through every moment through the day where I get the thing that I want and that I need.

I knew that this surgery would heal many things, but to heal this of all things has been such an unexpected fortune of wealth and restoration of self. I didn't know it was possible, and it hadn't occurred to me for even a second that it might happen now. I expected, like always, that I would simply feel all of my happiness and gratitude when the time came, but no, this is new and it is real.

This is what it feels like to be child waiting to open presents on Solstice morning.

I want this. All of it. And I'm going to have it.

no ends, only means