[TT] What is your coming out story?

I often hear the phrase ‘shared girlhood’ bandied about.
For those that haven’t come across it before, it is the idea that all women have this sort of ephemeral universal experience of what it was like to grow up female. The assumption derived from this idea is that trans women who don’t transition as small children will not experience this ‘shared girlhood’ and are somehow less female because of it.
But we have our own experiences that are unique to many of us, that no cis woman will ever experience and it’s one of those experiences that I’m going to share with you.

 
The heat was the first thing I noticed about Thailand; an oppressive, humid weight that settled around me like a hot, damp blanket. Having never travelled overseas before, the sheer size and busyness of the Bangkok airport was intimidating to say the least.
I was very conscious as I went through customs that they would know I was a trans woman from the ‘M’ for ‘Male’ on my passport and I was terrified that there might be some kind of problem.
But I was waved on by the surly looking customs official and met up with my partner on the other side, where we were eventually found by our guide, whose name was just a singular vowel to my English ears and our bags were loaded into a van and we were driven off to Chonburi, a small town a couple of hours out of Bangkok, near the coast.

It’s recommended that you stay in the hotel near the clinic, as the staff are used to trans women and the clinic staff can check up on all the girls easily when they are all in one place. We arrived after midnight, so we only interacted with tired Thai hotel workers initially and crawled into our room to get some sleep.
Breakfast in the hotel is a buffet of various foods, mostly done in western styles and it’s free, so my partner and I wandered down to get our free meal.
I guess that while I had expected there to be other trans women there, I hadn’t expected there to be so many of them.
In my home city, there are maybe five trans women that I know of and I run into them once or twice a year, if that. But in the dining area of the hotel were a good 25-30 trans women, all in various stages of their visit to Thailand.

It didn’t take me long to make friends with the other girls and introduce myself, as I’m quite a social and gregarious creature. I found that there was an instant bond with them, as we were generally all there for the same reason – to have our genitals reconfigured.
The bond wasn’t just over having surgery though; these were women who had been through many of the same trials that I had. As I talked to them and got to know them, the same common threads came to light – being disowned by family, losing jobs, being assaulted, being bullied for being ‘gay’ growing up.
But there were also painfully wonderful experiences to share; like that first ache of budding breasts, the bittersweet feeling of throwing away one’s ‘boy clothes’, of passing for the first time in public, choosing your new name and a whole host of other unique experiences that I thought I’d never get to talk about so openly, so candidly, with so many other women.

Before I knew it, I was in the hospital having needles poked in me and tests done. My results came back clear the next day and then I was shipped off to the hospital with well wishes and hugs from the new friends I'd made.
I don’t remember being nervous, though my blood pressure apparently told a different story. Hungry and rather scratchy from a broken sleep, I was given my hospital clothes to change into, some pre-surgery requirements fulfilled and then I was being wheeled into theatre.
Six hours later I awoke on the hospital bed, thirsty, freezing cold and aching for my partner to come and collect me from the recovery area.

I spent just over a week in the hospital before I was released back to the hotel. I was very touched that one of the girls I had befriended, Tanya, came in to check on me and make sure I was okay. The general asskicking from the surgery had severely depleted my energy reserves and reduced my mobility, so I was hotel bound for the next week. There were other girls in exactly the same situation as me, so we hung out in the lobby or each other’s rooms and hobbled down to the clinic to use their free internet and drink delicious Thai iced tea.
We commiserated about post-surgical pain and bitched about dilation. We also helped each other out as much as possible, getting supplies for each other from the markets across the road and sharing pain meds when people ran out after the clinic had closed.
Most importantly we offered shoulders to cry on, soft toys to hug, sympathetic ears and an understanding that only other people who had gone through the same experience could offer.

When the first of my new friends left the hotel to fly home to their own country, I burst into tears. The hotel and the group of women within it lulls you into feeling that you are part of something monumental and eternal and the loss of new friends shatters that illusion suddenly, leaving you feeling lost and empty. You forget that you are all at different points in the 30 day experience and that some will leave before you and some will leave after you.
The loss of those two women seemed to draw our circle closer together and Tanya and I hung out even more, along with Heidi, Lisa and Karen (who arrived after me).
But as my own time in the hotel drew to a close, I found myself desperately wishing for it not to end, despite wanting to go home to my own bed, familiar surroundings and air that didn’t taste like car exhaust. I guess that in that hotel, I found the sisterhood, that ‘shared girlhood’ and I didn’t want to let it go.

But like ‘shared girlhood’, it eventually ended and I was farewelled by my remaining friends in the lobby before I was driven to the airport where I began my journey home.

It was summer back home and on a warm, calm day, my partner and I went down to the beach, where I took my first walk in a bikini.
I remember thinking as I walked barefoot through the shallows that I didn’t feel ‘reborn’ or ‘brand new’. I didn’t feel amazing, or special or overcome with emotion.
For the first time in my life, I just felt normal.

/r/WritingPrompts Thread