Healing the Split

Sixteen days after top surgery I have scars on my chest that divide my body, scars that create visible borders between my identities, scars that push my family away, scars that scare me. On day 5 of my recovery when the drains collecting excess blood on my chest were removed I realized that I’m now a transsexual. Another identity to add to the list. Looking at myself in the mirror is still just as painful as it was before surgery. I don’t like the way my new chest looks.  And while I'm happy that people may stop using female pronouns with me as a result of surgery, the thought of being perceived more as a white male scares me.

Having borders on my skin comforts me in a way. The borderlands of my body and my identities are visible to me now every time I look down. I wonder about why I think these scars are ugly. Borders are meant to be ugly- do those of us who live our lives on them have to lie and say how happy we are that our bodies, families and identities are ripped apart? I don’t know if some internalized transphobia is keeping me from reacting the way transsexuals are supposed to when we have surgeries. We’re supposed to feel so happy that the pain is meaningless, that we can finally look at our bodies with satisfaction. I look at my body and I see the physical border from being other in so many ways. It comforts but does not heal or satisfy me.

I wonder how the border between my racial identity would visibly manifest itself. I’ve always imagined looking different- either looking more like my mom’s side or more like my dad’s side. I think that the border is visible when I’m placed in the context of my family. My sisters and I look nothing alike; we don’t visibly make sense as siblings unless our parents are with us. The border is always present at the dinner table and family gatherings. But where does it go when I’m by my white-skinned self? It gets internalized while I "pass" as white only. The thing about passing is that it’s intrinsically tied to deception in order to access certain privileges. When I "pass" as a white male I’m hiding parts of my identity and gaining privileges. I can’t wear signs everywhere that declare myself as a mixed tranny, and I am undoubtedly perceived as a white male. The borders become internalized on MUNI, in the grocery store, all those spaces where white non-trans males access privilege.

Gloria Anzaldua wrote about healing the split caused by unnatural boundaries. Her answer was to change the binary nature of Western thought, situating herself firmly in that space within the border crossings of race, gender and sexuality. I try to inhabit that space and it’s a struggle because borders are unnatural and they hurt. They hurt the way my chest does after surgery. They hurt in the way my hand cramps now because it’s so hard to orgasm without nipple sensation. They hurt in the way that my mother who was 45 pinche minutes away from me for the week after surgery never came to visit. They hurt in the way that my white dad drove 3 hours one way to take me to a follow up appointment while my mother reenacted the oppressive patriarchal message of betrayal to la raza. They hurt in the jokes of my sister about how I’m the whitest looking person in the family. They hurt in the absence of messages from most of my friends who never called or emailed to ask how my surgery went. They hurt in the phone call I got 6 days after surgery from the Program Coordinator of the UCSF Sociology Ph.D. program who asked me if I pass as male when all she called to tell me was that UCSF lost my GRE scores. They hurt monetarily in the $7,500 desperately saved for a surgery listed as a "cure" in my Gender Identity Disorder diagnosis not covered by the insurance I am privileged enough to have.

I don’t understand how to heal the split in my identities when it is both so visible and invisible on my skin. I identify, live and breathe on the borders that hurt me and push me away from my family, lovers and friends. Maybe it’s that the ugly scars on my chest are too new and painful right now for me to find any solace in the borderlands. This split, this visible Sex Reassignment Surgery split dividing up my gender was supposed to heal something. All its done is gotten rid of my binder, my breasts and with them my nipple sensation. I’m not finding any healing in that. Right now my identities are all raw like my new scars. And I’m very afraid that this raw, chafing, emotional, fucked up space is where Anzaldua situated herself. I am afraid to stay here and afraid of moving away from it. I want my fucking cure and I’m shocked by my surprise that it is not found in binary Western medicine.