I’m up in Sydney. Staying here for a few weeks. The countdown has begun. I have finally convinced my psychiatrist that I am enough of a man to have my tits chopped off. Convinced that I (well, the rest of me at any rate) am normal, she has, after six or seven visits, given the go ahead. I haven’t been doing real work for the last five days, but today is really the first time I’ve had literally not doing anything.

I have caught up on sleep. I have talked to my friends about what happens. I feel totally prepared – in fact over prepared to the extent that I have been this prepared for at least the last twelve months. But I also feel strangely unprepared. I have been moping around for the last few hours waiting for something to hit me. I’m not sure what exactly – just something.

This moment strikes me as being important – deeply symbolic at the very least. And yet I can’t feel it that way. It also seems incredibly ordinary. Symbolic of nothing.

I feel like I should be preparing myself for my reaction after the surgery. What am I going to feel like then? What am I going to look like? How will I feel about and relate top my body? Will it all be a disappointingly normal experience? What exactly should I be doing now to prepare for these things – or is there nothing I can really do at this point anyway?

Will the meaning of all this become apparent only after the event. Or has the point of meaning come and passed with my mental acceptance of the concept of surgery itself?
Is this moment more symbolic for others – a tangible moment of turning – than it is for me? I have plenty of OTHER tangible moments of turning.

At age 4, after working out that there were boys and girls, there was an instant when I realised that no matter how hard I tried, that no-one could ever explain to me how this worked or why it happened.

At age 7, talking to a friend of mine Rebecca who said that her mum had read in a magazine that women could become men. There was a moment of wondering why no-one else had ever talked to me about this amazing possibility. Why was it such a secret?

At age 16, talking to a teacher from school about being a dyke, and realising that the problem was not with the object of my sexual desire, but with the origin of it. It was not that I couldn’t love men, but that I couldn’t relate to men as a woman. There was a moment when in frustration I realised that I could never find the words to express that feeling. And a moment when a huge amount of fear ran through me that to speak such words, even if I could might not be wise. There was little point in even trying to find the words until I felt like I could speak them.

At age 21, my lesbian partner insisting that I was transsexual and enduring the ensuing obsessive discussions about T people. At age 23, when most of my friends called me Pete, insisting that I had no preference about what name they called me. Not quite understanding the shame I felt around the people who were the closest to me.

At age 24, coming out as a tranny boy to a straight woman who I met at the Wickham Park Hotel in Newcastle, and whose name I can’t even remember, on the bank of some river at 3am in the morning. I heard the words I spoke to her as if they were being spoken by someone else. It seemed like the thoughts that they encapsulated had never entered my head before but on hearing them, they slipped neatly into place, like no words I have ever heard spoken before.

At age 25, coming out to my friends and family and being overwhelmed by their strength and support. At age 25, taking control of my destiny for the first time in my life. Actively making decisions and pursuing them. And being rewarded in unexpected ways at every single turn.

Why is it that this decision seems so much more important? It isn’t. It is a decision like many others. Yes, it is irreversible. But so are many decisions we make in our life. We still make them. We may not even spend much time thinking about them at the time. The series of decisions I have made in relation to my transsexuality have had more thought go into them than any other decision I can recall having made.

The important decisions have been made. The symbolic moments have been and gone. There will be more I am sure. But not necessarily about this surgery. And most certainly not right now.