00:00How I identify myself as a trans woman of color.
00:04I'm on this journey to reposition everything externally to match everything that's internally.
00:11I have to be myself or die trying.
00:16I say that I have tranorexia, that every time I look in the mirror for some reason I see
00:20my previous self, even though people from my past say it's so hard to remember who he
00:26was and we don't see him.
00:28Imagine waking up every day uncomfortable in your own skin, looking in the mirror and
00:32not quite recognizing the person that you feel internally.
00:40It is important for me to get facial feminization surgery because now my facial structure will
00:48match my internal expression of who I am.
00:52The doctor that I've chose, Dr. Obeng is a corrective surgery doctor.
00:58So today is your big day, right?
01:00Today is your big day.
01:01So in your own words, what are we doing for you today?
01:04We're going to sand the forehead down, the chin and then the nose would get balanced to these
01:10because I really don't want a major nose job.
01:13What's beautiful right now is that we're starting to get to a space where everyone's
01:18being allowed to operate on a spectrum.
01:21One extreme being completely female, the other extreme being completely male.
01:26Now what's in between is what you choose.
01:28My definition of what being a woman of trans experience is, is living a reality that is
01:39mirroring a cisgendered woman's expression.
01:42I want my body to look completely female because that's how I see and that's how I feel.
01:46But that's just me.
01:47So eventually you would like to have a vagina?
01:50Yes.
01:51Okay.
01:52Now this is a 10 hour surgery.
01:55So my philosophy, like I told you, we are going to do what's safe.
01:59Okay.
02:00I know you're young, you know, but I can do all of this at the same time.
02:03If we get to a point where we feel like we need to stop, we're still.
02:07Because you're young, you know, we're not in a hurry for anything.
02:10So we want to start from working our way this way.
02:13Okay.
02:14Okay.
02:14Okay.
02:15For me, it's scary.
02:17What am I going to see?
02:18Am I going to recognize myself?
02:20Am I going to be happy with these results?
02:22Are these the results that I really wanted?
02:58I think it's going to be more than just a look, but it will be a new confidence.
03:02It will be a new definition of self.
03:04After this surgery, I'll be able to reintroduce the real me.
03:13So healing for me was nothing at all what I thought it was going to be.
03:18I thought it was going to be like, you know, day seven, I see bruises, but you know, I'm
03:23trucking along.
03:24There was so many hiccups along the way.
03:26My body was just storing trauma.
03:29I think by day seven, I wanted, you know, I wanted to reverse everything.
03:34I wanted it to stop.
03:35And so much stuff was done to me.
03:37And while my body could take it mentally, dealing with it and physically dealing with
03:43it was a lot.
03:45But today, looking back at it all, I would do it again in a heartbeat.
03:52And it feels fucking incredible.
03:55This whole surgery, I will say that it changed me.
03:58It changed the way I see myself.
03:59It changed the way I define myself.
04:01It changed the way I introduce myself to the world.
04:04I'm now in a space where I understand this isn't my end result.
04:09We just got one more surgery to sell.
04:11It's just that last step where Dr. Obeng is going to assist me in getting my vagina.
04:17I'm defining me and who and what I am.
04:21And my female expression is mine.
04:23And don't you dare tell me how to be.
04:27Thank you for watching Refinery29.
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