I always knew I was a girl. Even as a kid, when I wore pigtails and skirts until my parents punished me for it, what I learned from that was how I was allowed to look, not what I was allowed to be. I started to push those boundaries again during my high school rebellion phase, but I was only really out to a few close friends. Then when I went to college, it was a fresh start, and I transitioned as fully as I could.
It wasn't until I was off my parents' health insurance and started my career that I started hormone therapy. It was a revelation. It reshaped me in more ways than I expected, righting wrongs I hadn't even registered.
For a while, it was enough. I knew there were novel treatments in gene therapy, but I didn't want to be a lab rat. Initially the research was targeted towards correcting fetal defects, but soon it expanded to other uses as well.
I was living with my girlfriend Kristen at the time. She always saw me for who I was, and supported me at every step of my journey. I was contemplating marriage, but the future was still so uncertain. I told her I was considering a genetic transition, and she encouraged me to pursue it.
In the doctor's office, I was a bundle of nerves as the doc talked through what to expect.
"The gene therapy will make you genetically female, inside and out," he explained. I nodded along, having read up as much as I could. "That's going to take time to complete, if you think of the trillions of cells that need to be edited. Once you heal from the surgery, the gene therapy will take care of the rest. In the meantime, we would surgically remove your male genitalia and reshape that area appropriately. Would you like to keep it?"
"Keep it?" I asked, confused. "No, I'm here for a sex change, doc." I laughed nervously.
"Sorry, let me elaborate. For the penis and testicles, once those are removed, you have the option keep them. In case you might want to father children in the future. Or just for...recreational purposes." I thought about Kristen. We hadn't made any firm decisions on future children.
The doc went on, "We do this by splicing in some genetic material from a sea cucumber, so it can stay alive separate from you. Is that something you'd be interested in?"
"Uh...sure," I answered. It would be a fun sort of souvenir of my surgery.
That piece of myself had always felt at odds with who I was. I wondered if it would feel odd to keep it around, or if it would be a welcome reminder of how far I've come. I had to admit that these parts of me had also played a role in most of my sexual encounters. We'd had some good times together, even if it was time to part ways.
I scheduled a date for the treatment. There was still time to back out, but I was more committed than ever. This was it. I would be a hundred percent myself, finally.
I was awake when they injected me with the proteins to remake my chromosomes to be X and X. The first shot was a big dose, to remake 99% of me at once. After that, there might still be male cells here and there, and I might have to come back for a booster shot. But unlike the hormone treatment, at least it wasn't going to be a constant, ongoing commitment. Eventually I would be as biologically female as if I had been born that way.
They put me under for the operation, which I was grateful for. While I wasn't emotionally attached to my penis and testicles, I was glad to be spared the physical pain of having them cut off.
I awoke woozy. I could sense a difference already, but at the same time, I still felt very much myself. The drugs meant that I couldn't feel much of anything yet.
The first time I got up to walk around, the nurse showed me the small saltwater tank on the table. Inside it, my old sausage and two bits were floating there. Until then, I'd only ever seen them from above, or in the mirror. That's when it became real for me.
"It will naturally feed off the nutrients present in a vaginal ecosystem," the nurse explained. "Otherwise, if you're not going to be using it that way for a while, here's a nutrient gel. You just smear a little on the opening every day."
After that, it took a while for things to get back to normal. They never really did, to be honest. In the following weeks, I could feel my body remaking itself from head to toe, even if it wasn't always clear what it was actually doing in there. I lost my Adam's apple. I gained weight around my hips and thighs. I didn't get busty overnight, but I did get boobs, the nipples turning large and sensitive. Eventually I had to start wearing sports bras for support.
"Down there" it took some time to recover from surgical part of my transition. At first my slit was just a crude surgical approximation of female anatomy. At first I was aching and sore and tender there all the time. I walked like a cowboy for a while. It took a while before I was ready to be touched, and even then, I wanted to first rediscover for myself how it worked and what I liked now.
Because of that, Kristen and I had kind of a dry spell. I knew it was hard on her, and I did what I could to keep her pleased. I was already accustomed to using my mouth and fingers to get her off sometimes. But now there was one less tool in my toolbox. She had always enjoyed taking me inside her, or sucking me off. She was more used to be the one giving pleasure than receiving it. It took some adjustment.
Gradually it felt like I blossomed. When I looked down, when I felt myself, it started to feel...natural. I knew what female genitalia looked like and felt like to the touch, and I started to recognize all of that taking shape between my legs.
I started to experience female arousal and female orgasm. Intellectually I knew these experiences were different from the male equivalents. My experiences with women had often backed that up. But it was different to have those experiences firsthand, as it were. To gently tease my labia, to feel myself warming and moistening to the touch, to feel my clit light up at the slightest sensation.