The hard part was always pussying up

(Content note: this talks about genitalia, surgery, pain, dilation, and depression.)

Dilation is the pits.

That’s kinda a good thing because just a couple weeks ago, it was much worse. And that’s because surgery was never going to be the hard part of getting surgery. Dilation was always going to be the hard part.

It was the thing I dreaded the most.

It happens three times a day, you slather a hard, long, unforgiving, dildo with goop and then shove it as far up a fresh pussy—newly formed from skin and other tissue from the penis, scrotum, and other bits—as you can, and let it sit there for 20 minutes. Then you take a slightly bigger one and see if you can shove that one up there just as far for another 10 minutes.

It’s one of the most painful things I have done.

And I have to do it three times a day.

To myself.

For a year.

And pretty regularly for the rest of my life.

To psych myself up, I’ve started thinking of it as pussying up. Because balls are weak but pussies can take a pounding.

The pain decreases as it gets easier every day, but it still feels like it sucks all the energy for me. I wake up and dilate before breakfast, then I need to nap because the pain from the last session the night before means that I slept poorly. The pain meds take about an hour to kick in, so I’m often taking meds and waking up high from pain meds. By the time the morning meds wear off, it’s time to take more for the afternoon dilation, by the time the afternoon meds wear off, I take it for the evening dilation and once I’m done with that, I’m so exhausted that I fall asleep, waking up the next morning to start all over again.

Honestly, it leaves very little energy to do anything else or make any other decisions. Early on, it took all my willpower and emotional energy to get myself to do it. But it has been getting better, each time hurts a little less, it becomes a little easier to get the purple dilator all the way in, then the blue, adding a third that is a little bit wider and trying to get another centimeter deeper.

I want to say it used to be harder, but the I remind myself that was only a week ago, two weeks ago. But it is hard to differentiate between days when you haven’t looked out a window in nearly a month. One day I took my noon meds twice because I woke up and thought it was the next day.

A few days after surgery, I was texting a friend who had surgery a few years earlier and she went “I don’t get how you’re cogent and tweeting right after surgery, all I could do was stare at the wall for weeks.”

The thing I’ve learned in the three weeks since is that lucidity is overrated. Even though I’ve been laying down, trying to maintain a high level of executive function, plan, and push towards goals (largely worrying about dilation) was keeping me from actually resting.

Seeing friends at virtual brunch or chatting when some come over to help out has been much needed. But I feel bad for not having energy to log onto the Minecraft server. But I was exhausting myself and then sleeping poorly.

tl;dr: getting myself to the point where i can just stare at the wall is pretty hard to do.

My mind does not like being idle. When it idles, it worries. I worry about dilating while also having a busy and intense work schedule. I worry about what pain medication I’ll need because the current regimen leaves me pretty non-functional for hours at a time. I worry about doing it right. But I have two months and change to heal. To turn this chore into a practice. This is only the fourth week and healing takes time.

Healing takes time. And staring at the wall is kinda great once you get into it.