FFS Diaries: Ego Death
On the 10th day of facial feminization surgery recovery, I finally saw my entire face. I had gotten my head bandages and chin drain removed during our one-week check-in, but the nose splints and cast remained to preserve Dr. Seth's carefully sculpted rhinoplasty. For a week and a half, I breathed only through my mouth. I couldn't wash my face or shower because the cast needed to stay dry.
That day, I sat in the examination chair of one of the patient rooms in Dr. Seth's Walnut Creek office, waiting to get this damn cast off finally. He peeled off the nose cast first; "Oh, this was ready to come off," he said as the plaster came cleanly off in one piece. He proceeded to take out the splints in both nostrils and as soon as he removed them, I breathed a breath like no other. It felt like the times I went scuba diving with my family, swimming across the ocean floor while inhaling air into our lungs through a rubber mouthpiece and tube connected to a 75-lb oxygen tank strapped to our backs. It was only once we came out of the water and took our diving masks off that we could breathe through our nose again. I had taken nose-breathing for granted when it was available to me, but after over a week of sleeping with my mouth open and waking up to a dry throat, I vowed never again. In that fleeting moment of clarity in the examination chair, I said thank you to my body for everything it does without me noticing.
But that relief was immediately met with shock as I looked at my fully exposed face for the first time after surgery. On the way over to the appointment, I imagined that seeing my new nose along with the rest of my face would reveal a model face. A face so beautiful it could sell fragrances and moisturizer and cell phone plans.
Instead, I saw a reduced nose bridge and bulbous tip awkwardly sitting in the middle of a face I didn’t recognize. The proportions didn't make sense aesthetically. Every contour and angle was hidden behind swelling. My lips were so puffy they looked like they would pop at any moment. I looked uncanny, like a 2D caricature came to life.
My heart dove down into my stomach and out my body. I could barely open my mouth still, but my jaw was on the floor.
"Obviously, there's still a lot of swelling that needs to come down, but you're healing well," Dr. Seth mentioned while looking at my face (his work).
For the rest of the day, I couldn't stop thinking about the reflection I saw in that patient room mirror. After I got home, I stayed away from my bedroom’s four-foot arched mirror I use when putting on makeup. When I went to the bathroom, I stared at my hands while I washed them and left as fast as I could. I couldn't look at myself for too long or a black hole of regret and remorse would consume me.
"What the hell did I do to myself?" The thought steeped into my brain like a thick fog.
Maybe I should've asked to preserve the nose I was born with, the one that got so many compliments. No. I trusted Dr. Seth to balance the shape of my new nose with the rest of my face. He’s the professional who’s been doing this for years, right? Or maybe I should've specifically requested the stereotypical "doll-nose". You know, that Anglo-Saxon ski-slope nose with pinched tip that all the gorgeous, gorgeous girls have?
But there was nothing I could do at that moment. There was nothing I could do for the next few months. I forced myself to accept my fate.
My surgeon reiterated to me that the recovery process would be rough. After all, he had spent 11 hours shaving bone and cartilage, transferring fat from my stomach to my cheeks, and stitching together a new hairline. He told me to sleep on a thirty-degree incline and wean off the Oxycodone and eat only liquids for a week. But what he didn't tell me was how to live in this gap between the person I used to be and the person I would become.
Trust the process. I repeated that mantra to myself every day, hour, and fleeting moment I looked at myself in the mirror. It wasn't just a thought. It became a belief, a practice. It was the nightly routine of slathering Aquaphor along my scars to speed up the healing process. It was the regimen of taking Tylenol for the pain and Arnica for the bruising. It was the ten minute walks I would go on to increase the blood flow in my body.
After a week of running away from my reflection in mirrors and windows, I finally stopped. I forced myself to stare at my image, my new face, and tell her she’s beautiful.
The proportions still didn't make sense. My eyes were still slightly yellow from bruising; my cheeks were still chipmunk-full. But for the first time, I didn't see a stranger. I stood before her, not as my worst enemy looking for flaws to fix, but as a witness to another evolution of me.
I stopped expecting a face that looked like the girls in my “FFS inspo” photo album. I started to accept this "ugly phase" in between what I used to look like and what my surgeon promised me. And I hesitate to even use the word “ugly” because what does that mean for a woman who looks like me not by choice? What about all the women who get beat up or disfigured because a bitter ex-husband threw acid at her face? What about the women who suffer from an autoimmune disease that causes half their face to droop from paralysis? Are they ugly? No, absolutely not.
I realized that if I could only define beauty from the same narrow-minded perspective that Hollywood and the media pushes down our throats, that wasn’t real. I was adopting the same dangerous type of thinking that convince women out of their own power and autonomy.
In this space where I couldn't access my visual currency in the way I used to, I learned to cultivate a new, stronger definition of what it means to be beautiful, to be valuable. One that didn't reflect the toxicity of the patriarchy, but was instead built on resilience, kindness, compassion, and joy. I finally understood, truly, what it meant to be beautiful on the inside.
By week three, the model face I had fantasized about felt like a shallow, distant dream. In its place was something much more visceral: a face that was fighting for me. I spent my afternoons on that thirty-degree incline, distracting myself by binging another anime series, waiting for the uncanny version of me to settle into something human. I realized then that beauty wasn't going to be a sudden reveal at a doctor's office. It was going to be a slow, quiet negotiation between my reflection, my values, and patience.