Maggie David Haynes

For the first half of 2014 (not to mention many years before that) I thought I was a cis guy. I started rethinking that in July or August of that year. By summer of '17, I'd started hormones, I'd decisively rejected he/him pronouns, I was wearing women's clothes at least as often as men's, and I'd legally changed my name. The following year I knew I was better off without testicles, and had them removed that fall. I think it was some time in '21 when I decided I wanted a full-depth vaginoplasty and since then that's seemed like a far-off goal. Except last month it happened. The recovery is a bitch, but the big surgery is behind me. This summer I'll be back to my normal activities. Maybe I'll have some of the remaining bureaucratic stuff done by then, too — though it's looking less and less likely that Ohio will let me change my marker to X in the foreseeable future. This summer will be ten years since I hatched. In the nine and a half years since then, I've come a long way.