https://ko-fi.com/joyeuse

Please consider donating if you can!
(Note that I’ve also posted the link to my fundraiser on BlueSky and Fedi. Resharing my fundraiser on either platform would be appreciated just as well:

https://bsky.app/profile/swordofcha...../3laeewlefm52l / https://critter.cafe/@swordofcharle.....83051313500406 )

My largely untreated gender dysphoria is debilitating - it is a drain on my life, and that drain on my life is a drain on my ability to seek treatment. Thank you so much to everyone who shares my fundraiser as well as to everyone who donates. What you're doing for me can't be overstated.

The Australian healthcare system presently expects gender-affirming treatments to be paid-for from out-of-pocket, though this may change later in this year with the (hopeful) passage of MSAC application 1754 (addendum: lol. lmao.). I've set my target amount ($18,000) based on estimates for surgeries similar to mine shared by other trans people in Australia and the USA. Note that an exact quote for my surgery fees will likely not be available to me until very close to the surgery itself, and that organising surgery is in itself a painstakingly long process which cannot begin until I am at least moderately confident I have the funds for my surgery, but reaching my target amount will hopefully mean being able to cover the expenses of my surgery itself as well as expenses to do with hospital insurance and the letter-writing process.

Depending on the extent of the coverage granted by my Mental Health Treatment Plan, a portion of the proceeds from this fundraiser may go toward assessment and treatment for generalised anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder and depersonalisation-derealization disorder. One way or another, those conditions (which in all likelihood are long-term knock-on effects of my experience of gender dysphoria) have got to be tackled too. Fingers crossed that'll even make for a two-for-one deal leading into the letter-writing process.

As it stands, I can't help but keep thinking to myself: "It's paralysing, vertigo-inducing to contemplate how I'm going to pay for any of my healthcare." "What I need is too much for anyone in this system to give." "No matter how I try to reach out, I'm invisible in the pain I've had all my life." "There's going to be sharp-pointed distress between my legs until I'm gone." Please help me.

I'll finally note here:
A long-term plan in my transition has been to create what will eventually be a comprehensive write-up on pursuing, receiving and recovering from my target genital reconstruction surgery ('nerve-preserving nullification'), with additional perspectives to be sought from my friends who have pursued and received the same kind of surgery themselves.
They say that you become the person who would have saved you, and I won't deny that a significant, motivating goal for me, as a person, is to create the resource which would have given me hope during the long period of my life in which I was convinced that I was alone; that nobody would ever understand why 'being male' (being in the sex binary at all) would make me feel like an alien passenger in my own body.