My Earlobes Still Feel Fat

So as I think I may have mentioned, I have to write a book for my MA in Creative Nonfiction, and I decided to write a memoir about this whole GB experience, including childhood stuff and family dynamics in addition to the process of surgery and the mental and physical results of the change.  I thought it would be so easy.  I mean, I spend 90% of my time thinking about my body anyway, how hard could it be to put those thoughts down in the form of an interesting, structured narrative? NOT, that's how easy.  I haven't written one single word of the book, and I'm having a really hard time starting.  And the longer I put it off, the more afraid I am of failing at my goal to write a funny, frank narrative; I'm terrified it'll end up as a 'poor me' memoir, and I'll have proven my dad right in saying that this project is self-indulgent and useless.  And that's not the only surprise stumbling block... When I tell people what I'm writing about, they al...

I found this written in one of my many random notebooks when I was cleaning the apartment today. I wrote it back in September when I had just moved to London: I saw a beautiful thing the other night. I was kneeling on the bed, leaning down on my elbows in a pathetic attempt to ease my stomach ache, when I happened to glance down my body. There, where my upper thighs have always met, for as long as I can remember, was a beautiful, shining triangle of light, a beacon of the life I’d always wished for and had never had. I lay there like that, on my elbows and knees, stomach-ache completely forgotten, and stared at that triangle of light, willing it to stay. Eventually, when I felt more confident that it wouldn’t just vanish unexpectedly, I began to test my triangle. I made sure my knees were pressed tightly together and shifted my hips, putting my weight first on one knee and then the other. My triangle twinkled cheerfully back at me. of course it was around this time that my boyf...