Living In My Silence
Three weeks without uttering a word
Three years ago, I started to contemplate having surgery on my vocal cords. When I speak, my voice is recognized by everyone as coming from a man. My voice is not very deep, but there is enough bass to be addressed as sir.
When I was young, at around eight, I came across a reel-to-reel recorder that one of my brothers had left behind. I figured out how it worked and was able to record. My sisters and I had fun recording ourselves and listening to how we sounded. I remember how my voice was very close to my sister’s; in other words, I sounded like a girl. I was a late bloomer; I finally went through puberty between my first and second years in high school. I remember being very happy that I could answer the phone and not be gendered as a girl or one of my sisters.
I googled vocal cord surgery in my area and found a plastic surgeon in Boston that performs voice feminization surgery (VFS). Writing this, I find it funny that I want to go back to sounding like my sisters. Three years ago, the surgeon wanted $150 for a consultation. I just wanted information. I wasn’t ready for a consult; there was no sense in spending the money to ask a few preliminary questions. I read through the voice feminization surgery page on their website and found the answers I wanted. Of course, knowing the answers only leads to more questions. The…
