Kathleen Caywood, Author

This post is the last in a series of posts in reply to a friend who asked, “Did you always know you were really a girl inside?”

So, yes, Jesus did it, but before the primary care provider (PCP) had a chance to prescribe the wrong antidepressant, my own willful self attempted to take matters into my own hands.

I said last time that I read a lot of self-help books. In a misguided attempt to shorten my life, I intentionally directed against my body (and my penis in particular) all the negative energy I could find. This is bordering on psychosomatic medicine (further reading at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosomatic_medicine ) culminating in two questions:

• can someone think themselves well?
• can someone think themselves ill?

I attempted to answer the second question in the affirmative.

If there is any validity to psychosomatic medicine, then it is ignorant and cowardly of me to assign blame to the PCP for the damage to my urinary tract. My own stupidity and self-hatred were partly — perhaps mostly — to blame.

I am about to reveal an intimate detail that may be triggering for some people. If this passage distresses you, you could call the Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860, or call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which has counselors available around the clock.

Furthermore, an event I omitted from the book damaged my urethra. That event occurred in the mid-1990s. I bound my penis very tightly, then attempted to masturbate. I reached some degree of orgasm in the spasms of the muscles, but there was no outlet for the ejaculate and some section of my urethra burst. I passed bloody urine for a few days.

The blood in my urine scared me enough to return to the urologist who’d done my vasectomy twelve or fifteen years before. He was unsmiling as he lectured me, shaking his finger and disparaging my crossdressing and my attempt to punish myself for having a penis.

The net result is that seven or eight years before the removal of my prostate, I had damaged my urethra. About six years after the prostatectomy operation, some weakened portion of the urethral wall burst a second time during one of the fits of laughing that I mentioned in Part 1 of this series.

I promise to you that I will now put this series of posts to bed. I shall dwell no more on my sins of commission involving my urethra.