No one anticipates the sunset flip

Hi! I’m Seb (or you may know me as Mitch, either is fine) and I’m 33 years old. I’ve been living as the man I am since I was seventeen, so that’s sixteen years now. Wow, almost half my life. For pretty much that entire time, I’ve been trying to save for top surgery, and have just never managed to make it work. One emergency expense after another has eaten away at my attempted savings. Finally, I’m turning to you!

Though I finally have health insurance, the only surgeon in town who accepts the insurance requires a BMI that would, without giving details, be both impossible and unhealthy for me to achieve. (I’m a fat guy, I always have been, I make no excuses or apologies for it. No need to donate or ever speak to me if that offends your sensibilities.) I deserve this affirming surgery that will enable me to live more confidently, even though I’m fat, and my primary care physician agrees. Unfortunately, going to a different surgeon does mean it’s highly likely that I’ll have to pay for this whole procedure out of pocket.

I’ve set the goal a bit higher than the average cost of a double incision bilateral mastectomy, because even if I’m able to pay for and get surgery, I’ll be out of work for approximately two months afterwards due to the inherent physical restrictions of having had my whole chest reconstructed. Just getting enough to cover the surgery would be great, above and beyond what I’m expecting, but anything more than that will go to helping me stay housed and fed during that recovery period.

Rest in peace to the incredible Anthony Stewart Head (20th February 1954 - 1st June 2026)

I have absolutely no issues understanding metaphors or idioms. When someone says their heart is on their sleeve they mean they’re emotionally expressive and openly display their feelings, not that they have a chunk of cardiac tissue on their shirt. I very rarely have issues with sarcasm. I sometimes have issues telling when someone who’s said something mean is about to say “just kidding”, but tbh I think that’s more on them than me.

BUT

My grandmother asked me “Do you know when the trash was taken out last?” and I said “I think Eliot took it out yesterday” and a few hours later she yelled at me for “not taking out the trash when I asked you to” and I was like???? You didn’t ask me????

I dread filling out forms and am crap at filling out diagnostic tests or personality quizzes because there are always questions I don’t know the exact answers to (how am I supposed to know what day I got dental surgery seven years ago?) or don’t understand exactly what they’re asking or the wording’s unclear and they could mean this or the wording says this but I’m pretty sure what they actually meant was this and should I answer what they said or what they meant, and how does everyone else just whip through the form when surely they can’t know all the answers either? Does everyone else remember the day they got dental surgery seven years ago?

I get tangled up by bureaucracy because the rules on the website say that for this you need that and for that you need the other and for the other you need something else for which you need the first thing, and I go in circles for hours or days or weeks or months or years because their stated rules say there is no way to get what I need, and when I talk to somebody else they’re like “just call them?” and I’m like “how could that help? the rules say that what I’m trying to do is impossible”

In light of some of the many things happening across the world this year, I thought this Pride Month needed a special illustration.

Nobody listens to trans men + how the demonization of masculinity harms trans people.