Just one week later, not even seven full days getting my mole removed, and I’m already wondering what I was worried about. Sure, I’m still in the active wound-care stage of things, but I’m notably less self-conscious of the bandage stuck to my face than I ever was of my mole, and that’s even with the bandage feeling way more noticeable than the mole ever was. It just bothers me so much less. Honestly, the only gripe I’ve got about this whole process is how I have to shave every single day. I learned the hard way that more than a day’s worth of facial hair growth makes the bandages fall off much more quickly. Most of the other gripes I’ve had (such as how bad the wound looked) either faded away in the first few days or I’ve learned how to counter them. For instance, I might still be unable to bite into large things (like an apple), but I’ve gone back to drinking as usual and gotten the hang of eating various more easily bitten foods without making a mess or accidentally putting pressure on my wound. It has all become fairly routine at this point and while I’m definitely eager to get to the point where I don’t have something stuck to my face twenty-four hours a day, I’m honestly just happy to not have the mole anymore.

Probably the biggest difference between the mole and the bandage is my awareness of it. Sure, I can feel the bandage on my face with a level of sensory acuity that my mole lacked (it was entirely without feeling, though portion of my lip underneath it could still feel stuff), but I can also go hours without thinking about it as long as it is firmly attached. The only reason I could ever get that level of unconcern with my mole was because I’d had it for my entire life and had learned how to not think about it. It took active effort to avoid thinking about it, just like managing any of my compulsions or anxieties, so this effortless ignorance is incredibly refreshing. I know it will still be a long adjustment period, weeks or maybe even months, as it heals and the scar does whatever fading it will do, but I genuinely can’t imagine how it could get any worse at this point. I’m following my dermatologist’s instructions, doing my best to avoid putting too much strain on the healing skin, and keeping it covered so it doesn’t dry up and pucker around the dwindling scab. In a few weeks, the amount of work required will go down to just putting the scar cream my doctor recommended on it every so often and making sure to hit it with a little dab of sunscreen when I go on my daily walks. It’ll be great.

If only all change was this easy. I’ve been working out for a long time, now, to encourage fixing my sleep schedule and lose weight. I’ve been trying to figure out what sort of presentation I want to put forward to represent the parts of my identity that I’d like to be public facing. I’ve been watching my hairline recede even as I’m finally finding a hairstyle that I like and that feels like “me” (that isn’t the sort of masculine default short hair that I had my entire childhood and frequently returned to for years because, like having a beard, it was an easy way to signal to the world at large that I was conforming to masculine standards). There’s so much I’d like to change and that I’m trying to change, but that is changing so much more slowly. Losing weight isn’t going to help in the long run if it isn’t the result of sustainable habits and healthy choices. Fad diets can have quick effects, but they tend to disappear almost as quickly once the diet ends. There isn’t really anything I can do about my hair that my insurance will cover (it’s pretty good on the medically necessary stuff with a couple bad and clearly transphobic carve outs and then really bad on pretty much everything else), so I’m mostly just hoping that whatever caused the recent increase in hair loss has finally ended. That or I somehow become the first to experience spontaneous hair regrowth. That’d be pretty neat. It’s not like any of the other parts of my body have trouble producing hair…

I appreciate the step I’ve taken. It’s not a small one, even if it might seem like it. It might just be a result of my mind seizing on the one thing that would be deemed acceptable by the model I was taught to follow, but so much of my body image issues are wrapped around this mole. So much of what I disliked about my own face was caught up in the mole, even after I managed to set aside all of the desire for a perfect masculine mask that my parents had drilled into me. It was always there. It was always visible, in mirrors or out of the corner of my eye. Every picture I’m in, every smile I make, all I can see is it unless I’m absolutely focusing on looking past it and almost nothing else. Sure, I’ve got issues with my weight and the way my upper body is basically just a barrel with limbs after two years of working out has mostly shifted mass from my stomach and waist to my shoulders and chest, but I can get past that with the right pose or the right angle. I am in photos where my body looks fine to my eyes, even if I’d prefer to have my desired improvements occur faster, but there’s nothing that can be done about the mole. If my face was in a photo, so was it. And that’s just not true anymore. It feels incredible and incredibly alien to think that thought. Just so new.

I don’t think I’m going to start taking a bunch of selfies now, nor will I suddenly move from my preference for being behind the camera to being in front of it, but it don’t think I’ll be actively avoiding it as much as I used to. Which is also a weird thought. I’ve lived my life this one particular way, with this one major and overwhelming concern, for thirty-two years and now it’s suddenly gone. I don’t have to worry about it any more. I’m sure there will be new worries. My own therapy process over the past fourteen years has made it abundantly clear that there’s always layers of this stuff, each new layer being exposed as a problem once the previous outer later has finally been dealt with. I will find new things to be insecure about now that this is gone, since I’m still working on addressing the thought process and ingrained values that are the basis of my insecurities, but this was an easy fix and now I just get to move on without it.