I wake up at 5am drenched in worries. I’m scheduled to have bottom surgery in exactly two months, and I just heard an alarming story at work about a young transwoman who was treated terribly by the nursing staff where she recovered from bottom surgery. Will that happen to me, my mind asks? What if I have bad complications? What if everything goes wrong? I picture myself bleeding from my genitals to a painful death. Wow, the worries have clearly taken over.

Around and around goes my mind, unable to escape the loop it’s on. I try to meditate while still lying in bed, but it continues. My sweet partner puts her arm around me as she dozes off again, and I try to be comforted. But the problem is in my mind, and her sweetness can’t touch it.

Fine, fine, I tell the higher part of myself, and scoot off the bed to my meditation cushion. I start to repeat the mantra Hung Sau over and over again, watching the breath come in, and watching the breath go out. After a while, my nerves calm a bit. The worries’ grasp on me is loosened, and my body relaxes again.

How do we keep taking risks as adults? With the worries and fears that come from the unknown, it’s hard to keep going after new things that could be great. Bottom surgery is likely to make me feel better than I’ve ever felt before. To feel more whole, more grounded, more in my body, and more confident. It’s likely to take away at least some of the nagging feeling that everywhere I go, something’s not quite right. I believe it’ll help me feel far better than anything I’ve ever experienced about this current body I’m in.

There’s only two real options about it. One is to stay in the comfort of the body I’ve known for so long, trying to distract myself from the dysphoria that steals my energy and brightness. And the other is to take life’s next big risk.

So here I sit at 5am watching my breath. I let the worries wash right through, knowing I don’t have to go with them. I’m reminded that they’re ok, and they are not me. The meditation soothes the pain and brings back faith, though by the end of it I realize not even that will save me. There will be pain and there will be pleasure, and all of it is ok. Somehow that’s the answer I was looking for, the grain of truth at the end of the tunnel.