In early 2016, I decided to get top surgery to remove my breast tissue. The surgery, I believed, would allow me to live in my body the way I have always seen it. My partner, Annie Flanagan, is a photographer, and we decided to document the experience together. This is our journey.

Eventually I got sick of the binder, too. I fantasized about putting on a T-shirt with nothing underneath. I found myself spending more and more time in front of the mirror, imagining myself with a flat chest.

I wore it home, and every day thereafter, until the elastic gave out. I bundled up all my bras and threw them in the trash.

In college, I wore sports bras because they were tighter and less frilly. A few years later, a friend who had transitioned offered me his old binder, a thick mesh garment with a Velcro closure meant to flatten one’s chest. I tried it on in his bathroom. It was tight enough to constrict my breathing, but it felt great. I was smoothed out, hardened, indestructible.

I WAS A LATE BLOOMER, and was thankful to be. While my friends bought padded bras and waited impatiently to mature, I looked at my chest in the mirror and hoped it would stay the same. As I got older, my posture worsened. I slouched my shoulders and slumped my spine, not wanting to draw attention to my chest. I felt disconnected from that part of my body. I spurned two-piece swimsuits and resented lacy, flowery bras that were meant to be looked at. Even with intimate partners, I kept my shirt on.

“I felt disconnected from that part of my body,” said Linden Crawford of the decision to have breast removal surgery. With the author’s partner, Annie Flanagan, they documented the experience.

I stand in front of my mirror late into the night. I take off my shirt and undo my binder. I put my thumbs on my nipples and pull my skin upward, hook my fingers onto my shoulders, and turn from side to side, trying to make out my shape underneath. I wrap clear packing tape around my chest, as tight as I can. I squint a little so the lines soften and blur. I’m trying to see how it would look.

I wake up tired. The roll of tape is empty, down to the cardboard. I don’t know how many hours of sleep I’ve forgone in my reverie. What could I do with all those hours if my body looked the way I wanted it to? But then, why should I get to change it, a body I’m fortunate to have? This is the loop I’m in. Around and around I go, exhausting myself, but afraid to cut myself free.

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I hear about a doctor in Miami who does top surgery. The best in the country, people say. I daydream about going to see him. One day, in the back of the coffee shop where I work at the time, I mention it to my friend Mara. As if it is a casual thing to mention. Mara admits to thinking about top surgery, too. “Let’s go to Miami together!” I say.

It is two years before I work up the resolve to call the doctor’s office in Miami and set up a consultation. It can’t hurt, I figure. When I hang up, I feel like my lungs are expanding to fill my whole body, like my feet might lift off the ground. I run through the house, out onto the front porch, looking for someone to tell.

I have to email pictures of my chest to the doctor. I stand in front of my computer camera, take one from the front and one from each side. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve photographed that part of my body. The consultation is brief. The doctor clears me to schedule surgery. His practiced, even tone assures me that what I am doing is perfectly acceptable.

One of my favorite writers, Karl Ove Knausgaard, says that shame is the disparity between how you view yourself and how others view you. When I tell my closest friends that I’m considering top surgery, they are not surprised, and they do not ask why.

I call the doctor and reserve a date for my surgery. I am excited, undeniably excited, and for the rest of the day I let myself bask in it.

I write a long letter to my family. They’ve never heard of top surgery, so I have to define it for them. I look it up online for help with the wording: I am getting my chest reconstructed to be flatter and more male-appearing. It is the hardest sentence to write. I tell them I’m not becoming a man, but I’ve never felt connected to that part of my body, never felt that it was meant for me. I ask them not to worry, and to be happy for me, because this is a thing that will make me happy. I cross out words and then circle them again, trying alternative phrasings in the margins.

The summer heat sets in, and my friends and I escape to Wolf River, my favorite swimming spot. I climb the rope swing, and Annie photographs me high above the river.

I get a short, unsigned email from my mom. “I have no problem with your top surgery,” she writes. “However you feel most comfortable.” But when she calls, she expresses some concern. She asks if it will affect my mammary glands and whether I plan to have children, a subject we have rarely discussed. The next time we talk, she says she’s having feelings of loss.

I don’t hear anything from my dad or my brother, so I shore up my reserves and call them individually. My dad is unusually gentle, tentative. “I’ve always thought your body was perfect,” he says, though he’s never told me anything of the sort.

One month before surgery, my biggest payment is due. The surgery isn’t covered by my insurance, so I’ve created a fund-raising campaign. My friends, even those I haven’t seen in years, are quick to contribute. At $6,000, it’s the most money that has ever passed through my hands.

Mara, who is now my next-door neighbor, receives an insurance check for a recent car accident. It could pay for Mara’s top surgery. “Come with me!” I say. We agree to drive to Miami together and take care of each other.

I meet the doctor the day before my surgery. His office is next to a Waffle House, in a strip mall outside Fort Lauderdale. The windows are blotted out with white plastic. I ring a doorbell to be let in.

“Let’s go to the mirror,” he says. He traces the curve of muscle starting at my armpit, points out where my nipples will be, shows me where he’ll make the cuts and which skin will be removed. It is the first time, especially in a medical setting, that someone sees my body the way I see it.

On the last night before my surgery, we stay with a friend in Coral Gables and go out to dinner on the Miracle Mile. After dinner, we drive along the coast, looking for a place to burn our binders. We keep running into dead ends, locked gates, and private security patrols. We give up when we notice a house with its own private canal for its own private yacht. Perhaps this isn’t the place for our little ceremony. We head back to our lodgings and pack up for the early-morning drive to the hospital.

I wake up bent over, bandages cinched tight around me, as rigid as a cast. I can’t draw a full breath, can’t straighten my spine. My chest is searing, the pressure of the bandages compounding the pain. I try to shrink away from them, but I can’t; there is nowhere to go. I send my attention away — anywhere but my chest.

As the pain subsides, my mind creeps back in, picturing what’s underneath the bandages, which will remain in place, undisturbed, for a full week. Each day brings a new terror: I’ve ripped an incisionopen by laughing or coughing, the drain tube has detached itself. I say my fears out loud. My friends listen and tell me everything will be fine. I count the hours until I get the bandages off and announce it several times a day.

We’re staying in a condo in a sprawling resort complex laid out along a golf course at the farthest edge of human development. We sit at the pool and I read and doze and watch my friends swim. With my lumpy button-up shirt, the drain tubes peeking out the bottom, and my rigid, shuffling walk, I am Frankenstein monster in a man-made paradise.

At the doctor’s office for the second and last time, I take off my shirt and sit in the exam chair. He pulls off the tape and begins to unwrap the long bandage. I’m trembling. Every turn brings a fresh flood of relief. The air I’ve been missing for seven days rushes into my lungs. Then the bandage is off, and there I am underneath it, smooth and rounded off. It’s official: I did it. It’s done.

“Want to take a look in the mirror?” the doctor asks. I slide off the chair — movement is much easier now — and cross the room. I see myself, all in one piece, with no parts to skip over.

We get back to New Orleans a few nights before the new year. My friends hug me longer than normal, and they stand with me in the bathroom while I change my bandages. I turn 33, and we eat king crab legs and pecan pie.

I step away for a moment — the Ace bandage has slipped down a bit and I need to re-wrap it. Then I count backward and realize I’ve hit the two-week mark. I reach up under my sweatshirt, tear off the Velcro, and unravel the whole thing, letting it pool around my ankles on the tile floor.

Later, alone in the mirror, I can see what I look like. For the first time, my chest looks good to me. Even with the fading bruises, the puckered, lumpy scars, the new, hardly pink nipples, it’s better than it’s ever been.

It’s official: I did it. It’s done. The bandage is off, and there I am underneath it, smooth and rounded off.

Summer comes again, and the public pool near my house opens up. I want to go, but I’m nervous about swimming topless. I got in trouble there last year for wearing a tank top. “No street clothes,” they said. What if they remember me — covered up one year and bare-chested the next?

This time when I sign in I leave the gender column blank. My friend and I put our towels down and walk toward the outdoor shower. I keep my tank top on as I rinse off. Then I walk to the deep end, slip out of the tank top, and jump in as fast as I can. My chest is bare, in public, for the first time in my life.

The last weekend of the summer is Southern Decadence, a gay festival that has been celebrated in New Orleans for more than 45 years. Annie and I are going to a friend’s drag performance and then a dance party. I wear a black mesh shirt that is completely see-through: if there is any right time to bare my chest, it’s tonight. On the way to the performance, we stop for food at a 24-hour Mediterranean restaurant.

The man at the counter keeps glancing down at my chest and back up. I hold my gaze. I let him look. I know it’s confusing. As I hand him my payment, he asks if I’ve been here before. “Yes,” I say. The coffee shop where I used to work is right down the street. “Welcome back,” he says.