I had spent seven years
believing it was permanent.
Seven years, from eighteen to twenty-five, believing this part of my body was a permanent problem. I had avoided women, avoided doctors, avoided mirrors, avoided language, avoided my own hands. I had arranged whole stretches of my life around not arriving at the moment I had just arrived at — in a small bathroom before work, reading a forum post, realising for the first time that other men had fixed this.
Not managed it. Not learned to live around it. Fixed it.