'I just want to see the person I always saw in my head'

The Story of a Face: How a trans woman found the surgery that could restore her sense of self

By Jenny Kleeman
Nover 2020

Sophia Drake

When the children at Sophia Drake’s primary school in rural Wales used to talk about what superpower they’d like, she always told them she wanted to be a shapeshifter. “But I didn’t want to be an animal. I didn’t want to be Spider-Man or Muhammad Ali, I just wanted to change into a woman.”

Drake was born biologically male. For as long as she can remember, she felt different and uncomfortable, and experimented with whatever identities and fads she could in an effort to belong. Video games saved her. When she discovered them as a child, she found she could get lost in a world where she could embody any character she liked. “They took me to places where I didn’t have all those issues and problems; I wasn’t this confused child, I could pick who I wanted to be,” she told me.

While she was growing up, Drake didn’t really know what transgender was, aside from something everyone laughed about in the playground when Nadia was on Big Brother or Chandler’s dad was on Friends. Her experiments with makeup and cross-dressing were always secret. When she left home for university, she developed an eating disorder and lost half her body weight in a year. Controlling her food intake fed the fantasy that she could finally shapeshift, after all. “It made me feel like I had power, for the first time in my life.” In 2016, she married her girlfriend, hoping the discomfort would somehow go away. It never did.

“Outwardly I was this confused, shy, reserved young adult. But internally, the person I wanted to be was very different.” She found that internal person impossible to suppress. “That was natural, that was innate, that was me. This,” – she splayed her palms across her face – “that people saw, was the mask. I didn’t want to live as a fake person.”

After she got divorced, in early 2018, Drake, now working in the games industry, was determined to transition as quickly as she could. She devoured whatever information she could find on Reddit pages such as asktransgender, transgenderuk and transtimelines, and specialist forums for trans women such as Susan’s Place. The nearest NHS gender identity clinic told her they had a two-year waiting list for an appointment. “Some people are on the waiting list for four years,” she said. “That’s a long time to ask someone to put their life on pause. The point where you get the referral – it’s taken you years, often, to get to that point.”

The same year, she found the online, private GenderGP service, and had some consultations via Skype with doctors who prescribed her hormone replacement therapy. She pays about £50 a month for her hormone treatment, and will need to continue with it for the rest of her life.

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Facial surgery was only one step in a long journey for Drake. “Things will tighten up, obviously the scar will slowly reduce over time. We won’t see the full effects until next year,” she said. But the authentic Sophia Drake she is looking for in the mirror is still several procedures away. “On my face, I’m 75% there. I still have things I want to do on my body.” She nodded. “I’m planning other surgeries.”