Inside the small waiting room at Hawthorn Medical Associates in New Bedford, Jayson Kryla sat impatiently with his elbows pinned to his knees. He’s arrived for the final step in a gender transition journey that began more than seven years ago. On the wall in front of him, a television carried news of a conference about the war in the Middle East. A jury deliberated in a murder trial. Heavy showers were expected on the South Coast for the weekend. Beside him, pregnant women in stretchy sweat suits and swollen ankles paced back and forth, holding their backs.
Kryla looked down at the time on his smartphone: 10:30 a.m. In a few minutes, Dr. Annalise Boisvert would greet him for his pre-op appointment, and one week later Kryla would finally get his long-awaited hysterectomy.
Kryla is part of a small percentage of transgender individuals who choose gender affirmation surgery. The decision is highly individual and depends on various factors, including personal preferences, identity, access to healthcare, and cultural considerations.
“People don’t understand that it’s not what I am losing,” said Kryla. “It’s what I’m gaining.”
Kryla, 26, said he has not always known he was transgender. But looking back now, he can see that something in his childhood wasn’t quite “matching.” While growing up as a little girl in Fall River with his adoptive parents, his personality and his preferred toys were so different from what his three “very girly” sisters liked. When, before holidays, his mother would take them to buy dresses at Macy’s, Kryla wouldn’t even consider the girls’ section, running straight to the boys’ one.
“I never thought I was any different,” said Kryla. “I never thought that it wasn’t OK for me to dress as a boy, when I was a little girl.”
But as puberty hit, his body started to change. Fast. There wasn’t a deepening voice or facial hair to cut, but menstrual pads to wear and pap smear tests to undergo. Birth control. Two-piece swimsuits.
Suddenly, there were young and adult eyes looking down on him, expecting him to act like a girl was supposed to. Judging. And while everyone seemed to have found their place in a natural, spontaneous way, Kryla didn’t.
“There is a divide that happens in high school,” said Kryla. “There is male and there is female. I was in the middle.”
In a religious family like his, Kryla said asking questions about sexuality wasn’t an option. No one explained to him what was going on, not even when, at 15, he was hospitalized in the psychiatric ward of Boston Children’s Hospital for self-harm.
“There were times when I felt there was no place for me,” Kryla said.
He first heard the word “trans” when he was 19 years old. He discussed his experiences growing up and his feelings about his body with a child psychologist in his school program and the doctor told him that they might have been indicators of gender dysphoria.
“I remember thinking, ‘What is that?'” said Kryla. “She handed me a bunch of packets about transgender people, hormones, and surgeries.” While still sitting in that small oval office, he realized there was something he could relate to, he said.
“All those feelings of not fitting in, all those pieces came together, so perfectly.”
On Nov. 20, the steps of the New Bedford Public Library were illuminated by a candlelight vigil for Transgender Day of Remembrance. As Kryla and other volunteers displayed photos of more than 25 transgender individuals murdered in the United States in 2023, Rev. Donnie Anderson emphasized the importance of being an ally to the LGBTQ+ community. “We need you,” she said. The community, continued Rev. Anderson, needs to come together to fight the increasing hostility many trans individuals experience, including access to adequate healthcare.
Kryla’s surgery came after years of hormonal therapy, countless doctor appointments, and psychological evaluations. Now, he can’t wait to enter menopause, he said.
As a full-time volunteer at the South Coast LGBTQ+ Network, he supports young members who are — just like he did — trying to define who they are, often without the support of their families.
“I didn’t have anyone in my life who was able to accept my flaws,” said Kryla. What he thought were flaws at that time, he said, are now his power.
“They are who I am. They make me Jayson.”
Email multimedia reporter Eleonora Bianchi at ebianchi@newbedfordlight.org
