Updates! So, this is week 6 on T. Everything is going swell.
- The acne is under control (thanks to the Dr. Hauschka line of clarifying toners/oils! Though still a wee bit pimply, my skin has never felt or looked nicer. Seriously.)
- Voice has dropped a bit and I’m getting the same creaky quality I got back when my voice first dropped at puberty.
- I have to shave or else it looks like I’m trying to grow a Fu Manchu. My eyebrows have also started filling in (thank god). I treated myself to a new razor subscription.
- I smell different. Heh I keep sniffing myself. It’s very odd. I’ve always smelled like me… but this is like… me plus.
- Sex drive is… wow.
- I’m already seeing some fat redistribution, which is interesting.
And no, I still haven’t told my parents. The application for sex/name change is already in the mail. I should probably tell them soon. Ha.
Like I’ve mentioned before… I’ve never “come out” before. People just naturally figure out that I’m queer (or don’t). I’ve never made any attempt to hide it, nor did I ever feel the need to broadcast it. I just am what I am. Being trans (and I still sort of cringe at the “trans” label because I cringe at all labels for myself… including the aforementioned “queer” I affixed to myself earlier in lieu of “pan” which, for some reason, I find too restricive. Ha.) is different though… or is it? Do I really need to tell anyone? I don’t really feel the need to explain myself, nor do I like to.
I had an appointment with an orthopaedic surgeon for my knee to see what could be done about it and when they suggested cortisone shots to start, I asked if cortisone shots were contraindicated with testosterone shots (the jury is out on that, btw) and they blinked at me twice, connecting the dots, and then just rolled with the new info.
Anyway.
Life is good, atm.
I was having a conversation with an acquaintance a week or two ago about transitioning and they were curious as to why I was doing it, given that I’m not depressed, not given to anxiety, and don’t seem all that bothered by my current gender situation. The way I explained it was that I have never felt like I was in my body. I have a massive case of BIID (Body Integrity Identity Disorder) and gender is only one part of it… It means there’s a huge disconnect between the blueprint of my body in my head and the one I’m actually in. My brain literally thinks I’m around 5’10, for instance. I’m not. In reality… I’m just short of 5’5… so my centre of gravity is not where it’s supposed to be and I’m all clumsy. I feel weird about the parts that stick out of this phantom body outline, and even weirder about the parts that don’t reach it. Here… I drew a picture. It’s not really accurate, but it goes something like this: The parts in black fit into the outlines and that feels ok. Everywhere that’s in blue or red… those are the parts that don’t fit and I feel weird. If this was a side view, the boobs and butt would be included.
But yeah… I feel like I’m wearing an ill-fitting skin suit. Or only playing a video game, wearing a really terrible haptic suit, so when people touch my avatar I can “feel” it, but it’s super disconnected and there’s a major delay… being touched is problematic on so many grounds for me.
Mostly, it makes me feel insane. All my life, I’ve retreated to little fantasies to try to make sense of it:
- I’m actually an alien from a different dimension sent to spy but they put together my human body wrong.
- I somehow switched bodies with another baby in the hospital… this one I believed for a long time. I was convinced there was someone walking around with my body and that if I could find them and we touched, our brains would switch. I literally walked around looking for this other person.
- I had a fraternal, male twin and I absorbed him in the womb so I wound up with a female body but a male brain.
- I’m just a brain in a jar and scientists are messing with me.
- That I’ve always been male in my past lives (I don’t know if I believe in past lives) and this is my first time being female so it feels like I parked my Ford F-150 at the pearly gates and when it was time to leave, the parking valet gave me the keys to a Volkswagen Beetle instead… and no one believed me when I said it wasn’t my car. Heh.
But, while it makes me feel insane, I try hard not to stress about it because stress makes everything worse*. And I figured there was nothing I could do about it anyway. But then, all these stories started coming out from people who transitioned and finally felt like they fit into their bodies… well, dammit, I was going to give it a try too. I’ll never be able to fix the height problem, but if all I have to do is take some hormones to nudge my body over to male? Hell yes. Maybe, just maybe if I work to fix the gender dysphoria aspect, I’ll feel like I’m actually in my own body instead of wearing someone else’s. I dunno. It’s worth a shot. I know I’m already feeling pretty good about all of it.
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* yes, I do feel stress and anxiety and whatnot, but I ignore or quash most of it. The problem with that is no one believes you when you say you’re stressed because you don’t seem like it.