transitioning

Been a While

by
Sunrise

I think it’s been over a year since my last post. Kept meaning to write something here, if only to track my transition, but I just haven’t had the… energy? Spirit? I don’t know. I was starting to get better, starting to pull out of my shell. The panic attacks were subsiding… I actually was spending more days out of bed… and then my best friend died. That sent me into such a tailspin that there were days where I fell right back to the early days when I lost almost everything in my life.

Little by little, day by day… sometimes just minute by minute, I kept pulling myself up, forcing myself to do things like shower and eat when all I wanted to do was stay in bed all day long. I had to get up and let the dog out… sometimes venture outside myself for a bit, but the time when Kiddo wasn’t with me—half the week—was just… one long anxiety attack where either I felt like I was having a heart attack, couldn’t stop crying, felt too nauseous to stand, too exhausted to move… or a pleasant mix of all four.

(The days when Kiddo is here… those are always my bright days, even when I was at my worst. She makes me feel stronger because she needs me to be there for her. I can be almost normal, even if some of it is so exhausting I need to sleep part of the next day while she’s at school just so I can refuel. The days she leaves… those are still hard. But after… [Wait, how long? How long has been since my time with her was abruptly cut in half? Years, by now?] After however long… I’m no longer crying my eyes out for hours after she goes. I still cry every time… but it’s only a few minutes. )

Heh but I do still drink too much on those nights and make bad meal choices.

Top surgery in June went well and I was over the moon. It’s never fun to recover from surgery but this was such a load off my chest (ha ha) that it buoyed me in a way that I really needed.

Transition has been such a paradoxical thing for me… had I not transitioned, I wouldn’t have lost my job, my home, my relationship, my ability to trust, and half my daughter’s time/presence. However, because of my transitioning and finally living as myself, I survived all of it… I don’t think I would have survived otherwise. The thing that caused the worst thing in my life is also the best thing I’ve ever done.

And, I know it’s a common “coming out” theme.

Then, when things were looking up, again, right around the anniversary of M’s death, another friend died… the circumstances frighteningly similar to M’s. Given two weeks to live, he only made it one. Again… all forward progress for me was kicked back to square one, but this time… I found myself bouncing back. Finding strength I thought I had lost. New apartment (that I love) and the sale of the house has pushed me further into the light. I still have panic attacks every day, but it’s 2-3 times a day max, and they’re nothing like the hours-long ones I was suffering before.

But, my bandwidth is still very very small. Kiddo is my primary concern. Then it’s my poor, aging doggo. Then it’s care for myself. I barely have the “spoons” for those three things… there just isn’t room for anything else. Which is terrible timing because someone I care about is very sick and I just can’t be involved, no matter how much I want to be. I can’t even let myself think about it too much or else I start to shut down… and I can’t. Not again.

Right now, I’m keeping my head down, finding joy in doing things I love—like spending time with Kiddo and cooking… and… writing. Yes, this week I sat down and wrote several thousand words. I hung up a few more paintings. I unpacked a few boxes… I actually vacuumed. All the dishes are done. And now I’m writing a little more. Could it be that I’m actually going to be fine again, or close to it? I’d like to think so. It’ll take time still… but… I’m feeling ok. And that’s good.

Thoughts on transitioning

by
Angst

The biggest factor holding me back from transitioning for all these years was the act of transitioning itself—the liminal period that can stretch on for years and years where the changes in your body can be… so… tediously… slow. Heh, I’m so impatient.

Are you a man or a woman? How do you deal with/manage people’s perception of you? All the awkward fucking conversations… was all that crap worth it? I could never be a real man, right? I’d always be pretending… but then I’ve always been pretending to be a woman. I wished I could just snap my fingers and voilà! Skip past all the embarrassing shit.

Argh… I knew I would hate it.

And I do hate it… but not as much as I thought I would. I’m definitely not as angry or embarrassed as I thought I would be, and you know why? Because there are so many others going through almost exactly the same thing. I’m not alone—not by a long shot.

When I thought about transitioning, early on, it was always with the assumption that I’d be a freak. That trans folk were few and far between and that it would be a horrible, overwhelming, demeaning, uphill battle.

But… it’s not, actually.

See, when I first spoke about my genderfuckedness with my high school counsellor (whom I was forced to see twice a week for my delinquent, antisocial behaviour hehe) all he knew was the word “transexual”… and not really anything about gender dysphoria. He did do his research after talking to me, but it was all medical and, back then, it was super restrictive and secretive and complicated and holy shit I would have blown my stack. And there was absolutely nothing he could do to alleviate my fears of the social aspect. He just didn’t know.

Thank god for the internet.

I mean, it’s still awkward as hell sometimes, and maybe because this is Canada and we generally try to be polite/understanding about things, but I’m finding that dealing with folks as I transition is… no big deal? I lost a lot of my self confidence over the last 10+ years, so I’m timid about certain things that never bothered me before. Like using the men’s washroom, for instance. It never used to bother me. All throughout high school (and the last two years of elementary school), I used the men’s and women’s washrooms pretty much interchangeably. In high school, I used the men’s changing rooms more often than the women’s and, whenever we went on a field trip somewhere overnight, I always bunked with the guys. Same in CEGEP. I was willing to put up with some annoying comments about my behaviour if it meant I could be more comfortable (weirdly, not a single teacher ever questioned anything I did).

But I was the only one I knew like me.

Not anymore. And it’s not only just groups online and a few IRL friends—it’s also all the people who are incredibly supportive and respectful of trans folks. It’s my postman who, picking up on my name/voice/appearance change told me his daughter is trans and he loves and supports her. It’s the teen guy who came to the door to sell some chocolates and who asked “do I call you sir or ma’am?” in the most genuine and endearing way. It’s all the people who “sir” me without question once they see my name. It’s the people who, when they make a mistake, apologize.

And it’s people I admire who are blazing paths on tv, movies, and social media… like Ian Harvie, Laverne Cox, Aydian Dowling, Jamie Raines, Chase Ross, who have so many followers that are trans themselves.

I’m not alone… never was, as it turns out. 🙂

All right. So maybe I don’t actually hate the transitioning thing. It’s slow, sometimes awkward, and really annoying… but if this is all I have to go through to come out the other side feeling and looking more like I do on the inside, I’m lucky.

Hoops and Health

by
Voyage

Just as I think I’ve changed my name everywhere, something else pops up. So many hoops to jump through and I can’t wait to be finally done… well, as done as I can be. I finally went and got a haircut so I could get a picture for my new passport, and when I get that, I can update my Nexus card. Next, up is getting documents certified so I can get a replacement university diploma. And go back to the pharmacy, again, because my name change just won’t go through.

I finally got all my papers together for the GRS clinic. I’m really looking forward to top surgery.

Like I’ve mentioned before, the latest MRI scans of my knees show moderate-to-severe osteoarthritis with floating bone fragments (my knees are messed up from a combo of running and genetics) but my doc is confident that I don’t need surgery on them just yet—I’m getting cortisone shots to keep down the swelling, and I’d like to try using CBD oil. I was worried I would have to put off top surgery because of knee surgery, so I’m glad my knees will “keep” for a while. The weight loss helps. However, I’ve found that being on testosterone sort of screws a little bit with tendons/muscle growth and ratio so I have to be extra careful. Needless to say, my weightlifting regime is still very light.

[Stuff about mental health]

Done and done and done.

by
Map Fire

Alrighty… went public with the rest of my IRL friends and family on FB. Surprisingly, I don’t think I lost any FB friends and everyone seems ok-to-very supportive about it. Radio silence from my mother and brother though, but that’s what I figured it would be like. I know I’m probably in for a “why would you DO this to your father?” and/or “you’re the most selfish person in the world” thing from my mother. But, now that I’m out, I’m done with it. This is who I am and that’s all there is to it. Yes, I’m respectful of the transitions that they’ll have to go through to accept me… I’m willing to educate, I can be patient, but I won’t compromise my identity.

Week 22 on T… I was just looking through the videos I’ve been taking and found it neat how much my voice has deepened already.

Overall the changes thus far have been very positive. Some sort of funny: I’ve gained weight in my face but lost it in my ass and my ankles. hehe

My facial hair is thickening and growing (I actually haven’t shaved in a few days to see how it looks and kiddo wants me to grow a moustache. Heh, I keep having to say that I’m not quite there yet.)

Went to Cuba for a week, just me and kiddo, and it was a blast. Everyone was super nice and though the food was meh, the pool and the weather were juuuusst perfect. I think we probably spent 3 hours/day in the pool. And goddamn it was nice not be constantly teetering on the edge of a panic attack. The last few years during vacation with my parents, I spent the whole time trying to keep myself calm, and that in itself was stressful—especially when you throw in a young kid and a spouse you have to look after. Shaving my legs, wearing a bathing suit, putting on make-up or a dress… it was a struggle not to break down completely. The last time we went it was especially bad—one night M and I were supposed to go out for a nice supper and I only barely managed to tamp down a full-fledged panic attack (hello rum, my friend) when I had to get dressed. I had brought a really nice dress with me and I just couldn’t put it on.

Actually, you know what? I think THAT was the moment—the straw that broke the camel’s back—that made me realize that I just couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t be the boy in the dress any more. I’d done it long enough. I didn’t wear the dress that night and I think I only wore one more dress since then, for my cousin’s wedding last summer.

I’ve gotten the ball rolling for top surgery. I’m just waiting to see my GP so she can fill out the form. My name and gender are legally changed, and are changed almost everywhere. I should get my new medicare card this week, and I will work on getting my passport changed soon.

And now that I’m not stressing about telling my family any more… well, let me tell you: boy did I sleep well last night.

Upward and onwards.

Oh, and you know what? I’m turning 41 next week. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t have to spend the next 40 years as a woman… and looks like I did it. Go me. 🙂

Health Post

by
Progress

Physical

The Good:
Overall my health is good. I had full blood work done when I first saw my new GP a while back, a few weeks before I saw my endo. All my levels of whatever are good and my blood pressure is about what it should be. I learned from my endo that I have a small cyst on my thyroid but that it’s absolutely fine. Testosterone shots have been great for stuff like my body temperature regulation. I feel good overall.
Side note: I have to shave every few days. No, I’m not going to let it grow out until it’s more substantial… but I’m looking forward to that 😉

The Bad:
My knees are shot. I have moderate-to-serious osteoarthritis in both knees and a bit of floating bone that’s cocking up the works. Funny enough, now that I know what’s wrong with my knees, they don’t really hurt as much. Also, the underlying reason why my knees (and all joints) are so bad is still a mystery. More and more things are pointing towards EDS/HSD so I’ll have my GP send me for some testing of that. My acne comes and goes – I get new zits where new hairs are coming in (both face and chest and shoulders). Also, my asthma has been kicking my butt and so have my headaches… but the reason for that is below.

Mental/Emotional

The Bad:
I’m still drinking far too much. I was drinking all the time when the ex was still here just to cope with the relationship. Also, drinking was just something we did… and any time I tried to cut down, it was met with weird hostility. I’m actually much better than I was just a few weeks ago—there’s a bottle of whiskey sitting on my bar that’s been there for four days… that’s a long time for a bottle of whiskey in this house. I’ve also switched to light beer.
The drinking is especially bad on the nights where kiddo goes to sleep at the ex’s place… I sort of panic and can’t get out of my head and drinking is pretty much the only thing I can think of doing. But, I’m not harming anyone but myself, and, like I said, I have cut down. I just need to cut down more… it’s bad enough I have headaches and asthma flare ups because of the weather, piling on hangovers is not doing me any good at all.

I’ve only just realized that I’m actively avoiding my office. I say to myself “I’m going to work from my office today” only to find myself on the couch an hour later. I’m still working/writing, yes, but with little to no attention span. I know I’m avoiding my office because I was forced to sleep in there on a tiny cot for a year and I obviously developed some negative associations with it. I have to get over it. I have to get back to working out of my office because it helps me focus and I need to focus if I want to get my groove back.

Sometime in the last 7 years I developed what I think of as a stress tremor. Most of the time I can hide it, but I really wish it would go away. It happens any time I have to hold still… like when I’m at the dentist or getting a tattoo or even the massage therapist. I find myself panicking, feeling trapped, and then my whole body just starts trembling. I usually get over it by alternating counting and reciting the alphabet backwards in my head.

Feelings…. oh feelings. I’m someone who’s on the very low end of the emotional scale to begin with, but after a decade of forcing myself not to care, not to react, my emotions are a little wonky, even for me. I’ll get to a better place, I know I will, but sometimes I can’t do anything but lie there feeling things and being overwhelmed. It’s exhausting and it contributes to the drinking.

The Good:
Transitioning is doing wonders for building my self-esteem back up again. There’s a bounce in my step. I keep thinking “thank god it’s over” about the whole female thing. I smile and hug myself. I dance in the shower like I used to (not as dangerous as it sounds) and I’m constantly singing. So, my mood is more positive than negative, I think. At least it feels like that today. Tomorrow, I might be melodramatically whinging to myself over something, but today I’m good. I’m even starting to really feel like socializing.

Things will get better. Things will get good. I have faith in myself.

Life is Good

by
Progress

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.

BIID

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.

____

* 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.

Week 2 – I’m a rambling man

by
Progress

🎃 HAPPY HALLOWEEN! 🎃

Second shot of T… you know, I watched a few videos of people giving themselves shots of T and everyone just seems so nervous. That’s really gotta suck 🙁
Maybe it’s because I’ve got a long history of sticking needles in my skin (not illicit drugs… self-piercing, boredom, grossing out friends, occasional medical needs) but it doesn’t bother me at all. I’m doing subq instead of IM and it is literally painless for me… but then again, as I’ve discovered a few times now, I have “dead” spots everywhere in my skin where I don’t have much sensation at all.

Actually, that came in handy last week when I got my neck tattooed and I was actually nervous about it hurting… but lo and behold, sometimes I couldn’t even feel the needle at all (though goddamn it’s annoying to have a healing tattoo on both your neck and hand). Speaking of the neck tattoo… It’s another example of how everything’s sort of clicking in place for me. I commissioned it months ago to commemorate starting T (a tardigrade wielding a bat’leth) and it just so happened that, after all the delays acquiring needles and whatnot, the tattoo appointment fell on the actual first week on T. Far out, eh?

Anyhoo… I thought I’d write down a bit about how I went about this because I had a few questions via facebook last week when I wrote a brief filtered post about what’s going on.

I went to go see a new therapist when things weren’t improving at home because I really needed to talk through the steps I had to take to kickstart my physical transitioning and my last therapist hadn’t really known much (heh fun fact: I’ve been “cleared for transitioning” with a letter from a therapist three times in my life. Once in [squints] 2004… oh man, reading through old LJ entries… once in 2015, and finally once in 2017). New therapist was a great therapist. She gave me a number for a doc who prescribes T… but he was way far away. At the same time, I had just put myself back on the waiting list for a family doctor (my old doc is MIA) and though they told me it would take up to 6 months, I got a call 2 months later for a shiny new family doctor just near here. And! She’s awesome. She’s just as excited as, if not more than, me about my transition. She’s never followed someone through the whole process (she does volunteer at a trans youth centre) and she’s really looking forward to seeing how everything goes with me. I’ve also got other things to take care of (bum knee being the top of that list) and she gave me a huge list of tests for the vaccination clinic next to my place. Then, I booked myself an appointment at the endocrinology clinic with my referral and he was very happy to see that my doc had already asked for the blood tests that he needed me to get (heh and he even read to me the results of the MRI on my knee because I was curious). I have a small lump on my thyroid that is nothing and my health is great (phew!)… so he put me on delatestryl and I go back for blood tests and then to see him in a few months to see if the dose is right. *thumbs up* Next step? Top surgery! I’ve already been through boob surgery before so I know what to expect (last time I wanted to go down to nothing but the guy wouldn’t go smaller than B).

I still haven’t told my parents. I know, right? What’s the holdup? Well… hang, lemme show you something I found in my LJ when I was looking up dates earlier:

Private stuff – opens in new page

I’m going to record a little 30 second video before I take my shot each week to sort of document my progress. Heh.

Weekly observations:

  • I’m not cold. I don’t know if this has to do with the shots or something else has changed but usually when the weather drops below 20ºC I get cold—cold feet, cold hands, and, as if to compensate, I’m hot at night. For the last week my temperature has been weirdly even and I’m comfortable.
  • Oily skin. Ugh, no comment.
  • I feel good. Like, really good. Like, I keep smiling to myself and sighing contently.
  • Libido. Hel-lo, dreams. As someone who’s always had a libido dans l’tapis, it should be fun (eesh) to see how bad that gets. Vrooom vroom.

Day One

by
Sunrise

Guess who just took his first shot of T?

You got it… this guy. 🙂

I feel all jittery and weird but I don’t know if that has anything to do with the Delatestryl or if it’s just a vagus thing.

But, I’ve really got to tell my parents now, don’t I?

DELAY

by
Pug Bug

My blood tests were all a-ok and I’m absurdly healthy for someone who drinks so much. So… I have a prescription for T (Delatestryl)! And I have filled it! It is sitting in my medicine cabinet! I have also bought alcohol swabs and saw my family doctor for some preemptive acne medication (thinking ahead… puberty was a real bastard last time).

So what is the problem?

The pharmacy was out of 29g, 1ml needles. So they ordered me a box. Five days later… still no needles. Went there in person to say “yo what’s the holdup” and it turns out that there are like no 29g needles on the market at the moment. WTF eh? So I said, gimme 27g. GUESS WHAT? No 27g needles. Had to order some. They should be here next week early.

Sigh.

I’ve also not told my parents. I have literally been working on the same “coming out” letter/speech since 1997. Kill me now.

Soft launch

by
Bird

Coming out, little by little. Friends, sibling… no one is really surprised. I wish I knew my folks would be so blasé.

One of my oldest friends reiterated something I’ve heard so often: “I’ve never really thought of you as gendered. You’ve always just been you”.

Heh