31 december 2019
Well, it's been a long time since I've been on here, so I thought I'd update with some thoughts.
I'm currently sitting on the couch at 3 AM while my wife is drawing on her tablet. Pretty sure I wasn't married last time I was on ~town, so that's pretty big news.
I'm still on HRT, having just finished 7 months. It's been kind of wild. I /think/ I'm non-binary now, not a girl. I'm still working through my thoughts on that. I'm currently at the cross roads of "do I stay somewhat masculine or do I go full fem" and.. I'm kind of okay with staying there. I get to keep a bit of both types of traits I like: I don't have to be completely emotionless and I also don't have to feel so restricted by clothes.
I still have bad days, but it's hard to compare to the bad days I used to have. Before, it was just existential dread and sadness and feeling like I'm throwing away my whole life by not transitioning. Now it's most often just pure dysphoria and being unhappy with my body. Both are bad of course, but I actually prefer the latter. It's something I can fix.
Right now I have a few main dysphoria triggers that almost always fuck me up.
Singing anything is a big one. I've always sang at a high pitch, half as a form of coping ("at least I can do that") but also I just don't fit into a particular range very well. But when I sing or think about singing anything in front of others, then I get depressed that my voice will never be right. That said, I don't have any plans to train my voice, but maybe that will change in the future.
Body hair affects me even more. It's been growing in a lot more than I got used to for the last couple of months, and it makes my normally very comforting and affirming clothes /feel wrong/.
These things put me in such a mood that I can't shake for hours, on up to days, and nothing will clear them up. I'll be miserable and cry at the littlest things until I can just convince myself that everything is okay. I don't know how to improve that, but I'm still trying to. I just wish I could flip a switch sometimes and feel okay.
My wife tries really hard to be there for me when I'm feeling bad like that. It helps but it doesn't get me out of the mood. It's been really hard for me to say that, although she's trying, it's just something I need to ride out. Combining that with her not really understanding how I'm feeling or what I'm going through and it's a little frustrating for both of us.
As far as timelines go:
~7 months ago: start 2mg estradiol
~2.5 months ago: start 50mg spiro
~2 months ago: increase to 100mg spiro
~1 months ago: stop taking spiro
I added the spiro to help further decrease testosterone and it did that. It also had a couple of side effects for me. My sex drive absolutely plummeted. Body hair stoped growing as thick. I could go 2 days without shaving and instead of 1 day. I also got super depressed.
I did some reading online and found that many trans people had the depression problem on spiro and that switching to an alternative medication helped. I asked my doctor about this and she suggested that if I wanted to drop the spiro and see how my mood is, then I could, and that she would look into other medications I could take. I go back in about 2 weeks to see about starting something else. Of course, she also suggested that the depression could be due to other things: just run of the mill depression, dysphoria, etc. If it's just dysphoria, then upping my estrogen dose might help me get more feminine features. I don't know if that's what I want though...
There's a lot of uncertainty for me in my transition. I don't know what I want but I know I'm going in the right direction. I don't know if I want really feminine features. I don't know what I envision as feminine features. I don't know if I want to go by they/them, but I think I do. I'm liking them for now, but who knows if that will last. I don't know if I want to just be publicly masc and privately fem. I don't know if I want to look, I dunno, "normal" or not.
I think there's more I could talk about but I think that's enough for now.
Thanks for reading. It helped to get some of it written down.