Before the Dawn

"Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don't belong."
                                                                               – Mandy Hale

There seems to be a lot of debate and thought lately about what makes us who we are? What truly defines us? Is it our appearance? Our genes? Our DNA? Our mind? Do they all play a part, and if so, how important is each part?

As someone who is trans, the thought of identity and what makes us who we are is a constant. Part of that is because I feel in eternal discord, so I am trying my best to rectify that, and how do you fix something you don't understand?

And so I seek understanding.

Another reason I'm bombarded with these thoughts is because I insanely read comments on trans stories on the internet. People cry out that no one can be trans and we're all mentally ill and unstable because of DNA or genetics or <<insert reason here>>.


All that said, I come FIRMLY down in the camp that we are who our mind says we are. Our mind governs what we do and how we do it. It governs what we say, how we act, and really, isn't ALL of that who we truly are?

With that in mind, I have been out as trans to everyone in my social world for years now. I have received a host of reactions to it. Thankfully most of them have been good.

The thing that's strange about it is that I think many of the people in my life accept the fact that I'm "trans", but there's no real thought as to what that means. It's like, "You're trans and I support you," and while I appreciate that immensely, a step seems to be missed.


By saying I'm trans, I'm basically saying, "Yeah, I look like a guy, but I'm not. In fact, I'm not at ALL what I appear to be. My brain is female, and to me that means that I—who I am at my CORE—is female."

It took a loooooooonnnnnnnnngggggggg time and a massive amount of agony to come to that realization, and even more time and agony for me to learn to start embracing it. It's not that I didn't explore other options. It's not that I didn't scream and cry for it to be other things. It's not that I didn't go to seven different therapists to try to find out what was really underneath it all and why I was having these feelings.

After all of that, it became clear I was having these feelings because I'm trans. I was having these feelings because I'm a woman, but yet I look the way I do. It's enough to cause self-hatred and depression to envelop you like a shroud. It's enough to make you want to die. Literally. It's nothing that anyone would want for themselves, for it's just a magnificent amount of pain.


Okay, I don't mean to get all morose with this post, but I need to establish that this is not something I dreamed up overnight. This is not some fanciful whim I flew off on. This is DECADES of self-examination. And now I'm here, trying to find a way to be at ease with who I am, and have those in my world feel the same.

Yet I'm assailed with reminders that people can't let it go. That people can't see me for who I am. That people still call me the wrong name and say the wrong things about me. That people assume that I'm some guy and that I'll get all the "guy" things and have no idea about the "girl" things... whatever the hell that genderist bullshit is. That some dude will come up to me to tell me how "hot" some woman is because, I don't know, this is what dudes do (or creeper dudes do at the very least)? It's all fucking maddening.

But, outside of that, there are people who see me for who I am despite my appearance. They get ME. They understand ME. And they want to do right by ME. So there is hope, and things on this front get better every day. This is something I need to hold onto and keep in mind.

However, even with these people doing right by me, there is still the pain I feel every single day. There is still the discord. Nothing is in harmony with me. Everything is off kilter, and it's a terrible way to go through life.

And so I seek to get that harmony. I seek to match my outside with who I truly am. And this is happening in a major way just two weeks from now, because I'm having surgery. I'm having "the" surgery, as a friend recently put it. It has a lot of monikers: SRS, GRS, GCS, bottom surgery. Yep, that one. I'm having it. I couldn't be more excited about something, and I also couldn't be more terrified.

I think the excitement aspect here speaks for itself. I know this isn't going to cure all that ails me as a person, but it's a pretty big fucking bit of medicine for my soul. It will help. Immensely. I will no longer be cursed with feeling constantly wrong. A big part of me will be fixed. I will be able to just sit and watch TV at night and relax and not be in mental pain about my discord even while doing something so supremely mundane. That will be beyond amazing.

I'm terrified because it's surgery, and I've never had surgery. And with surgery you can have complications. You can have things go horribly wrong. There's a lot of trust with this, and you just have to hope and pray that things go well.

But even without that, there's the pain of recovery. There's the reliance on other people (which I am SO not good with) while I am healing. There's just the thought of SO much with this that it overwhelms and staggers.

On top of all of this, in preparation for surgery, I had to stop hormones two weeks ago, and I have been on them for over 12 straight years with no breaks. My brain and body forgot what it was like to be hammered with testosterone and not filled with estrogen. In short, I'm a catastrophic, emotional, hormonal mess. I cry basically every day, partly because my body chemistry is SO out of whack right now, but also because ALL of the awful feelings I had before starting hormones—before getting my body in tune with my head—is all coming back at me with a vicious ferocity. My skin feels different, my brain feels different, and my hair is already coming out in clumps again. I feel like all of the progress I've made physically in the past 12 years is rapidly being eroded away, and throughout all of this, I feel like I'm completely alone in contending with this horribleness.

I know people love and support me and they will be there to help me out, and I'm SO thankful. But this is an every-second-of-every-day thing with me now, and no one can keep up with that, nor would I want them to, because they have their own lives to live, and I need to find a way to muddle through mine.

Thankfully these feelings and this physical catastrophe that I'm going through should only be for a few more weeks, then I can get back on track feeling immensely better about me, my identity, and who I am as a person. I just hope I don't lose ALL of my hair by then.

It's overwhelming to think of this thing I've wanted for so long—to feel right—is only 14 days away. It's almost like, what do I want out of life after this??

I know there's more to go with my transition and getting me feeling better and better, but when something you needed has been SO out of reach for SO long, when it's finally on your doorstep, it's almost too much to process. And yet I'm doing my best to. Every minute of every day. The thoughts have swallowed me.

I think that's all I can say about this tonight, but my brain is going MACH 5 since this has been scheduled, and I get that out through writing, so I may just pop up on here a time or two before the big day.

In the meantime, thanks to all who have helped me or someone like me to get to this point. It's a hard enough journey as is, so it's nice to have some pals to help you along the way. Many thanks and much love.

And now I grit my teeth and continue trudging my way through this last bit of darkness before the dawn. I'm hoping for a glorious sunrise.

All the best. Always.

Acknowledging Change (a.k.a. Dem 'Mones, Dem 'Mones)

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been expending a great deal of mental energy lately trying drive off an overwhelming depression that seems to be swallowing me whole. It's a depression that stems from the whole trans issue (obviously), and since I don't feel like playing a rousing game of "Jonah!", I need to find a way out of its belly.

As I've also mentioned, there are many things I'm trying in order to get this to happen. So... here's another thing that I'm doing:

Whenever anyone gets in a situation that they don't like... be it a bad living situation, a bad job, a bad relationship, financial straits, or whatever... most people will generally take steps to make things better. And when we try to make things better, a lot of times it seems that the process goes oh...................so.......................slowly. Like imperceptibly slow. To the point where it feels like you're not moving at all. Which is precisely how it feels for me at this point in time (hence, you know, the hungry depression that's been making a hearty meal of me).

There's this illusion of permanency that hangs over bad situations. This is especially so when it's a situation that will only get better through years of effort. It seems like nothing ever changes... and it gets annoying... and it gets frustrating... and it can make you very, very sad.

SO... I needed to keep reminding myself that the permanency (read: nauseating stagnation) I feel actually IS an illusion, and that things ARE happening to me all the time that will get me closer to my goals. I mean, I quite often feel like I haven't made a lick of progress since I started taking hormones about 6 years ago. It feels like this was the last big change that happened in my life. And I'm sure that this may seem a bit insane considering all I've been through, but it still feels like things aren't moving at all, and I've been doing the same thing on repeat for the last 6 years.

Now when I look at the events that occurred during this span of time in my life, I know that a LOT has happened. There's not a year that's gone by where I haven't had some big, life-altering event shake up my world in major ways. Sometimes the events were good, and sometimes not so much. BUT they did change me. They did move my life forward. They did cause me to grow as a person in some way. In short, things DO change.

However, I've been dealing with this trans thing for so long, and I still have SO far to go with it, that it seems like I'm just running in mud. The molasses-in-winter speed of this process is enough to make you want to start beating your head off a wall for the better part of a year. It seems like nothing happens with it. Ever.

Now this is inherently false. Much and more has happened in regards to this issue over the past 6 years: coming out to more and more people, getting more and more support, getting better and better with myself, accepting myself more, LOVING myself more...

All of this should be a constant reminder that, even if it doesn't seem it, things ARE progressing. Some of these things seem quite nebulous, though, so it's hard to feel like there's concrete evidence of change, and I start to feel like I'm making a lot of it up. I know now, however, that it's just a matter of having faith in what you're doing and having faith in the process. Acknowledging these things has made it a LOT better for me over the past few weeks.

And if that's not enough to help me feel better, there's that big thing that happened 6 years ago, and the effects of that event, to show me IN REAL PHYSICAL TERMS just how far I've come. I mean, physically I'm not even the same person I was 6 years ago. I'm pretty f'n different... and, more importantly, closer to my goal... as I keep having to remind myself for some reason.

So, after that long introduction, I'm now actually going to remind myself of some of the effects that hormones have had on me since I began taking them in the summer of 2005. I also thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to cover this since a lot of people seem to ask me what hormones do and what they don't do, so hopefully this will be helpful for that reason as well. Additionally, I find it an interesting insight as to the differences between men and women, especially those that are induced by hormones. Keep in mind here that I take 2 small pills in the morning and 2 small pills at night—a pill of estrogen and a testosterone blocker, twice a day—and doing this is enough to bring the following changes.

I found a list on Wikipedia of hormone effects and I shall now kind of breeze through that list and talk about my experience in regards to said list item (where pertinent). Ready? K, here we go...

Firstly I would like to talk about a few very important things that hormones do NOT do. 

Hormones do NOT change your voice... at least going from male to female it doesn't, because your vocal chords have already thickened during puberty. Voice DOES change, however, when people go from female to male, though I'm not really here to talk about that side of it at the moment. A lot of people have said that my voice sounds very different, but that's mostly due to practice, practice, practice. It's gotten a lot better, but I still have a good way to go with it. Consistency is my biggest issue, but let's move on lest I get bogged down in this topic.

Hormones also do NOT remove any facial hair. That all has to be burned off through various annoying and expensive treatments. Electrolysis is the only proven method of permanent hair removal and they say it takes 100 to 400 hours to clear a face of its hair (at a cost of $65 to $100 an hour). Being about 200 hours in, and still having a great deal of hair on my chin and neck, I can attest to the fact that this is very much true.

Hormones will also not cause my hips to widen, though had I started at an earlier age when my bones were still growing, they would have. Generally speaking, the more removed from puberty you are, the less effect the hormones will have. I started when I was 32. Changes would have been much more pronounced if I began at 22... though they would have been less pronounced if I started at 42.

Hormones will obviously NOT change my height. Essentially the skeleton I have is the skeleton I have. It's just the way it is. Cosmetic things can be done to the skull to give someone's face a more feminine look, but height, arm and leg length, and all that other good stuff is pretty much fixed.

Now, here (according to the Wikipedia) is what hormones do, though I did edit this list down to practical things that I can discuss: 

-  Body hair thins greatly. I noticed this on my arms and legs. I didn't have much hair on my torso to begin with, and now I have none save a few stray hairs that stick around even though they are most unwelcome. They don't seem to care that they're not wanted, though. Little annoying bastards. 

-  Thicker head hair. More than a few people have said this is the case with me, including my hairdresser who has no idea that I'm taking hormones. Part of this is that the texture of my hair has changed. It's just thicker, shinier, and less coarse. Additionally, from what I've read, it seems that the hair I lost while younger may have started to come back because there were some follicles that weren't completely dead, and they were revitalized by the estrogen. Some follicles have died, however, and I pour some of my 40 out whenever I think of these fallen homies. I'm pretty certain, however, that at the rate my hair was going, if I hadn't started hormones when I did, I would be bald by now. And while I do have some issues with my hair, and it's certainly not the thickest head of hair on the planet, I do think it's manageable and that it can look good at times. So, you know, hooray for hormones... and all that.

-  Decreased libido. Yeah, totally true. When I first started hormones it was like someone came in and cleared out my head, because getting bombarded with testosterone all the time made the majority of things in the world center around sex (or so it seemed to me, anyway). When you remove that, and you can finally see the world outside of that vantage point, WOW does it look different. It was like getting a whole new take on the world... and it's one that isn't dominated by sex. It was refreshing when it happened, and I'm still very happy that this is the case. This is not to say that I don't have ANY thoughts of sex, I just don't have thoughts about it all. the. time. Which is nice. For me anyway.

-  The skin becomes softer. YESSSSSS. It did. It's great. Sometimes just having a hand on my arm and feeling my skin is the biggest reminder of how much I've changed. It seems as soft as melting ice cream compared to how it felt before. It's tremendous. I love it.

-  The uppermost layer of skin becomes thinner "and therefore more translucent and pinkish (spider veins may appear or be more noticeable), less collagen, more susceptible to tearing and irritation from scratching or shaving, increased tactile sensation, and slightly lighter in color due to a slight decrease in melanin (pigment)."

This is actually one of the more noticeable changes from the hormones, believe it or not. Now I don't know about the lighter in color, because when I started I was already a nice, paper-like shade of blinding white. But there's definitely a different look to my skin. It's more shiny, to be succinct about it.

I also get clear indicators reminding me to be more careful with my movements, because when I'm not, scratches and bruises magically appear ALL over me. Maybe this is why women generally move a bit more gracefully than guys? Before hormones I would RARELY notice a bruise or scratch on my body, let alone have any; now it's like I'm never without one. Odd.

Finally there's the increased tactile sensation. What does that mean exactly? Well for starters, it means that I get cold. Like really, REALLY cold. PAINFULLY cold, in fact. And I used to love the cold weather. I mean severely LOVE it. Like wanted to make out with it because I loved it so much. Now it just HURTS. I tell guy friends of mine, "Yeah, you don't even KNOW what it's like to be cold. You may think that you do, but you just don't." And I didn't either. Then there were hormones.

The flip side of this, however, is that I realized the sheer amazingness of a good, hot shower cutting into the back of my neck and shoulders. It is SO. F'N. GREAT. Additionally, with the aforementioned softer skin, this heightened tactile thing is where it's at! The stuff that felt nice already, feels even nicer now. 'Tis fantastic.

I should also mention here that in addition to skin becoming thinner, my nails have as well. I used to do home remodeling when I was younger, and I remember using my fingernail to turn smaller screws (like on a receptacle plate) with no real problem. I tried to do that once recently, and it literally tore my nail. I never had a nail tear in my life before hormones, and now I'm thinking that I should be hitting them up with some clear polish or something just to strengthen them because they rip and tear a LOT.

-  Due to reduced gland activity, dry skin becomes a problem and lotions and oils may be necessary. Totally. I never, ever, ever, ever, never had dry skin before in my life. And now I hate winter because not only am I painfully cold (as I mentioned above), but the skin on my hands basically cracks and peels right off. It's brutal. I can't tell you how much moisturizer I go through, and still I get cracked, bleeding,  f'ed up hands. If you can't tell, I'm not too jazzed about this change.

-  Body odor (skin, sweat, and urine) will become less "metallic," "sharp," or "acrid" and more "sweet" and "musky." I haven't noticed this because I don't often smell of the b.o. (nor do I often make it a point to sniff at my urine), though I feel like I have noticed some differences with this. Just nothing I can really confirm mostly because... 

-  Many types of sweat glands become inactive and body odor decreases. Which I'll take... though I'm betting that the whole "less sweating" thing leads to the whole "stupid dry skin" thing. I guess that there's just a good and bad side to everything. 

-  More fat tissue accumulates. Yeah, I have a lot more fat than I used to. Part of that may just be getting older, but just the way I'm shaped is now completely different. It's also a HELL of a lot harder to lose weight because of this (you know, because muscle burns off fat, while fat, surprisingly, does NOT), and it's also a LOT easier for me to get drunk (according to this article from the NY Times, "Because women's bodies have a higher ratio of fat to water, they reach a higher blood alcohol concentration after a single drink than men, even when matched for weight and size."). 

-  Sensitivity to male body odor(s) (including male pheromones) may be positively correlated with elevated estrogen levels. Overall, olfactory senses may increase.  The latter point first... I definitely smell things better and more intricately than I did before. I remember the first time I noticed this. I was walking through the woods a few months after starting hormones and I was overwhelmed by how much I smelled. Scents were coming at me from every angle. It was crazy. And delicious.

I also had a moment about a year or so after starting hormones where I was walking down the street with a friend of mine and I said, "I smell boy." And right then and there two guys came walking around the corner. I've also told guy friends of mine who were fresh from the shower that they "smell like wet boy." And they did. That's exactly what they smelled like—wet boy. I'm not entirely sure I even knew what that smell was before.  I should try to make a Wet Boy scented candle to capture the scent.

-  Breasts develop. Yeah, they did. They're not as big as I would've hoped, but they're certainly there and they're fine. I'm turbo-happy about that fact, but I've discussed this in other posts, so I'm not really going to get into it here. Just wanted to say that this does happen from hormones, as opposed to the things I listed earlier that don't. 

-  Fat distribution takes on a more female pattern. To this I'll just say that I had zero ass when I started this process... I mean like negative ass... and now it's a whole heck of a lot fuller. It's now to the point where I notice it. Like, I was lying on my floor the other night and was amazed that the small of my back doesn't lie as flat to the floor as it did before, which kinda feels weird. I can also feel more "junk in my trunk" when I walk. My thighs have also gotten bigger since I started hormones, and I should mention that none of this is because I've gotten heavier. Since starting hormones I've lost at least 30 pounds, and yet there's still this odd kind of fat collection going on. 

-  The face appears "puffier" and more rounded out. My face looks completely different and more than a few people have told me that. People who didn't know me before I started hormones are sometimes shocked to see older pictures of me. I wish I had two to post to this page by way of comparison. I'll have to look into that and try to do it another time. 

-  The metabolism slows down and one tends to gain weight, lose energy, need more sleep, and become cold more easily.  This compounds the thin skin factor for coldness. Brrrrrr. I don't really need much more sleep, but I've never been much of a sleeper anyway. Sometimes I feel a bit more run down, though, and if I eat anything even remotely bad for me these days, I can rest assured that I will gain weight. Part of all this metabolism slowing thing may just be me getting older as well. It seems that most of the changes I notice in myself are addressed with the question, "So, is it age or hormones?" I will say, however, that the food thing is maddening, and I work my ASS off trying to lose weight, and it's rare to see a change. I'm sure if I was doing everything I'm doing now before I started hormones, I'd be absolutely, 100% at my goal weight.

-  Due to androgen deprivation a loss of muscle tone, a slower metabolism, and physical weakness becomes more evident. I addressed the metabolism thing above... so to move on... my arms, as an example, don't look like "guy arms" anymore, to the point where my forearms are actually curved differently now and look pretty much like a woman's arm. My upper arms aren't big or bulky in any way, and they're much smaller than they were before. I also noticed that I have less physical strength than before, and things that I would move around with ease before (like this big-ass arm chair I have in my living room) now takes a good bit more effort. Additionally, before hormones I felt like I had this reserve strength or something, but that has since disappeared. Like if I was struggling with something, I could strain and get a nice boost of strength (I should say here that I was pretty f'n strong before). Now when I strain it kinda seems like nothing happens, you know, other than me making that straining noise that one makes when they're straining.

And finally, to wrap up this uber-long post, here's two weirdly interesting things: 

-  The hips will rotate slightly forward due to changes in the tendons. As crazy as it sounds, this totally happened to me. About two years into hormones (right when I upped my dosage), I started to get hip pain. It got better over time, but I've noticed since that I can't really stand the way I used to, nor can I really walk the way I used to. This also kind of makes my butt stick out more, and it's just kind of crazy in general. I never thought anything like this could happen, yet it did. I find that fascinating for some reason. Like taking these pills every day can cause your HIPS to ROTATE. Nuts.

-  The lens of the eyes changes in curvature. Now I never actually had it measured and compared, but I did notice about a year or so in that things just started looking "off", and I was getting headaches, having trouble judging depth, and weird things like that. This eventually got better, probably because I got used to it, but I do think that things look differently now. I wish I could explain it more than that, but I think that I've been seeing things for so long through these new lenses that I can't really say what's different anymore, though I know that it most certainly is.


Like I said, those are most of the physical effects that I've noticed. There are also some major mental ones that hormones have brought on (but that's a post for another day). With all of this going on, and with all of the amazing differences I've experienced, it's probably pretty delusional to think that "nothing ever changes" and that I'm "stuck". As I said, I've been acknowledging these things more and more, and that has certainly helped in my battle against The Big Sad. 

And now I better go. Thanks for bearing with me through this longish post. I promise I won't make it a habit.

Be well.

Part II: The Bad

Where we last left off, the protagonist of this-here story (i.e. yours truly) had just gotten a written referral to see an endocrinologist to hopefully get prescribed hormones. I called the office, made the appointment, and waited something like two looooonnnnng months in a feverish anticipation that was riddled with both fear and apprehension. Talk about a fun two months.

Now when I called the doctor's office, I told them that I was coming in hoping to get prescribed hormones and all of that. They gladly took the appointment and didn't say anything that would make me think that this was not the place to go. Well, it wasn't.

When I finally met the doctor, he asked me why I was there. I thought that a question like this would have been addressed by what I said when I made the appointment. Obviously I was mistaken.

What followed was me nervously stammering my way through an explanation of what I wanted to do. I was having these feelings; I wanted to try hormones to either confirm these feelings as being one thing... or another. When the doctor wasn't sure what I was asking for, even after a long explanation, I explained it again, and quite possibly even a third time.

Finally, the doctor understood. Here's what he said (again, paraphrasing a bit here):

"I think that this is a crime against nature, and it's not how you were meant to be. I don't know why anyone would do this to himself. What are you hoping to get out of this? You were born a male and you'll always be a male. How could you want to do this to yourself? This is very, very wrong."

And so on... and so on. This went on for an excruciating five minutes. Finally, I just said, "Okay, I get it," and started to get myself together to go. Then this braying jackass had the stupendous amount of gall to ask me:

"Would you like us to keep your information on file in case you decide to come back here for treatment?"

Ummm... what??

My response was:
"Look, you obviously have a problem with this, so why would I ever want to be treated for something by someone who has a problem with it?"

"Well," he answered, "we have prescribed hormones for people before."

"But you have a problem with it, so why would I want YOU to prescribe them for me? So I can come back here and have you tell me about your problems with what I'm doing? No thanks."

"We could still keep your information on file..."

"That won't be necessary."

"Are you sure?"

"Ummm... yeah, I'm pretty certain."

WTF!?

I walked out of there and I was FURIOUS. People have problems with this kind of stuff, and whatever, I sort of understand that. However, how could you, as a "professional", start laying into someone like this... and then have the sheer audacity to ask me if I want to come back for treatment? Seriously, what IS that??

I was actually shaking when I walked out of the office. I didn't even know what to do. I was mad that he acted that way towards me. I was also pretty mortified by the fact that I went there in a pretty iffy emotional state, baring something that was VERY difficult for me to talk about even under the best of circumstances, and then I was met with a lecture about how I was a "crime against nature."

This experience, needless to say, was nothing but BAD.



As a postscript:
On the way home I was so upset that I stopped off at a pay phone to call a friend (remember pay phones?). While talking to her, I actually just started to laugh about the whole situation. Then I just started to feel kind of bad for the doctor. He was so blinded by his own fear and ignorance that he never took time to even look at the situation from a different perspective, or to talk to me about it, or to talk to anyone about it. He just decided to think what he thought about it and be magnificently blind as to what was really going on.

But as nervous and scared as I was, I got through it. Even with his wondrously supportive words scraping every soft nerve in my brain, I got through it... AND I wound up laughing it off soon after it went down. It made me stronger. It made me less afraid. It made me want to do it more... though I wouldn't be prescribed hormones til some five years later.

One final note:
When I next went back to my primary doctor and related the story, she was aghast at the endocrinologist's behavior. "Even if he does have a personal problem with it, it was HIGHLY unprofessional for him to talk to you like that."

Yeah, I'll tend to agree with that assessment.
As I've said, my primary kinda rocks.

That's all I got tonight.
I hope all is well.

The Good, the Bad... and the Lovely

One of the trickier things about being trans is that sooner or later you have to actually discuss this personal decision with someone administering to your health care, i.e. a person who may very well be a complete stranger. This may be because it's pertinent to what you're being treated for, or it's just something you need to say due to the obvious physical differences that hormones bring to your world. What follows are three brief stories, which will be written over the course of three different posts, about different reactions to this news by the people who attend to physical health. We'll start with...

The Good

About seven years ago or so, I was deeply embroiled in the whole coming-to-terms phase with all the feelings I was having and what they actually meant. I was seeing a therapist, who, while not knowing much about the topic, was very helpful in getting me to admit to myself that what I was feeling (that I wanted to be a woman) was real, and that it would greatly behoove me to explore my options when it came to this.

I did a lot of reading on the topic of trying to figure out what these feelings actually meant, as this was the point where I was desperately trying to convince myself that I WASN'T trans. A course of action was discussed that seemed to be somewhat doable, as well as something that may indeed help me to better know what it was that I wanted. This was: To go on hormones for about three months or so, just to see how it made me feel. If I felt better and liked what was happening to my body (and to my mental state as well), it would be an indication that this may indeed be the path that I should follow. If I didn't like it, it would be an indication that something else was amiss, and I should start trying to figure out what that issue was. Additionally, all the changes that the hormones would cause in me after a mere three months would be completely reversible if I stopped taking them. So I wouldn't be permanently changed if I decided this wasn't for me. All in all it seemed like a great idea, and I was excited to try it. The issue was - where do I get prescribed hormones?

My therapist thought a great place to start would be with talking to my primary care physician (seems kind of obvious when I thought about it after she suggested it, but at the time, it sort of didn't dawn on me). The only problem I had was actually going in to tell my doctor that I was having these feelings and that I wanted to try hormones, because, at the time, I could barely even admit that to myself, let alone admitting it out loud to someone else. I mean, it took all of my courage to even just admit it to a therapist.

My therapist, however, saw my hesitance and apprehension, so she offered to call my primary and tell her what I was dealing with. She did. Which was super-awesome of her. A few weeks later I found myself in my primary's office, discussing all of this with her. Here's how she started our conversation (though I'm paraphrasing a bit here):

"I spoke with your therapist and she explained everything to me. This is obviously a very difficult personal decision your dealing with, and I'm not here to tell you whether you're right or wrong in what you're doing. That's not my job. My job is to ensure that no matter what you decide to do, you do it smartly, and you remain healthy.

"That being said, I have no experience with this, so I'm hesitant to prescribe you anything, because I wouldn't know what to prescribe. I suggest you talk to a doctor who would better know what to do and how to address this best."

It was then decided that I should go see an endocrinologist, as I read that this was where one should go if they wanted to get hormones and be safe about it. She had the referral written up immediately for an endocrinologist in the area, with more than enough visits to take care of any problems that may arise.

Since then, she has been nothing but understanding, very professional, and extremely helpful. I couldn't have dreamt of anything better. This experience... was nothing but good.

To be continued...

Be well.