#and my god. was that recovery painful

[eliotquillon]

asking bc i’m curious - i had mine removed in the uk when i was 14 after years of recurrent tonsillitis (strep) and have never met anyone else who’s under the age of 50 and has also had them out lol

[mokutone]

your art makes me wanna start testosterone

i can't read tone well, so this is either an incredibly touching ask, or an extremely funny one, and in the absence of confirmation: both!

i'm in a chatty mood, so i'll share some thoughts about testosterone and my art.

i liked being on testosterone a lot. i had an IM injection every two weeks (on tuesdays!) and because that's a sizeable dose every 14 days that slowly disperses, it can cause some mood fluctuations (every other friday i would have a crisis about not feeling like the world had a place for me in it) but even those were far more manageable than the ones that would come with my previous and current monthly hormone cycle (every month i spend a solid week thinking the world will never have a place for me in it)

It gave me a patchy little bit of scruff on my chin and a whispy mustache under my nose that still struggles on, despite adversity!

It redistributed my fat a little bit, but that's long since gone back to pre-T shape.

it lowered my voice! that hasn't changed :^)! even if i never go back on t, that won't change. it was the thing i most wanted, and its the one i'm most grateful for. Pre-T, I didn't speak much. I'm getting better and better at talking and getting more and more comfortable communicating with people because of it.

having been off t now for 3 years, i don't pass anymore—not as a cis man, or a cis woman, certainly not as anything approximating straight. if people look at me and see anything, i'd hazard a guess that they see me as A Queer (the noun—for all it's complicated connotations).

i'm not surprised that my art might make somebody want to start testosterone! a lot of my art was made out of the aching grief that came with being kicked off of testosterone, and how neatly that loss of autonomy over my own body knits in with yamato's loss of autonomy over his own.

how my body started doing things i disliked, how i didn't have the support necessary to access the healthcare i needed—how my inability to give myself what i needed made me feel as though i were trapped inside of myself and abandoned (by both myself and the world at large)

when i write comics about yamato as a trans man, i don't take away his testosterone, because that hits a little too close to home for me. for Ninja War Town Reasons, he has plenty of access to all the HRT he could ever need and nobody questions his need for it—instead, i project my own horrors onto the way Danzō defined his identity for him as a child, the way that Kabuto and Obito dehumanize him as an adult in their war efforts, and reduce him to the thing his body holds (the Mokuton). I give him a kneejerk compulsion to dehumanize himself (out of a feeling that he has a duty to his community to do so) and I give him a slow-growing resistance to that impulse (which comes out of a feeling that the people he loves would frown upon seeing him reduce himself like that)

it's dysphoria! it's not gender dysphoria, but it's a loss of self, and a need to reclaim it. it's a war between the hollow shell of a thing he thinks he has to be, and the vibrant and messy person beneath it that he is. it's a desperate need to say "this is who i am—only i can say it"

I enjoyed HRT a lot. it was a really useful tool in helping me feel like my body was my own, that i didn't have to fight it, that we were the same entity. It's not the only tool, but it was a really good one, and one day I hope to use it again.

(as for the being off of it—it's unpleasant, but i'm enduring! being somebody who now doesn't really pass as anything has put me in a weird and interesting position, where I'm constantly having to declare myself to people, because nobody knows what to make of me on any front. they don't know if i'm a man, a woman, nonbinary, nor even what age i am (Augh!!!!) it forces me to be brave and vulnerable more than I'm comfortable with—if I tell somebody I'm a man, there's no way that they will believe I'm cis, but I'm not about to recloset myself—and I don't think I could at this point anyway.)

(there's something fascinating about the position i find myself in, and while i'd leap back on t the moment that an opportunity presented itself to do so, i do feel like i'm experiencing something interesting and important in this weird zone i find myself in)

[highspeedinterconnect]

this week has been fucking awful I just wanna lay down somewhere quiet w my gf and cats. holy shit

[totalspiffage]

I would really like it if my bones stopped hurting constantly

[iero]

Had a panic attack that literally woke me up in the middle of the night last night and lasted until the early morning and let me tell you, that shit is TERRIFYING. Needless to say, I think I'm ready to go back to work.

[saminthea]

Is it appendicitis or just fibromyalgia and a stomach bug? Guess we'll see in the morning!

[quietly-sweetly-yearning]

you make me want to be better. healthier. happier

[binders-and-beanies]

.

[caffeinatedopossum]

I went grocery shopping today and realized just how much stronger I've gotten since pre-recovery and now I suddenly don't wanna relapse

[angelsofneonandgarbage]

legs don’t break challenge: hard level

[jamesunderwater]

I swear to god if this incision opened more because i tried to clear off a counter I'm.......well I guess I'll just stop moving at all

[spootsaline]

honestly you'd think over the past 8 years id get better at saying "no i need to stay home and rest" and not push myself until i fall the fuck apart but i never did get that good while having the chronic pain

however. the threat of having to fuck my school schedule and make up shit i dont wanna make up is actually making me reconsider

[makorragal-312]

OMG!!! BUCK IS GETTING A POST-LIGHTNING SCAR??!!

[just-rogi]

.

[deviouslittlecreature]

Oh my god I only have 14 more days until I can take this fucking thing off my ribs hurt so much

I don't know how I got this lucky healing, but it has genuinely been fine, I've been doing really good, I have like no bruising or swelling, and my nipples are doing good too

I just hate the binder

[jametartt]

🧍