#and that's shitty because at that point i couldn't transition medically and i felt like less of a man

[uncanny-tranny]

On the topic of hormones, I love trans men, transmasculine people, abinary, multigender people, or whomever else who takes estrogen and trans women, transfeminine, abinary, multigender people, or whomever else who takes testosterone.

There is no "right" way to transition. You don't have to be a perfectly binary, gender conforming trans person in order to take hormones. We all have different levels of estrogen and testosterone, and that means women and nonbinary people don't have to have estrogen-dominant systems and men and nonbinary people don't have to have testosterone-dominant systems. Do what sparks joy and if it's shit, hit the bricks!

[vampelune]

new year new... idk

haven't made a proper new years post in a while. i think this year kinda earned one.

tw: death, suicide, and so on

so... 2023.

where do i start?

a lot of good. and way, way more bad. but i don't want to lose sight of all the good because of it.

for the first time after knowing these guys for over a decade, i met my best friends nate, kathy, and kai in real life. spent over a week together with them, went to a con, got to share a bed with them the whole time, and force nate to eat a bunch of american food.

but. a month later, kai killed herself. and i'm still dealing with that. probably will be for the rest of my life. she was my best friend, i would call her my soulmate, my sister. she meant the world to me. i wish i could've spent every day of the rest of our lives like we spent that week in DC. i regret all the things i didn't do yet with her. all the things i couldn't do for her, to help her.

i miss her. a lot. i've just gotten to point finally, after she passed on aug 28, where just the thought of her doesn't make me spiral into misery and cut myself. i still get the feeling sometimes---i travelled again for the first time since our trip to DC, to see my childhood best friend graduate, and the entire plane ride was miserable. i just thought of her the whole time, because the last time i'd been on a plane was to see her, and then to leave her. and i kept thinking about how much i fucking wished i could've taken her back to vegas with me. she joked about it, when they dropped me off the airport, got out of the car and pretended like she was leaving with me. i wish she could have.

she made the year really stressful. from her new relationship to the constant troubles that came with it, to her psych ward visit, and then her constant attempts. over and over. and i had to keep stopping her, fighting with her. found out her whole philosophy on suicide---that it's her body her choice, and therefore anyone not wanting her to kill herself is being selfish, and that it was just a difference in philosophy. it was difficult. the conversations i had with her, i didn't want anyone else to hear. unfortunately it all spilled out, and then she took her own life.

i would've dealt with that for the rest of our lives if i had to, though. if it meant i could still talk to her, to see her again. i would've foiled her suicide attempts and argued with her and fought with her about it until we both grew old if i had to. i wouldn't have had to, i hope. but it was hard to convince her that there was any life to live other than this, for her. that she wouldn't feel this way forever.

it was a difficult year, if not for that already, but on top of that i was still dealing with the aftermath of a bad, drawn out breakup. so while trying to help her, i was barely able to help myself cope and move on from that---the fights and the shitty words and feelings. i felt pretty close to trying to attempt myself, last year. i'm better now. back on my medication. and while my self-harm is still an issue, it hasn't been for a couple months. its still on my mind, though. not always but a lot of the time.

i've been struggling pretty badly with feeling like i don't have a place in the world. worsened by the obvious, you know. i place a lot of my self and identity on the people around me---so who am i if not his boyfriend, if not kai's best friend? so much of my self-perception revolved around them.

there was a good month or two where i sort of just like... didn't want to exist, or accomplish anything. it's hard to describe but i felt like---why bother with transitioning? why bother with top surgery? HRT? legal documents? all that? if she's not here. i was her best friend, and she was always so proud and happy for me when i made progress---when i started growing a stache, she'd point it out everytime we video called and say "ooh, you look like a man, so handsome", or the more common, "you look like a fag". when my voice started dropping a bit, she noticed. it dropped even more this past month. i wish she could hear it.

this is certainly nsfw, but it makes sense in the context of our relationship (she was always very openly sexual around me, and vice versa. it was just part of our dynamic), but when we met up in july, i let her do... a lot of things lol. including suck on my nipple. which, yea, sounds weird, but it made sense for us. i told her now she had to live long enough to see me get top surgery, so she could test out if i still had enough feeling in my nipples. she said she would. so, for a while after she died, i felt like... i can't? or, why should i? if she won't be there, for me. if she won't be there to see my results.

it's really hard, thinking things like that. i'm struggling to not start crying right now. which is a miracle, honestly, i haven't been able to cry as much since i started T and yet because of her i've cried more in the past few months than i have in the year and a half since i started T.

i really miss her. i wish we could've done more, together. the week i spent with her felt like what i'd wanted my life with her to be for years. nearly a decade. you know, you grow up a mentally ill teen on the internet with all your most important friendships being these long distance people you've never met irl, and you talk and talk about what your life could be if you all lived nearby. and then for one week, that's what my life was. and i've never been happier in my life, genuinely. i wanted that to be my life, forever. it felt so comfortable and easy; i've notoriously had some bad anxiety issues about meeting up irl with people for the first time, i sort of shut down and go non-verbal, struggle to socialize or talk. but with her, kathy, and nate---i felt none of that. none of it. everything was so easy. i wasn't anxious or scared or anything.

i loved being with them. i loved doing mundane things like shopping at walmart and target with them while they pushed me around in the shopping cart. loved going to hot topic and picking out clothes with them. loved seeing the barbie movie in theaters opening week with them. going to a convention with them, something id' wanted for so long, because conventions are such a big part of my life and all i'd ever wanted was to share it with them. we cosplayed together. i put kai in my mikan cosplay, it fit her so well. when we went to the danganronpa meetup at otakon, she fit the part so easily even though she was kinda nervous. i still look at the pictures.

she really was a perfect mikan. nate was junko, you can see him on the right there, i was komaeda, and kathy was chiaki. it fit us all so well. i wish we could do it again.

it's been hard to wear my mikan cosplay again, after that. knowing she wore it.

i miss her a lot. but i'd be remiss to not mention that despite how awful this year was, i am hoping for a lot better in the upcoming one, and i'm going to make it so. and i know last time ifelt this way, a pandemic suddenly happened and things got worse, but i'm really gonna try, lol.

so what do i hope for, this year?

i'm going to see kathy & nate again, mark my words. i already have plans to see kathy in february and i'm going to enjoy myself the best of my ability, even if it'll be hard to be in her house again, considering the last time i was was when kai was there, too.

i want to get my passion for art back, and i think i'm already on my way to it. i want to get back into painting, both digitally and physically. and to draw with emotion rather than the intention to just make something pretty people will like.

back to the gym. rather stereotypical, but i gained a lot of weight after kai passed, and i want to get back in shape now.

drawing more things im passionate about rather than making myself stuck fixated on one interest.

top surgery. i wanna figure it out. even if i cant get it this year, i want to figure out what i need to do it.

a job hopefully. of some kind. just want to feel more stable money-wise if i can.

im just going to do things that ive wanted to do for a long time. im gonna stop putting it off. and just do it. because the time will pass anyways. so i want to do it now.

happy new year, everyone.

[discyours]

What does it mean for you to be a "reidentified woman" and how did you get to that current stage?

It means I at some point disidentified from being female (in my case by identifying as a trans man for several years) and have since gone back to being able to identify myself as a woman. It's similar to the term "detransitioned", but I feel a little less comfortable using that because my transition didn't involve any medical changes.

I'll reblog an old ask about how I learned to cope with my dysphoria. It recently came up in my notes and interestingly enough I still identified as a trans man when I posted it. It's only a few years old but before reading it I honestly forgot a lot about how intense my dysphoria used to be and how difficult the process of learning to handle it was.

As for what led me to the decision to reidentify, it's messy and complicated. I found radical feminism and gender critical writings which led me to think that detransitioning would, in a perfect world, be the best way of responding to my dysphoria, but I couldn't actually bring myself to go through with it under that mindset. I somewhat explored letting other people view me as female, but my dysphoria was too strong to let go of transition as a coping mechanism in any kind of "final" way. What ultimately did it for me was severe anxiety from shitty meds, followed by trauma. I spent months stuck in limbo because any form of existing, being seen or expressing an identity felt wrong and fake and scary. Staying trans felt wrong, actively changing anything did too. After the trauma I decided I just couldn't cope with nonconformity anymore. I felt like it made me a target, and I didn't feel safe.

A few years on and I have wholly failed the feminist target of being able to accept myself as female while keeping the same expression I allowed myself as a trans man. If you were looking from the outside in I think you'd assume I detransitioned because I "missed being feminine". I don't dislike who I am now, but I do hate the idea of that.

Overall I don't regret transitioning and I don't regret detransitioning. I keep it in my bio because I don't want there to be any confusion about if I'm currently a trans man from people who find my blog through old posts. It's not like "former trans person who changed their mind" is something I actually want to revolve my identity around.