#chances are good I'll look like a cis dude who can live their life for fucking once and that softens the fear

[stardustedknuckles]

Was thinking today that other than a persistent pressure between my legs, I really haven't seen anything change on my dose of T yet and then I realized that for all the headaches and sinus bullshit that's begun since then, for all the gas being worse and whatever, I haven't taken or wanted any weed since I started. The only reason I took it was for the constant inflammation I had been dealing with and I can't explain it, but that low-grade fuzzy feeling that had been in my skin is just. Gone. I've also been able to eat foods I have been afraid to touch for months since they randomly began causing problems I couldn't find the vocabulary to even explain. Gluten, soy, yeast - all of the things I had been trying to narrow down and figure out which of them was hurting me and how...I'm still careful about spacing out when I eat it, but that didn't matter before. Most things are acceptable again, and when I'm not anywhere near my period I have a huge appetite. Estrogen is still fucking with me pretty badly, but it's only been three months on a low dose and despite the hormonal migraine activity, I can tell it's easing up every month.

None of the things that are happening feel new, either. It feels like they were maybe going on before and they were so buried under inflammation that I couldn't experience them properly to label them. I now know that the random panic food causes in me sometimes is silent reflux - my throat feels like it's closing because the acid is touching the esophagus and making the muscle flinch away from it. The hypersensitivity to light around my period and the constant sinus pressure confirm what I've already looked into, that I have "flu-like" period symptoms. It's just clearer now (as it starts to fade). T isn't causing any of these things. They're just taking a while to go away because my cycle will take a while to piss off entirely.

And that's on a half dose. Part of me is worried it won't be enough to completely suppress my cycle and I'll have to go all in just to feel normal more than two weeks at a time, but three months ago it was one week if I was lucky. So I guess we'll cross that bridge if and when we (don't) get there.

And all of this time, I have needed my ADHD meds exactly twice, both for big projects that are specifically leaning on a skill I am especially bad at. So not only am I feeling better for the most part all around, I am feeling better without the meds that have kept me upright and functioning for three years. I have an official fibromyalgia diagnosis. Even if I'm not sure that's exactly what was going on, it is a very big deal that I don't need stimulants just to exist anymore. SOMETHING rheumy was fucked, and at least for now it's doing better (we'll see how next summer goes. it always gets quieter in the fall and seems heat activated.)