#paislee's romantic life (or lack thereof)

[spidergwenistrans]

So the other big way that dysphoria has been hitting me this year, seems to fall somewhere between social dysphoria and rejection sensitive dysphoria.

I told 3 people in the last 10 months that I had romantic feelings for them, and got shot down 3 times. I wanna be clear, I’m not blaming any of those people, they do not owe anything to me, I just wanna talk about the emotional responses that I experienced.

This is gonna sound super shitty, but the thing is, it’s such easy fuel for the dysphoria monster to feed on, but people not being romantically interested in you can make it hard to imagine that anyone will ever find you attractive, especially when you’re already struggling to see anything about yourself to like.

It’s so easy for the rejection to get used against you as proof that you are unloveable, that no one will ever find you attractive, that you’re a monster. All of the horrible things media told me about trans people until the 2010s, and it’s not like that wholly stopped then, just that there were some positive portrayals too.

As a demisexual person, I’m not primarily interested in the sexual attractiveness either, and I only develop romantic attraction after establishing some kind of emotional connection first. Of course, trying to function in a world where sexual attraction is valued so highly, and where, for many people the context a relationship is formed in first (friend, classmate, date, etc) is the only one they can/want to view it in (or so it seems from my perspective).

Something I struggled with before telling my classmate about my feelings for her, was that I didn’t know how I could possibly ask her to look at me and consider me as attractive, when I couldn’t even do it myself. This was in the middle of one of the worst weeks for dysphoria I’ve ever had (that I can remember). We were doing lab testing, the school uniform was starting to wear me down (it’s really hard for me to see much femininity under it), I’d been unable to get any electrolysis done for months, our Yikes Instructor was wearing me down, and of course the stress of wondering if it was worth even talking to my classmate about my feelings for her.

[spidergwenistrans]

I saw this comic a couple weeks ago, posted by the artist on her Twitter or Instagram page

I'd been kinda facing the feelings this comic brought up for a while, but I don't think I was really processing them. I'm not sure if I am now, or if I even know how, maybe eventually I'll make it to some kind of acceptance.

Before I started hormones, it felt like all of my emotions were dulled compared to what they are now. Including whether I even wanted kids?

I always liked the idea of having kids eventually, but it also didn't fit right trying to imagine myself as a father figure to them.

Around the 8 month mark on HRT, as the new school year was starting, and I was studying labour and delivery, our first unit in emergency medicine, and one of my closest friends was having a baby, I was hit with what I've been calling baby fever (stole the term from a classmate).

I suddenly WANTED a baby in a way I never had before, and badly. I bawled my eyes out reading a textbook about emergency delivery strategies. Of course, I also knew immediately, that I could never have a baby in the way my body was screaming that it felt like I needed to.

Experiencing crushes with this in the background was a new thing too, I finally understood people saying they wanted to have someone's babies. Of course, I'm not sure how a trans girl could have a cis girl's babies with current medical tech/practices, but when has reason ever governed our wants?

It feels like lately, the baby fever has gotten tangled up into whatever old feelings and new feelings I have about my ex. I'm still hurting over the breakup, which is now almost 2½ years ago. I think part of it is that I really thought we were going to be together for the rest of our lives, even if I had trouble picturing my future past becoming a paramedic, I knew it was supposed to be with her. The relatively sudden stall in our relationship leading up to the breakup, happened so much faster than I was able to process anything in The Before Time™, so emotionally speaking, it caught me off guard, even if I did kind of see it coming intellectually.

Something I don't think I've said out loud anywhere, text or vocally, is that she broke my heart, and I don't know how to put it back together to move on.

Whenever I imagine having kids, it's still with her, if I think about her, if feels like my insides have all been scooped out. It's a feeling on a different level from the rejections over the last 6 months.

The scooped out feeling is kind of similar to the emptiness I feel whenever I face the fact that I can't bear children the way I want to.

(I also wanna talk about fertility and transness, but that's gonna be another post)

I don't want the only visualisation of my future I'm capable of to include her in that way, I NEED to move on, she clearly has, but I don't know how.

I've only dated one other person, and that relationship was so much shorter and had so many problems with us both lying to eachother and ourselves, that it just didn't have the same soul-crushing impact. I've really never been on casual dates, or even had a short fling. I went from that first relationship to a 4 year long one that I'd put all my hopes for the future into.

Sometimes I think cutting her out of my life a little more completely might help, but we were friends before we ever dated, and we're still friends now, and it's not fair to blame her for my inability to move on.

I also realise that when we do talk, I miss her so much as a friend, not just as a partner, and while talking to her helps with missing the person who was my best friend for 4½ years, it brings back up to the surface all these heartbroken feelings.

I've told her some of what I've been feeling, the definitely-new-crush feelings, mainly, and how important our friendship is to me. Part of me really wants us to get back together, but part of me recognises the hurt we did to eachother, and I don't know if we can rebuild on that? Then again, if soulmates are a thing, I'm pretty sure we would be? It's all so complicated feeling.

I'm pretty sure I talked about how I kinda fell for one of my friends on the last year as well, and sometimes I think maybe I could settle into the QPR that we kinda have, but I don't think that would even come close to fulfilling my romantic needs? And it really wouldn't be fair to either of us, even if I am desperate for affection.

I wanna be clear, I'm desperate for affection because that's just who I am, I need lots of it, and quarantine has only highlighted that. It has nothing to do with being trans and not having options.

[spidergwenistrans]

I've been having more bad mood days than I think I've ever had in my life lately.

I think the only time my mood has ever been nearly as consistently in the range of negative emotions was the week I realised I'm trans and dealing with the breaking down of so much.

Even in 2 different break ups, and one following a 4 year relationship that I thought would last the rest of my life. Following both breakups, I realise that in hind sight I was doing a lot of burying my emotions, but even when I was sort of processing them, I didn't feel as down as I have been.

In the last week I've been told that the college has only the vaguest plan to let my classmates and I finish precepting, with no guarantee it'll last beyond the first couple people. Our provincial exam has been postponed indefinitely. My boss told me she's putting me on extended leave since if I do go back to precepting, I won't be able to work, and depending on how things are when that runs out, I may have to quit.

To be honest, my hopes about finishing my placement (9 whole shifts) have been pretty low all along, it makes no sense for us not to be allowed to finish, because we're needed, people are retiring, but no one new is being allowed to enter the profession, but somehow the news that some of us being allowed, but currently only those who have job offers there already is more disheartening.

The provincial exam being cancelled is neutral to be honest. Life would be easier if I could get my license finished in this province sooner than later, and not have to study for this exam months and months from now. But I can't even write that exam if I haven't finished my placement and gotten a letter from the college saying I graduated.

As much as I don't think lattes are really important right now during a pandemic, I was actually looking forward to going back to work? My boss was very good about accommodating everyone's specific concerns, and corporate has done a reasonable amount to mitigate our risk of getting infected, and to limit the risk of customers passing infections to each other. But mainly, I wanted something to do, something that required no intrinsic motivation, so I could just zone out and let work take my mind off of everything. Instead I'm staying home until June 14, and I'm still getting paid through then, though, paradoxically, less than my sister who got laid off and is getting the CERB lmao

I know that the stress of the pandemic generally is affecting my mood, but there's also some specific ways I'm feeling fucked over right now.

I can't continue electrolysis right now, because they're closed, which is reasonable, but it also means that it feels like my transition is stalled. Laser has done next to nothing for me, which makes no sense, I have dark hair and pale skin, and honestly idk if the at home one is doing any better, and I've used it daily for almost a week, and on and off for 2 months. I also worry about my electrolysis clinic suffering from the months of no appointments. They're one of 2 (that I know of) in this city that are explicitly trans friendly, and they specifically have options for trans folks who can't afford the full cost. My hope was to pay back into that system as soon as I had a job in my field.

I've been trying to work up the courage to talk to my doctor about bottom surgery for months now, but haven't been able to, and I'm not even sure what the point would be. I believe I would still need to see a psychologist to get it approved by provincial insurance, and I could maybe get that ball rolling by getting a referral, but I'm also not sure how long I'll be in this province, and once I move, it'll be a whole other system to deal with. Of course, the other province had more options for trans people than this one does, but I'm not sure I can wait that long? I want to have it done already, I still feel like I can't really fully exist as me until I have it out of the way. The idea of being in a relationship with someone before I've had bottom surgery is terrifying to me now. I honestly don't know how I lived so long not being bothered by it. Well, at least, not consciously.

With the college not letting me (and about 25 others) graduate without the next 100 hours of placement, I don't know if I'll have a chance at a job in this province. I had hoped.to work here for at least a year, to pay off debt, rebuild my savings, and start getting stuff figured out for FFS, while also being able to take paid sick leave for bottom surgery somewhere towards the end of that year. If me not graduating drags on much longer, there is a very good chance I will not be able to get a job here, even though it sure seems like the local service actually wanted to hire me. Now? It seems like my only shot at employment this calendar year is going to be traveling across the country, getting certified a level below my training, and working as a driver only, instead of as a clinician, to at least build some seniority with that service. Apparently I'd be able to take a leave of absence for education in order to complete my schooling here whenever that's possible again, and then my licensing over there would be relatively easy comparatively. But I don't know if I can afford the travel out there in the first place yet?

All of this time alone with my thoughts had made time seem to pass so much slower than it ever has before. It was so much easier to appreciate the changes estrogen has been making for me when I only had a little bit of time to dwell on it, now it feels like things are moving backwards.

I know that today and yesterday's bad moods are exacerbated by whatever my monthly cycle is, because I definitely get a lot more irritable for a few days every month, and my app seems to be right about it every month.

[spidergwenistrans]

I talked about FFS in that other post, but to be completely honest, the biggest source of dysphoria for me, realistically, going right back to my first puberty (though I couldn’t have called it that at the time), is facial hair.

I  hated when it started growing in, and as soon as I thought I could justify it, I started shaving it off, I kept that up consistently for years. Being a part of the scouting group I joined in grade 10 gave me a great excuse too, since we had to be N95 FIT test compliant at all times (not that I ever put one on as a MedVent, other than for the FIT test). I never allowed my facial hair to grow out until I was dating my first girlfriend, after I’d started university, and I couldn’t attend the MedVent meetings, but mostly only because she encouraged it. I was already her beard (though neither of us could admit it), and now I had an actual beard.

After we broke up, I went back to shaving much more consistently until my second summer after starting university, when the coworker I shared a truck with grew out his beard and I gave it a go. After that I started to keep a beard more often than I didn’t, I still shaved for MedVent when required, but 80-90% of the time I had that classic Egg Beard. My ex liked the beard better than a scratchy face, so I had external justification for it, besides the fact that it obscured my face from my own view.

I wasn’t exactly in a great place the months immediately following our break up, I thought I was processing it, but clearly I wasn’t. I don’t think the timing of the break up and me figuring my Gender Shit out was a coincidence either. I think the fact that I was so far into the closet played an important role in the emotional responses and lack thereof which exacerbated things between us. I also think that the break up shook my sense of self up enough that I had to look a little closer inside and started to see the cracks in my reality that I’d been patching over for years.

There were definitely other factors too, I had met some real life actual trans people who were publicly out, I’d seen trans people represented in the media, and not as a joke, I’d taken classes in university about feminist and queer theory, which included discussions about gender. All of these things had been the in the backdrop of my life for about 4 years at that point, but it took the break up to really shake me out of pretending to be who I wasn’t.

So back to the facial hair.

Not long after the break up, I had started growing out my beard in preparation fo the Obi Wan Kenobi cosplay I had planned for comicon that year. The beard got decently long, but good god it was uncomfortable, it was so freaking hot to wear once the sun came out.

At comicon, I bought a straight razor, a part of my plan to ditch the facial hair, probably for good, since I’d be heading to the paramedic program in the fall. At various points in my life before this, I’d toyed with the idea of having all of my facial hair removed with laser and/or electrolysis, just to avoid the hassle of shaving for work, since I really couldn’t see a future for myself that didn’t include being a paramedic in some capacity or other. Funny how I never noticed that that was basically the only part of my future I could imagine.

My sister and I went to comicon on of the days that year (I think it was the 12), I shaved my face that night, for the first time with a straight razor, as you might imagine, I made some mistakes and cut my face a few times. I kept my face clean shaven after that point, and about a month later, on June 11, I looked in the mirror, and with what felt like dread, realised I was not a boy. It really was like that cliche, but so accurate, comparison to looking at an optical illusion, and suddenly seeing the other image.

Once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it again, even my 24 years of denial couldn’t help me. Almost immediately, facial hair, body hair, and the shortness of my head hair, became massive points of dysphoria to me. Unfortunately, I decided I needed one more boy haircut (though it was indistinguishable in style from “The Lesbian Haircut”) to get me through the summer.

Because I have light skin and dark hair, laser hair removal should be super effective, though I did 4 treatments professionally and really don’t feel that there was much in the way of results. In January of 2019, a few weeks before I came out to my family, or spoke to my doctor about HRT, I went to see an electrologist, for a consultation and to sort of figure out a plan to deal with my facial hair. At that point, I’d been wearing makeup almost every day to school, and washing it off when I got home, trying to hide my beard shadow, though to be honest, that is still mostly unsuccessful in my eyes, though apparently I pass reasonably well sometimes. I’ve had more than 20 hours of electrolysis done at this point, most of it at full cost, though they did invite me onto their much cheaper program for trans patients this fall after college started up again. Unfortunately, before the world fell apart, my classes, clinical placements, and work schedule did not provide a lot of opportunities to grow facial hair out for the required 2-3 days before treatments would be worth attempting. The work has so far been focused on my upper lip, which remains dark with hair, and on my neck, where a lot of the hair grows the wrong direction and causes a lot of issues for my skin, especially with close shaving. It’s so frustrating not being able to continue getting electrolysis done, at least during the school-work-placement cyclone that was my schedule, I knew it would have a definite end, either at the very least school when I would just be working at the coffee shop, or if I got a job as a paramedic, then I would have only one schedule to follow and no more hassles applying for jobs.

But now? Now I don’t know if I can even graduate on time, or what job prospects will be like, since all of the routine testing a document verification for being a paramedic are damn near impossible to get done, I can’t get a fresh TB test, I had to fax a document request to the government, which I don’t even know if it’ll get processed. And nobody knows when anything will return even remotely to normal.

[spidergwenistrans]

Ok, I’ve seen mention of the Teenager Brain that sets in as part of HRT, but tbh nothing prepared me really for what it’s been. I kinda figured it was gonna be somewhere along the lines of how my first go at it was. I was so wrong.

It kinda first started with my ex over the summer, we spent about 4 days together on/after my cross country road trip, and everything felt normal then, until the morning I was leaving her place to go to camp, which at the time I chalked up to just generally feeling everything a little more than I used to. On my drive back to Ontario though, I started to feel it again, and maybe it was just the beautiful scenery, maybe it was the leaving all my friends from the jamboree, maybe it was the alone time, but I really missed her SO MUCH. I assumed at the time that it was just sort of reliving break up feels, since I figured I kinda left them unprocessed at the time, and now I was dealing with it.

Skip forward to the start of the school year, and most of my lab group from semesters 1 and 2 is back together. At the end of the first week one of the people in my lab group hosted the mixer with the first years in our program. During the party, Sandy, the one I had (let’s be honest, I’m still not over her) a crush on, and I ended up hanging out together/near each other most of the night. This wasn’t even like, a plan or effort on my part, I swear, I kinds just noticed towards the end of the night, that we were practically sitting on top of each other, and our legs were touching and my brain kinda processed it and went, “Oh!” and I was sorta doomed from there. And like, there was nothing especially romantic about what we were doing, or how we were sitting, just comfortable familiarity that comes from being in a patient care lab for 2 semesters already, I would have felt just as comfortable sitting like that with any of the other of my classmates who I’d been in lab with for both semesters already, I doubt I would have noticed the same Feelings though.

As the semester went on, I honestly just kept falling for her harder and harder, she’s one of the smartest and kindest people in my class, and we spent a lot of time together in lab, and then I had the bright idea to offer to pick her up for morning classes most days, which was lovely and amazing and it was so nice to have someone I could talk to about school stuff with in a slightly quieter setting before the day started, even if it was only a short drive from her place to the school.

I kinda promised myself I would either get over it or tell her I had feelings for her by the end of the semester, hoping mostly that I could get over it and move on (that did not work). So after she left the end of semester party (because I am a chicken) I sent her a message and explained I had feelings, but also gave her the out that I would never mention it again if she would prefer. She was very kind and thanked me, but was not interested. I’d like to say I got over it, but like, it still kinda hurts even thinking about it while I type this, sooo. Things haven’t exactly been weird between us, but also we have barely seen any of our class since that party because of the way this semester is mostly practical, I did offer her a ride once to one of our lab classes, but she didn’t see the message until after the class. I did have a birthday party after the first week of the semester, and she was there, and seemed unusually quiet and withdrawn most of the night, and I didn’t really get a chance to talk to her, so it could have been something else? I think my greatest fear around telling someone I have feelings for them is that they don’t return those feelings and then things are weird forever afterwards.

Over the summer I started to kinda maybe have feelings for one of my closest friends, and we had some good chats about how I couldn’t really be sure where the feels were coming from. So much of what we teach boys in this society is that any sort of emotional affection is for immediate family and romantic partners, and no one else. Now, obviously, I’m not a boy, and I didn’t exactly get all the lessons into my head the way society wanted them, but I still got the lessons directed at me (I think I’ll explore that idea in another post and stay on topic here). We’ve always had maybe a slightly more intimate relationship than might be expected, especially in the context of me having presented and believed I was a boy for 24 years, and she fully said she felt like we’d maybe veered towards a less platonic place at some points recently, but we didn’t really address the feelings directly. Later in the summer, I realised it was maybe a little more than a passing crush, and told her as much, which she said she would need time to process, which is totally fair, but then we didn’t touch on it FOR MONTHS.

Sidenote: somewhere in all this mess I realised I was having more than one crush at a time, which was absolutely astounding to me, not to mention that I now had 3 crushes in the span of 3 months, when I’d previously had 3 crushes my whole life before that.

When this friend and I hung out on new years, we cuddled like we usually do, and that was when I found out that the abundance of crush feelings had brought with it a brand new flavour of libido. I’d never before wanted so badly for someone to kiss me. Not even in the 4 years with my ex had I felt this way. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t want it before, or that I didn’t like it, just that now the desire was so much stronger. A day or so later I reminded her of what I’d said in the summer and asked her if she’d processed enough, because I needed to know if we were friends who cuddled or what, and she clarified that she did not feel the same way.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked my ex if we could talk about stuff, since back int he summer when I’d told her I was kinda reliving what felt like every emotion I’d had since the start of puberty, she offered to talk whenever I got to us. Well, at some point I made it to us, and kinda realised no, those weren’t exactly just breakup feels, there were also new crush feels mixed in there. I really tried not to entertain those feels, because I was, and am, pretty sure there’s no chance of us ever getting back together, but the Teenager Brain does as it wants, apparently regardless of my wants.

We had a really good chat about how part of what I was finding hard was that I missed her so much, and she’d been my best friend for 4 years and then disappeared from my life almost entirely. I never had very many close emotional relationships before I came out as trans, and I think a lot of that had to do with bottling stuff up trying to be a boy. It’s not like all of my friendships now are suddenly more deep and emotional, but I don’t feel nearly as panicked by the idea of opening up to someone, and now I have a few, which like, before I usually had none.

I did tell her about the feelings I was having for her and how I’m pretty sure it’s not just like, break up feels or nostalgia for what we had feels, but like fully fresh brand new, I-fell-for-you-on-our-road-trip feels. I’m not sure I communicated that clearly, because it kinda felt like she didn’t exactly get it, but then, I’m not sure I would have before I felt it?

I really wish I could say that I’m over even one of these crushes, but they will not go away, I’ve tried ignoring them, I’ve tried talking about them, neither has helped, and either way I just end up feeling kinda sad. It’s really difficult to harden your heart against someone who’s been nothing but kind and caring to you.

Also, somewhere in the last couple of months, emotions went from what already felt like being turned up to 11, to now being double that? I thought emotions a couple weeks into HRT were stronger, but I still just felt those in my brain really (well and boobs, because I started feeling crying in my boobs then). Now, everything I feel that’s above like 2 in intensity I feel with my whole body, kinda like when a shiver runs up and down your spine, except it’s in my chest and abdomen, and I feel it more noticeably down my sides, but it just goes right down though my torso and then into my toes, good and bad, happy and sad feelings. It’s not that I don’t like this new level of feeling, but lately there seems to be a lot of unhappy feelings to feel and not a lot of happy ones to feel, so it’s a bit overwhelming, especially combined with the ever increasing feeling of needing to be held, which is very much not being fulfilled.