#terrible at taking selfies

[heavenly-angell]

[anderperries]

going to be at tit tonight and i’m nervous and excited ahh!! say hi if you see me!! i’ve got a yellow “we’re all lesbian” shirt and a jean skirt on. wavy red hair and maybe flower cat ears on :D

(i’m sitting center balcony2)

[menlove]

this jacket is everything to me now

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

you can always tell who on tumblr is playing out their mean bully fantasy lmao i know youre not acting tough online when you look like this

[stellaluna33]

Good afternoon, lovelies!

[you-expect-too-much]

I need this dress in every colour 😩

[dayurno]

hiii tumblr user dayurno <3what do you think would be kandreil social media usage post-canon? i love thinking about 35 year old neil posting throwback pictures of him, andrew and kevin at age 19...

i also have this idea of neil posting a headline about him being the fastest striker in the pro league (whatever idk sports terms LOL) with a caption like 'this goes out to kevin day, who one time told me i wouldn't always be able to rely on being the fastest player on the court. my entire career has been a way of proving you wrong' (said very lovingly of course <3) and kevin just very earnestly replies. i love you neil, you have been a pleasure to teach

or like it has been a pleasure to teach you everything you know. eheheh

idk very out of character for them but i think about it a lottt. what do you think :)

OH THIS IS CUTE OK. i think kevin's social media usage is and will always be strictly professional, to me he'd be chronically offline and only actually keep up with social media if it was about exy. he really really really doesn't get the whole gist......... kevin is those people that say "social media? id rather go hiking haha" but like unironically and genuinely

on another hand i think neil would like it! he knows enough about social media (almost nothing) that he thinks its all about posting pictures he doesnt want to lose, so hed like it......... :3 neil has the scrapbooker's temperament after all so i think hed appreciate having a place to store all these memories knowing theyd never disappear. i do think his account would be locked though

andrew doesn't do social media in the traditional sense but i really believe that he'd be easily caught in the tiktok/instagram reels/whatever dopamine loop LMFAO andrew likes being distracted and not thinking so he'd enjoy his 5hrs a day tiktok scrolling while smoking time. kevin disapproves of this on a level yet unknown

re: kevin telling neil he was a pleasure to mentor ............ :') I REALLY BELIEVE HE THINKS THAT...!!! kevin strikes me as the kind of person who would drop unbelievably earnest comments online and not notice the magnitude of what hes saying. just like he does it in real life

[somegrumpynerd]

The gang learns to use snapchat

[pisshandkerchief]

how I look with he/him pronouns in bio

[sundancefemme]

FINALLY got my hair to cooperate. you think im sooooo cute & ur going to tell me so at length 🔫🔫

[thefabelmans2022]

finally made my pilgrimage to the jfk memorial and i wanted to take pictures but there's a group of people just hanging out like right there......

[stillhere-erehllits]

[iwait4youalexg]

Saw some candid photos of myself you know what that means….that’s right renewed desire to get a n*se j*b

[autopsytableromance]

My sister is obsessed with taking terrible pictures of me. Look at this one she took and then immediately made my profile picture

[mischievouslittlecreature]

You guys I got a peaky hat!!!

[gor3sigil]

Before starting T, when I socially transitionned, I was surrounded by radical feminists who saw masculinity as gross and inherently evil, something to avoid, something to make fun of, something to destroy. The other transmascs in my friend group, sometimes, told me that they didn’t knew if they really were non-binary or if they just were scared shitless of saying “I am a man”. Because they saw this as a betrayal to their younger self who had been SAd and abused.

I saw many of my masc friends and trans men around me hate themselves, not outing themselves as men because it would imply so so much, it was like opening the Pandora Box. Even when we were just together, talking about our masculinity was always coated with bits like “I know we’re the privileged ones but…”, “I don’t want to sound like I have it bad but…”, “Women obviously have it worse, but last time…” and we were talking about terrible traumas we experienced while taking all the precautions in the world in the case the walls were a crowd of people in disguise waiting to get us if we didn’t downplay the violence we faced, or like crying and being upset and being traumatized and afraid and scared and to say it out loud would make us throw up the needles we were forced to swallow every second of every day living in our skin.

Most of us weren’t on T yet, some of us were catcalled every day and harassed in the streets or in abusive relationships nobody seemed to care to help them get out of because they were “strong enough” to do it by themselves.

I was using the gender swap face app and cried for ours when I saw my father looking back at me through the screen. The idea of transforming, of shedding into a body that would deprive me of love, tenderness, and safety, was absolutely terrifying. I knew I couldn’t stay in this body any longer because it wasn’t mine, but I also knew that if I was going to look like my dad, my brother, my abusers, it would be so much worse.

5 years later and I’m almost 2 years on T, and almost 2 months post top surgery.

I ditched my previous group of friends. I was bullied out of my local trans community. But let me tell you how free I am.

I was scared that T would break my singing voice: it made it sound more alive than ever.

I was scared that T would make me less attractive: it made me find myself hot for the first time in my life.

I was scared that T would make me gain weight: it did. But the weight I put on is not the weight I used to put on by binging and eating my body until I forgot that it even existed. It’s the weight of my body belonging to me, little by little. The wolf hunger for life.

I won’t tell you the same story I see everywhere, the one that goes “I started going to the gym 8 times a week, I put on some muscles, I started a diet and now I look like an action film actor”, in fact if you took pictures of me from 5 years ago vs now I’d just have more acne, I’d have longer hair and still look like I don’t know what to do with myself when I take selfies.

But the sparkle in my eyes, my smile, tell the whole story way better than this long ass stream of words could ever.

I want to say some things that I wish someone told me before starting medically transitionning.

It’s okay to take your time. It’s your body, it’s your journey, if you don’t feel comfortable taking full doses and want to go slow, the only voice you need to listen to is your own. Do what feels right.

If you feel overwhelmed, it’s okay to take a break, it’s okay to ask for support.

Trans people are holy. Everyone is. You didn’t lose your angel wings when you came out because you want to be masculine. You are not excluded from the joy of existence, from being proud of yourself, from being sad, from being scared, from being angry. The emotions and feelings you allowed yourself to feel while processing what you experienced when you grew up as a girl and was seen as a woman are still as valid as before. Nobody can take that from you. If someone tries to, don’t let them.

It’s perfectly normal to grieve some things you were and had before you started to transition, like your high soprano voice or even your chest. Hatching is painful. You can find comfort in things that don’t feel right, so making the decision to change can be incredibly scary and weird and you deserve to be heard and supported through this. Wanting top surgery doesn’t make the surgery less intense, less terrifying, less painful to recover from. When it becomes too much you have the right to take a break and take some deep breaths before going on.

You don’t have to have a radical, 180° change for your transition to be acceptable or valid or worthy of praise. Look at how far you’ve come already. It doesn’t have to show, you’re not made to be a spectacle, you’re human and it is your journey.

Oh, and last thing, you know when some people say “Oh this trans person has to grow out of the cringy phase where you think that you can write essays about being trans or transitionning or just their experience because it’s weird” ? If you ever hear this or see this online, remember all the people whose writing you read and, even if they were not professional writers, helped you more than any theorists did ? If you want to write, do it. It won’t be a waste. It can help people. Or it won’t, and even then, if it helped you, that’s enough.

Love every of my trans siblings, take care of yourselves. You deserve the world.