#there is so much trepidation with hrt that they dont really talk about

[lockhartandlych]

tfw you're so used to the body you're in feeling foreign that you might look in the mirror one day and not even recognize your real self looking back

[devsdawn]

further down the road

I feel like any blog or journal I’ve ever had has a significant amount of posts or entries that begin with some sort of reference to the concept that I don’t write in them/post to them nearly as much as I would like to/intended to.

I also feel like I use the construction “I feel like...” a lot.

At this point, I’m 2.5 months into HRT, which consists of solely taking estrogen in pill form, without t-blockers.  The first four to six weeks left me feeling fairly disappointed, as not only was I not feeling as much as I would have hoped or expected... I wasn’t feeling ANYTHING.  After speaking with my therapist, it turns out the the dosage I was started on was EXTREMELY low, even by the most conservative standards, most especially considering I wasn’t utilizing t-blockers.  I was started on 2mg a day, and according to my therapist, a more standard starting dosage for someone in my position he would have estimated to be closer to 4-6mg per day.  Of course I wasn’t feeling anything.  Pissing in the ocean.

I messaged my doctor through the nifty online portal thingy to let her know that although I had an upcoming appointment, I also needed to go in to get my prescription refilled, and I was hoping she could up my dosage based on some personal research I had been doing and the the fact that I wasn’t feeling any sort of difference or effect.  

Fortunately, she obliged, and pushed my appointment out a month or two further down the road, which was ALSO helpful because over the course of this period, I ALSO learned that my insurance is NOT helping me out nearly as much as I was hoping they would, and every time I go in to see this doctor that doesn’t really know what she’s doing and is handling my case like she worried she’s going to break me, it costs me about 500-700 out of pocket. 

I’m still trying to figure out how to handle that, how exactly to work that out.  Maybe next time I go in, I’ll see about what the absolute least I could possibly go in would be, and discuss the fact that I can’t sustain those kind of medical bills, and that I might need to find another solution if there’s no way around it.

At the end of the day, at least at this point in time, I’m happy with my dosage and I don’t have any concerns of any kind, so if she’s happy to “be my doctor,” but that her only duties therein would be refilling my prescription every few months, that we can rock it like that, no problem.  This seemed like a cool solution because she was going to serve as my primary care and kind of just become my all around doctor, but there’s no way I’m gonna go in to see this bitch every time my throat hurts at 500 per visit.

I keep mentally checking in with myself, and of course, those that know what I’m going through keep asking how I’m feeling.

“Great!” I tell them, and I mean it.  But I can’t really talk about specifically why.  It’s a general sense of ease and clarity that I can’t really pin down and, frankly, can’t specifically attribute to the estrogen itself, either.  But I’ve gotten to a place where I don’t think that’s really the point, and I don’t think that really matters.  It’s more about this new space that I’ve created by deciding to embark on this journey, and by following through with my decision.  There’s this new safe space, this new home, that I’ve created for myself that collects all the thoughts and moments that have to do with self-love, self-actualization, self-identification, self-expression... just all the good, warm SELF stuff... that all kind of ends up getting tied to or at least abstractly related to and synonymous with gender and gender exploration in my spirit.

I can say that I feel a new sense of relief.  I can say that I am seeing with a new clarity.  I can say that what used to feel like fighting a battle uphill, or with my hands tied behind my back, or hindered in some way, now feels more levelled out.  I now feel unencumbered by a sloggy haze that used to get in the way of how I was perceiving and navigating life.

Whether this is specifically, physiologically effect of the estrogen, I don’t know, and like I said, truly believe doesn’t matter to me.  What’s important, what I’m thankful for, is the fact that I found this thing that is helping me continue to find and BE the truest version of myself that I can possibly be, and of course, in that, it will all become a cascading, domino effect of this changing that, and so on.

I know that I’m familiar with the feeling of “I’m not getting enough, this isn’t making a difference.”  Now I don’t feel that way.  I feel like I don’t want MORE, either.  I feel like I don’t know where this is going to ultimately lead me, but that uncertainty doesn’t even for a minute make me wanna stop or slow down.

My nipples have starting hurting, and I can feel the buds of breast development starting.  I wouldn’t say it’s noticeable at this point, but it has got me thinking about how I feel about breast development, and again I say, I don’t really know.  I don’t know what to expect, I don’t know where it’s going to lead.... I’d say if it was just me myself and I, and I was only considering my own, internal thoughts and feelings about it, it wouldn’t bother me.  I might even be a little excited about it, I’m not sure.  Any hesitation or trepidation I feel about it is directly tied to the anxiety surrounding what other people are going to think, are people going to notice, how am I going to navigate and explain to people, etc.

But again, any anxiety or hesitation I feel is not enough to make me want to stop.

So here we go.  Further down the road.