#transitionblogging

[mothdogs]

GUESS WHO’S GETTING TOP SURGERY NEXT WEEK!!!!!!

[scramblednoodle]

Day 50 - Is this the feeling they talk about?

One of the recurring things you hear about in transition stories is a high frequency of positive mood changes.  You feel better, you feel more confident, all as you come to accept who you are, and you start to make that physical change.

There’s a photo from a card my Mom-in-law made on Vermin(Jay) and My dresser.  It’s from last XMas.  I’m beefy, I’m bearded.  It’s me, but it’s not me.  It’s an old me.  The me in the mirror isn’t that person anymore.  And I’m actually pretty fine with that.  I’m more than fine, let’s be honest.  I like what I see.  There’s a certain amount of androgyny, especially when compared to my previous appearance.  I’ve got longer hair, I’m 50 lbs lighter, and it’s starting to show in the face.

I like it.

So right now, there are two-fold changes:  the transition to my correct gender, and a more reasonable weight.

I like it, but what’s more, I feel like I like it.  Like, I legitimately like who I’m seeing.  I’m still uncertain, but there’s this building sense of ‘right’.  And my moods and desires are starting to change in some ways.

I have, for the past 10 years or so of my mental health journey, constantly worried about whether or not my good moods were just a phase, whether I was just manic, and whether or not tomorrow or the next hour or the next minute would be the moment when my mood swung back to a negative space.

In a sense, through constant analysis and worry, I was not ALLOWING myself to indulge in true joy.  I still have issues allowing myself to feel this stuff without reservation.

So now we couple that realization with my gender alignment.  I like who I see.  I allow myself to feel joy.

It turns out I REALLY fucking love dancing.

Let’s use this as an analogue to a lot of things in my life.  I’ll start by saying that I care too much what other people think, to the point that I let it dictate not only what I do, but how I enjoy it.  I measure the way I talk, the way I move, the way I act, all to appease some projected expectation about what other people expect from me.  I’m like an actor, living within the boundaries of a role that I made up in my head.  I have always enjoyed dancing.  I love dancing at Burning Man.  I love dancing at company social functions.  I love dancing at furry conventions.  And now I love dancing in VR.

Up to these past two weekends, the way I danced was...subdued.  It was hard to get out there and do anything other than sway.  I’d move and shake and do stuff in rhythm, and I figured I wasn’t too bad.  But I never let myself cut loose.  Why?  I don’t know any dance moves.  I don’t know any of these fancy things that the professionals do.  And I’m REALLY self-conscious about my fat ass.  I may feel like my moves are decent, but I have this absurd certainty that I look like a beached whale flopping on a beach with its last breath.  So while I LOVE dance music of all sorts, and I FEEL the music like it’s my own blood, I never let it really take me.

These are restrictions I have placed on myself.

Two weeks ago, there was a dance event in VRChat, and for the first time, I moved like I meant it.  I just let go.  I felt more free than I had in a while.

Now, part of this was chemical:  I was coming off of a pretty bad case of Spiro brain fog, the constant cloudy confusion of a Testosterone blocker that I’d been living with for over a month, and which just seemed to get worse.  My doc cut the dose in half, and aside from a brief period of SUPER ADD every morning, I’m doing MUCH better.

So this dance, I’m coming out of this bad place, mentally and physically, and there’s music and lights and MOTION.  I was so jazzed about starting to recover from this haze that I just let myself go.  I just went with it.  The sounds and the sensation and the shared, communal energy just took me.

Look, I thrive off of energy.  Music, people, sound, emotion, words, colors, art, environment, it’s all energy.  I eat it up.  It feels like a sort of hippie thing to say, and you know, that’s fine.  Hippies have it right, IMO.  Spread this love, because in the end, that’s all we are, energy and star stuff.

I didn’t dance TOO much that weekend.  A few hours maybe.

Turns out there was another dance that got planned LAST weekend.  HexFurryFest.

Oh boy.

I danced about 4ish hours on Friday, 4ish hours on Saturday, and a probably almost 7 hours on Sunday.  I just didn’t stop.  By YUR.fit’s account, on Sunday alone I burned over 4000 calories.  FOUR THOUSAND.

I let go of what everyone was thinking, I lived in that moment, I let the music take me, and IT FELT FUCKING GREAT.

I’m riding that high.  I’ve “discovered” Twitch and this fantastic community of live music and musicians and experience creators.  The energy is outrageous.  The love is magical.  It’s like going to a jazz club, where when you like that shit YOU LET THEM KNOW.  The feedback loop is just fucking POWERFUL beyond belief.

I feel it.

What’s more, I feel empowered as a result of all of this.

It’s not that I don’t CARE what people think of me, or how I move, or what I do, or how I act.  There are still boundaries and limits and reasonable reactions and actions.  But I ACCEPT that you might feel "some way” about me and what I’m doing, and I move on, because this isn’t about you.  It’s about me and what I am allowing myself to feel, and how I’m stifling myself and my interactions, and ultimately letting everyone else dictate not just ME, but what makes me happy.

This is true of my music.

This is true of my art.

This is true of the way I speak and present myself.

This is part of my social anxiety.

This is part of my depression.

This is part of who I was.

In some way this feels like one of those “I MADE A REALIZATION, LET’S NOT WORRY ABOUT IT ANYMORE” things, where you have a self-realization and then move on because the endorphins fired off and you feel great for a little while.

I don’t think that’s happening here.

Look, this year has been shit for a lot of people.  There’s a lot of folks down and out, and there’s a lot of folks in some pretty dark places.

I’ve had an amazing year.  I am very sorry, and I am very cognizant of my privilege, and I thank the stars and the soul of the universe for my good fortune.  I have made more friends than at any Furry convention, I have had as much positive social interaction in the past year as I have in the entirety of my adult life, and I do not exaggerate that.  

This year has been full of change and discovery, of myself, and of the world around me.

And if this isn’t “That Feeling” that transitioning folks talk about, then I don’t know what is.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS MOTHERFUCKERS

There’s more music this weekend in VRChat.  I’m gonna go dance.  Come join me.

[felix-valentine]

HRT

Started HRT on Thursday. SubQ shots and surprisingly not as painful as I thought it would be. Though damn did that tiny shot bleed a surprising amount after. I’m doing the shots myself so thank goodness it doesn’t hurt much because needles = scary.

I keep looking for changes though I know there won’t be any yet.

[andydoesstuff]

New blog

I have a blog for just my transition in case any of you want to keep up with my transition and not the random things I reblog

@transitionblogs 

[dritter-detektiv]

yo yo yo since its trans day of visibility and i gained a ton of new followers, if youre interested in my transition my transitionblog is @sick--boy (i dont post much though, just updates and pictures and stuff) 

[dadhater420archive-blog]

wow all these hormones arent doing anything afaik , damn. 

[mothdogs]

Got approved for top surgery today 🥳🥳

[mothdogs]

I have a meeting with my therapist in two weeks to get approved for top surgery!!!! 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳

[mothdogs]

Ooghhfhf getting called “ma’am” by the nurse who literally phoned me to talk about my testosterone prescription

[mothdogs]

The street address of the doctor's office I'm going to for my top surgery consult tomorrow starts with "8008" 😂

[mothdogs]

When your (very specifically for transgender healthcare) nurse calls to schedule a meeting with a plastic surgeon to chop off your boobs and calls you ma’am four times during the conversation :)

[mothdogs]

.

I was chatting with my manager earlier about coming out to my parents as nonbinary (in the larger context of telling my parents that my partner and I are gonna be getting engaged later this year) and it's really made me a little bitter that I'm not... a trans man. Like at least a binary transition from one "thing" (their daughter) to another "thing" (a trans man), I think, my parents could understand, even if they wouldn't like it or approve of it. But how can I expect these two people, who I barely talk to, to understand the incredibly unique experience (and pain) of not wanting to exist as any one thing, of wanting truly to exist as nothing (since the most genuine expression of my personal identity is agender). In a society where nothing is not in the slightest way an option. How can I tell them that I'm taking testosterone, not to feel like a man, but to feel less like a woman, and expect them to understand? Being nonbinary in a world that is literally structured around and filled with and run by the very concept of a binary is exhausting to exist in, much less to then explain all of this to two people who I already have very complicated feelings towards.

Really, things would be so much easier (for me personally, not saying this is a universal feeling) if I could just be fucking cis or a fucking binary trans person.

[mothdogs]

Feel free to ignore. I have been on the fence about considering starting T. I'm not even at the considering stage, I'm still at the considering to consider stage. The reason for this is that I'm not a "full male." I would only want some masculinizing effects. (On the verge of TMI, I'm particularly interested in bottom growth, but don't necessarily want all the other masculinizing effects, or at least I'm not SURE I want any others, but i am positive I want bottom growth.) Considering you're nonbinary, I was wondering how HRT has been treating you as a nonbinary person. I'm asking a few other people as well who are not binary, as I'm still researching if this is what I want to do moving forward in terms and if so, how high a dose, which form of application, whether I can focus on bottom growth only or not, how a nonbinary person feels with masculinizing while not being male, etc. I do want to retain some feminity which may not be your goal, but your insight would still be useful as a nonbinary person on T, if you feel comfortable sharing.

Hi anon! I can tell you a few things. I started out on testosterone in November of last year taking a tiny tiny dose (.15ml injected weekly) along with a daily dose of finasteride, which mainly blocks some of the hair growth and loss effects of testosterone. In March I increased my weekly dose to .4ml and have seen a gradual increase in effects.

The main reason I personally wanted to go on T was for a lower voice and body fat displacement/increased muscle mass. I was/am indifferent about bottom growth, although it’s definitely… a thing. That is happening. Currently. My voice is also getting deeper, thank god, finally.

I’m not sure how much the finasteride is blocking the effects of my dose—I haven’t started growing facial hair, although my head-hair has gotten slightly thinner in general and my body hair has gotten slightly thicker. (P sure that’s thanks to my dad’s genetics—his side of the family is fair-haired.)

Long answer short, you can’t really pick and choose the effects, although a low dose paired with finasteride might be a good place to start if you don’t want to aim to be Fully Male from the jump. If you start T you will almost certainly get bottom growth, but you’re gonna get the other stuff too. Definitely talk to a doctor and consider bringing up finasteride in the conversation. Also, insert “I am not a medical professional” disclaimer here but there may be differences in your absorption levels and thus your rate of changes with different methods (injection vs gels)—I don’t care about needles so I went with injections and it hasn’t been bad at all.

If you do decide to go for it, there’s nothing wrong with starting with a small dose. Go slow, give it half a year to a year, and then see if you wanna increase. Good luck! You can always message me off anon too but I’ve kind of covered a lot of what I’ve experienced so far here.

[mothdogs]

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[mothdogs]

Dramatic reenactment of me coming to this understanding last night

Look. Testosterone and pretty video game men and my partner experimenting with gender fluidity has made me uhhhhh. Realize that I might not be a lesbian any more

[dadhater420archive-blog]

When is my body going to catch the fuck up w my face like I have such a nie face and a dumpy looking body like wtfrick, who decided this?