edge

I should sleep because tomorrow means travel, needing to be focused, and moreover I must accomplish important work during the way. But I am unable to – even taking an anxiolytic before sleep, I woke and cannot find the peace to sleep more. I must ride it the best I can, like Inanna passing into the Underworld. Putting down what I feel in text at least will help some.

The experience of being a sexual creature in this body is becoming harder and harder to endure. I can’t ignore it fully. Core, I suppose, is that it seems for a variety of reasons that being myself at this time in this body means it is near-impossible for me to receive bodily manifestations of love and lust. This stems from several reasons.

Weight I will only mention in passing. I am still hovering on the upper edge of the normal spectrum of BMI, and while that now means some curves, I still remember lovers telling me their honest feeling that my weight made it less interesting to touch me, that a desire to be with someone more like themselves remained in the background. And of course I cannot hold this against anyone; if we cannot be honest then what does anything matter? I for my part am trying to let myself care about whether my lovers actually attract me, which I have not always, so I should encourage the same in them. There is also that so long as my belly look like this, protruding far beyond my breasts, I feel always a little like a pudgy man more than a woman. I never knew what having a conventionally fit or attractive body was like, and I feel bitter about it. I deserve to know that feeling. So weight loss, at almost any cost, must be one of my priorities, and I can take some solace within the loneliness of the body that I would have to go through that process anyway before I have a body which I can expect many people to want to touch except out of pity. Very well, this is useful.

More importantly, and requiring more effort and attention, are my disgusting genitals. I did have that one single occasions where someone, for whatever reason, licked me, taking care to warm me up, mask my shape, applying pressure where my opening would have been, and who then brought me over; dealt with my fluids so the dysphoria spike did not come, and I could just sink into a relaxation I had not felt in years. I had not thought I could experience this pre-op at all, really, and it brought me hope that perhaps I can. But I am not very interested in this person on almost any level – socially, mentally, physically otherwise, and I should not play with their emotions, and they are not near me.

Perhaps I must accept that as the exception confirming the rule, because nothing like it happened before for many years, nor since. With partners by and large the respective dynamics of each relationship does not have the other having any real drive to touch or please me; each I am sure feels some misplaced guilt or sadness over it but the fact remains, each feels a desire primarily for what I can induce in them, and surely also out of the love I know to be real a wish for me to be happy, but the realities of how complicated I am leaves that wish no space to be expressed within anything resembling spontaneity. I love them each regardless and cherish what we have.

I recall that girl who sought me out to have me top her, met me once and then broke that off based on how my trans-based body uncertainty was a turn-off; I never mentioned it but she said she sensed it. Surely in some sense this shines through to all I am with. My loathing and bitterness over my body spreads like inky taint through empathy and kills feelings of lust towards me. I suppose unempathic individuals might be exceptions, but the reality is, I want only sex and nearness which is fully empathethic, where there truly is love, not with some mechanical stranger. And I know this to be a very tall order.

That girl was cis; I realize increasingly that I cannot relax fully unclothed with any cis person. With cis women I see our anatomies differ and I am in the darkness. With cis men I see them be similar and the same happen. And perhaps with trans people, I trigger their dysphoria by them sensing mine? Post-op girls, for that matter, I also feel tense around – some part of me is so much in awe and envy; I feel their perspective overshadows mine, it is a fearful respect and it makes me almost unable to make moves on them. It’s much like cis girl envy but in its own way more powerful. I deeply hope this will not happen to me in turn when I am post-op, that pre-op trans girls will feel too scared to lick or finger or fuck me. But I push that fear far far away.

Still my body does crave release as all bodies do. Touching myself is not an option, the feeling of loneliness and additionally dysphoria from stimulating myself such as I am becomes too much. I cannot even bring myself to do this to prevent atrophy even if it will help for surgery. I long for somehow someone stimulating me so that I do not have to be the one doing it, as an act of love or devotion or even out of attraction, a wish to make my mind experience another state. There are ways, but all the easiest ones are ones that treat my genitals as though they were male, and then I cannot relax; I have tried this now with two trans girls and it reminds me too much of how my genitals naively are paced. Getting ordinary “blow jobs” and liking them is something men do, my mind tells me in that moment. Though I would never see another girl so.

What remains is essentially just frottage or toys, and partners who are fundamentally passive feel no real drive to use those on me, their interests drift elsewhere, away from my trying to manage freaking out over being reminded of my shape. It simply doesn’t seem like it will happen with anyone, and I don’t have the energy left to try to go out and search for someone with whom it might. I’ve searched for so long for so many things and it never works. Meaningful things don’t happen when you seek to make them happen, within this sphere, they only happen when you do not expect them to.

So barring exceptional cases of people acting unexpectedly, and where still other mismatches remain an issue (as in, looking up casual lovers is no real option since I will just feel lonely in their company since there will be neither connection nor attraction), it seems genital release is basically off the table for me. There remains being pushed far enough from other kinds of stimulation – my nipples are sensitive to pleasure and even more to pain, and pain at least gets me out of my head. To experience pain with someone, I need much less of complex trust and safety and all these other things. It is more realistic to hope for, and I must take renewed steps to ensure I experience it. I need it. I need my body bruised and sore and aching so I can finally relax at least in some way, at least for some little while. This I should try to make happen, though of course it too is complex and not just something I can expect will come to me, or that I can expect to be able to make happen.

Most importantly, I bitterly and urgently and desperately need SRS now. I know it is no magic bullet. It might just take climaxing off the table permanently by loss of nerves, and I can’t expect more people will want to have sex with me post-op than pre-op. But at least I would be able to be open to receive, to ask for, to be naked with in more ways. I would not have to train each new person on what they can and cannot do, would not have to reinterpret and remap all sensations, would actually be able to be naked and just see what happens. Stimulation, while probably less straightforward, would be easier to ask for or move to receive. I need it already. Every day of waiting is a day in a body where asking to be touched is like asking someone to take out the stinking garbage bag – maybe they will, when it is their turn, but their heart will never be in it. Nor mine.

What is now in the way? I do want to apply for insurance coverage. I cannot myself, my psychologist must do it for me. She is in no hurry, no effort between our monthly sessions. She is happy to drag this out, what does she care? That can just keep on and I have no way to push her, no way to force her, because this is still gatekeeping, still something she must sign off on out of paid kindness. Perhaps something will happen next time. But perhaps it will not even work, and the insurer demand the present therapy continue for another year before they consider it. And while the time spent waiting takes place, I still have no date for my surgery, I cannot have one assigned until insurers sign off. So the long waiting list grows longer every day.

I am not sure I can take another year of this. Right now I feel I cannot. I feel like self-harm and crying and darkness. So my only fallback is to schedule it privately. I feel like an idiot for even considering – it costs 28K in total, which I don’t have yet. If I only wait a few years more insurance will cover, perhaps if I am lucky even a few months more. But right now I don’t feel like I have a year, I don’t feel like I can endure this that long.

So what can I do? I have savings of 20K. I can get the Suporn deposit of ca 3K back, and must. I will have to pay 8-10K in home renovation costs this year. Given yearly bonuses, if I save 1K per month, which is my realistic maximum, then I would have 20K free for surgery by end of the year, and another 8K by next August. The first operation is 19K, the second 9K. It would almost work, at least for a date next year, as it is six months between surgeries anyway. But that leaves me entirely without margins or safeties, if there are any unexpected costs or emergencies, or anything ends up more expensive, this plan breaks and I would have to cancel the date.

Perhaps I have to accept that endurance. And accept I must now save as much as I can, and look for the possibility even of loans. And accept I will burn all my savings and backups and margins on this. Because I feel I can’t go on like this much longer. I will do what I must.

kronos

Having a rare dysphoric spike which I am sure will fade with him; hoping noting it down here will help. It’s simple, really – I read a paper which highlighted how for some phenotypes – lipid absorbtion, liver lipid processing gene expression, and some other related processes – there is little effect of circulating hormones directly or cumulatively, but significant effect of dosage of genes that escape X-inactivation. This couples to those other findings where amino acid metabolism seems to follow in part from a rare example of an Y-chromosome carried transcription factor.

It amounts to there being some biology I cannot femininize with HRT or surgery alone. It is true that I share this with CAIS XY women, which is my first consolation; it can’t make me any more different from a cis woman than they are.

But it still makes me feel a sense of taint about my body, wrongness, thinking of how there are gene programme systems I miss out on. It sticks on me like a dark cloud. And this indeed is dysphoria.

Well, I will do my best. And look eventually for creative solutions.

(Though what can I do? Is there any way to meaningfully amplify gene expression levels in a way which matches the dosage effect of two copies? Maybe. We’d need it to be a strict doubling, amplification, something that still followed the tame tissue- and condition-wide on/off pattern. A global transcript duplicator for chosen genes. Not there yet. Hmmm.)

moonwater

I’m beginning to read Sunstone again. It showed up way in the past, and I read what was then there, but back then I did not know what I was (did not know myself as a woman, which meant I could not quite know myself as domme either), and though it caught me, it was not quite so strong.

Now it was recommended to me again – by incidence – and with some additional contexts casting shadows around it that fall elsewhere. But like with “Pattern Recognition”, what I learned since changes the reading much. First, I recognize so much more. From the nerdy trans woman domme – who wears the same kind of virtually unique glasses as I! sight lenses set into reading glass frames so as not to hide any eye makeup! – to the dynamics and nervosity and perhaps most importantly, I recognize now similar wants and preferences and kinks in myself; where I felt alien from the story back then, it feels like it is almost scarily literally describing realities of my life in the present moment.

That is glorious and delightful and I am very happy to find it so. Will see how it progresses. Today is an incredibly hectic day, stressful. Being able to read the comic in-between in transit helps me recharge a little. This will be good. On another note, seems the price for Dr Enki’s services is not as high as I thought, hospital stay costs are within the quote I already had. So while I still will try for the insurance solution, given another year I could still pay privately. This calms and makes me long for the body I will have.

On yet another note, six-seven weeks without shaving gives me about a dozen actual long beard hairs. They bother me but just waiting another two days and I will finally have them electrolyzed off. There won’t be many more sessions now.

posthuman and strange

At a sci-fi convention in Akkad now. I was here last year, my first. Then the main focus was on Battlestar Galactica, almost the whole cast was present. I had never seen the show, but I realized I had to, and that there was a particular character I had to cosplay the year after, that is, right now. This was in many important ways a transition-related need, for a lot of reasons. Back then I was 3-4 months on HRT and not so confident.

This character, Number Six, is important in many trans-related ways which the creators surely did not intend. She is a (humanoid) Cylon, a robot/AI that branches to multiple individuals who in turn reincarnate in new identical bodies if killed. The Cylons were created artificially by humanity but rebelled, and after a war against them, they are truly hated. When it is discovered there are human-looking Cylon infiltrators (some as sleeper agents), those are seen as subhuman, non-persons, artifical, machines, not real persons, who can be tortured and killed without any moral burden.

The specific character is further extremely femme-coded – bombshell blonde in revealing clothing, seductress infiltrator, with most of her significant screentime as a ghost presence in the head of a male character. She is also very competent, very dangerous, instrumental in destroying human main civilization, and she undergoes a lot of trials and sufferings which are also coded feminine – rape, pregnancy, miscarriage, and her objective of being able to birth or nourish a child that will bear the Cylon people forward is core to her plot.

All of this contributed to why I needed to cosplay this character. A very high bar for attempting performative and symbolic femininity, as a challenge and test of my own capacity. But also the duality of actually being a highly competent and dangerous immortal genocidal machine. And the fundamental struggle, so trans-like, of not being seen as a “real woman” but as somehow fake, artificial.

It is also my first serious cosplay, and first real femme cosplay. And I knew for all the above reasons, it was beyond crucial I would be understood as doing cosplay – a woman portraying a woman character – and not crossplay – a man portraying a woman character as a drag thing. The character has already attributes making this especially challenging – signature red cocktail dress, blonde hair, almost no makeup, no signature gimmicks or accessories. Meaning I’d have to use just simple clothing and my own body to portray a different person (who is a tall cis woman) well enough for recognition but without any hint of irony, faking or artificiality.

Going about this then required some challenges. The most important I did anyway already – another year of hair removal and HRT. I planned to have lost more weight to be slimmer, but did not succeed – will try harder now. As for the dress, I had great help from my partner who sewed it for me, got lots of compliments for it.

The hair was a major issue. Going blonde was costly, though at least I am not worried I am hurting the hair so much – I got complex protective formulations which seem to work. Bleaching eyebrows worked well. But the haircut is shorter, always a major dysphoria risk. Moreover, I recognize this year that keeping my hair out instead of in a bun makes the long shape of my face more apparent, accentuates squareness of hairline, squareness and width of jaw; I feel I look significantly more masculine with my hair loose, so that was already a major fear to have to face.

Similarly, for the character’s look I needed to skip during the cosplay (two more days to go now!) wearing glasses, lipstick, heavy eye makup, nail polish or eyebrow pencil; she has a cold “natural look” but all of these things I have come to rely on significantly to feel my face and form look more feminine. Going without them has been really frightening, at least at first. Would I look like some drag-performing man in a dress, performing this ironically as mere play-acting, not as an identity with respect to the gender dimension?

Add to this the most recent advances in my facial hair removal. Since two months I do only electrolysis, no laser, no shaving. I let the few straws there are grow so the electrologist can catch them next time, but that means having some long hairs here and there, most white and soft but some darker. This also scared me – how close must a person get before they can see them and notice? So facial hair, no makeup to speak of, a non-flattering hairstyle and a non-flattering body, when I need to come across as perfectly authentic for a high performative bar. Plus my voice still being quite deep.

That said… it actually went really well, this time. I feel confident. I feel OK. I don’t know how I am read, but I received smiles and compliments, was not challenged, and I sort of see even now under these circumstances a woman in the mirror, if one not so happy for her facial shape. No-one challenged me in changing room to the sauna (did not let them see my bottom parts while in there). I feel uninhibited in moving around, being real, being present. It’s as though I can recognize the flaws and limitations, but feel that I can ignore them and make others ignore them also.

So… it worked. I did it. And I now feel more confident still in “casual” femme presentation. I am who I am regardless, and I am beginning to expect to be read as a woman without having to jump through quite so many hoops. Maybe I expect too much still, but the fact I expect it is valuable and changes my self. And this marks also how my body has changed. It really has.

raccoon

This conference, we had a dinner by the end and I was drunk enough to feel uninhibited and came out as trans to several people on separate occasions. One asked (as my therapist once did) if I was female-to-male. And another two said they had not guessed.

These people have hung out with me all day and heard me give a lecture.

Are they just kind? Or is it actually possible that, weird and impossible as though it seems, I am able to pass for a cis woman now to people not actively looking for someone to clock?

This is weird! Do I dare believe it? Can it be possible, weird as it sounds, that I have some ability now to pass as cis?

This is weird!!!

shard haddock

Today is a day of interesting vulnerability. I feel baseline anxiety levels high in that way where I worry unnecessarily about arbitrary things, where everything feels vast and difficult and scary. It’s OK, I know to navigate it. It’s been blogged about before too. I have these days rarely.

I can see three main issues influencing. Three nights with less than six hours of sleep. Near-overwhelmingly much to do in a short time. And going into off-cycle for progesterone since Monday. It has happened in the past I had states like this when going off a high-P cycle.

Four issues but who knows cause and effect, some photo angles combining with my new shorter haircut to make me dysphoric.

Neither blood sugar, caffeine or alcohol (they gave me prosecco at the hair salon) has helped.

Never mind why. It’s here and I will navigate it.

I drink coffee, do my tasks and listen to the Turrican soundtrack.

lead-to-chrome

The day after my surgery consult I am aware that I still don’t have a definite date set. The procedure will be, they send me a cost model, then I either pay them or present them documentation saying my health insurance will. Thereafter I get a date. And after that I may be offered earlier dates if there are cancellations.

This means the first step is to ensure they actually send me that document (if they have not by early next week, I remind them). And then to ensure the solution is ready. I’ll try both paths; continue budgeting as planned, but also request from my health insurance what they require, and try to get my quirky therapist to write out the documentation those in turn require. She seems not optimistic about it but I have to try. And if she is not helpful enough, then I contact my old therapist once she is back from maternity leave and check if she can do it instead.

Then applying (needing to do so in Sumerian, so will need help, waiting waiting waiting, maybe have it rejected). If rejected it either means I need to continue current therapy long enough for it to count (and I don’t like being dependent on this therapist, really), or go back to the private option. Accounting for hospital stay costs, surgery cost estimates, home repairs, that is a semi-guaranteed possibility by end of next year, though may be possible earlier in different setups.

I’ll do all these things and it will work out. That’s fine. The interesting observation of my mindstate is how the uncertainty of not having a date creeps me the fuck out. It’s a dysphoria manifestation, makes me restless, a sense of a threat somewhere that I must be vigilant towards, an obsessive vigilance and defense need. Just like my life was pre-transition. This is very very useful to see.

The uncertainty itself, the projected expectation that I will have to spend time waiting without knowing when the wait will be over, that is scary. And highlights how my genital dysphoria is channeled. I can even receive some stimulation these days (not too far back, someone was able to make me come by licking me, after giving me enough attention that I didn’t care what anyone touched or saw, just about what I received – first time in a long while I climaxed, and first time in a long time I felt secure enough afterwards to just sink into fuzzy wordless sleepy happiness, fluids probably went in their mouth so did not cause me further dysphoria – they said I tasted like a cis girl squirting, which I was glad to hear – ah, NSFW interjection in parenthesis aside…).

But my sense of peace is predicated on knowing that I’ll soon be changed, knowing that this state is temporary, set to be resolved. Much like my old dysphoria over social gender relieved a little by convincing myself the world would soon change, must change. The mere fact of my anatomy is what bothers me, is intolerable, and until it has been corrected, the best I can do is to ensure I feel as secure as possible on the timeline of that correction.

That is also what had me before; when I freaked out over the Suporn scheduling system. When I delayed all other things for several days of frantic programming just to write a sniper bot to make the scheduling for me (see: https://lost-in-transition.music.blog/2019/03/25/ninshubur-and-the-hidden-moon/ ; https://lost-in-transition.music.blog/2019/03/28/the-battle-belongs-to-the-strong/ ; https://lost-in-transition.music.blog/2019/03/28/the-battle-belongs-to-the-strong/ for that saga). I couldn’t focus on anything else until I knew I did all I could. It’s similar now. A deep restless anxiety. And I even worry it will reduce my efficiency, keep me from working well.

What soothes me, beyond doing all I can when I can? Actually, walking through the streets of morning Zurich (pretty ugly city really), I started up synthwave I’d been sent, and somehow its minimalism (much more minimal, more elevator muzak like, than my usual empowerment music) seems to be particularly effective on background anxiety. Is this its appeal? That is, where more energetic-upbeat or dramatic material helps one push through apathy, this can help one (me) endure some baseline low-level discomfort that I currently cannot otherwise resolve. It’s inobtrusive enough to let my thoughts go anywhere else, for doing anything else, at the same time, but keeps the scared hypervigilant dysphoric beast somewhat focused. I am thankful for it.

pneuma relish

I went to the Mesopotamian clinic and spoke of sacred mé with Dr Enki. His English was middling, but we did spend more than an hour, he wanted very much to explain the history of his method, and was interested in my microbiome research perspective. Of course it was a sales pitch, but together with what I already know, I really do think this is the surgery I should have, for a few reasons.

First, he confirmed what I expected, namely that Thai-style scrotal graft meshworks involve a need to grow new epithelium. This matches very well with the granulation tissues, scar ring contraction, and so forth. The Mesopotamian combined method instead uses urethral, penile and full-thickness scrotal skin to reduce the extent to which the graft/flap combination is stretched. I can very well see this in line with avoiding the hard part of Thai recovery.

Second, dilators are flexible, with a soft tiny placeholder there in between them. I can likewise see how this makes for easier dilations.

Third, the use of urethral tissue really is interesting – it avoids a scar just around the urethral opening when done this way, and may even provide lubrication.

Fourth, he actually showed me statistics of complications and clarified they even work with a Babylon gynaecologist in case they happen.

So this is, in principle, the surgery I should have. To schedule a date they need either proof of insurance coverage or a payment plan. Costs may exceed what I thought, because it’s probably another 10K for the hospital stay itself. So the battle rages on. They’ll send me details of this, and I will try my damnedest to actually get insurance to cover it; otherwise that’s another major cost factor. Which I can deal with probably over the course of the waiting period, if I forgo rebuilding an emergency buffer.

So going now seriously to aim for insurance coverage. And probably looking at a date next fall or so. Nurturing a hope that by that time, circumstances may be right for loved ones to come stay with me and assist me. I believe it will be so.

This does break my fervent desire for SRS recovery done by age 40. But… getting it done safely and well, and without too difficult recovery, may really be more important. I feel I can be (a) patient here.

fresh hells

Some nasty surprises re: the offer the company gives me for home refurbishment. If they charge that much, they break my time frame for when I can have SRS with Mesopotamia, assuming I still have to pay out of pocket.

But I also recognize more and more how there seems to be way too many Suporn girls needing hours and hours of dilation six months or more in. That is not an option. I must go to Mesopotamia. Next week I have a consultation with them.

So the as-yet uncertainty on the financing has me feeling very visceral terror again. I must work out a solution. Most elegant would be if I can somehow get my health insurance to pay for it. Not having to pay 30K out of pocket would be useful. It may still mean it takes longer and at this point I really. Don’t. Want. To. Wait.

I hate these misshapen parts and want them gone, need to know they will be as soon as possible. I just have to be smart about it.

I’ll find a solution. It’s what I do.

return parkognition

A while ago the concept of Russia as modern-day cyberpunk was noted to me and since then I’ve craved to reread that literary literal description of it as such, “Pattern Recognition” by William Gibson. I did so now, just started. Last and only time I read it before was in the mid-2000s. Still it stayed with me in ways I am only now openly recognizing.

Gibson’s style is per definition pretentious as ass-all fuck, to be vulgar, and that neither helps nor harms I think. I actively (consciously) visualize all that is described. And I recognize what it is and why it affected me. The novel paints the contemporary world as interesting and complex and adventurous (cyberpunk tone for mundane tech), and the characters live lives I found extremely cool, exploring vast ranges of every level of human society, touching all strata. More to the point it is POV of a very calm, very nerdy woman entirely free from all aggression, apologetically being herself. It is the same as in “Howl’s Moving Castle” – I found descriptions of a female subjectivity in both heroines that I could fully embody while reading.

And reading it back then felt like such a guilty pleasure, wanting to be real, subjective, alive, feeling, enough in myself even while hurt and empty and sad, like these girls. Being a girl. The wish felt illegitimate, why would I get to care about that, wasn’t that fetishizing? Why would it matter? The characters could easily be genderswapped too without changing the story much, their femininity is not stereotypical, they are clearly women and that does not constrict so much who they otherwise are. Why would this be so extremely peaceful and pleasant for me to immerse in? Well, I know now. Other trans girls did crossdressing, I read books with female POVs I could identify with and never forgot them.

Continuing the read will be interesting – as will the two sequels I never read nor even knew were there. Because now my life has changed, my world has changed. By effort, and planning, and fifteen years and expatriation and transition and a quest for the most pretentious reality I could find, my everyday life has grown closer to what is there, even as the books themselves aged. It feels in a way like coming full circle, coming home, realizing how much I wanted and how much of what I wanted I have now done, and how much more I plan to do. There’s no disappointment so far, only pleasure.