move

Second time of jogging. Not much makeup, feeling relatively undysphoric anyway, sports bra may help a lot as it means I am reminded of my growing rightness of body even if others cannot see it. Moving unhindered feels great, like my self moves out into the extremities. I felt alive. Wanting more of this.

A lot of what has improved could perhaps be understood as various factors shifting to let me be present in the moment much more than I could before. Advice to stay in the moment never worked in my assigned sex/gender. As my actual one, it does.

sodality chlorides

So beating the dead horse a little more still (tenderize!), just short of the six month mark of HRT I certainly weep easier. Today from dysphoria, frustration, love, being moved, and, a first since childhood, from saying goodbye to a loved one for at least a month.

Of course it is hard to tease apart what is deprogramming toxic masculinity and what is neurological. My belief firmly remains it is both; that deprogramming goes easier with an appropriate endocrine state. I also could recognize something; it is here not necessarily that the emotion was not there, but I have an easier time now feeling it in my body – face scrunching up, voice breaking, eyes tearing up, and also perhaps laughing and shaking in other cases. The body creates a feedback, it makes me notice the emotion more clearly and persistently.

Thus perhaps I adapt my body to be a proper canvas for my emotions, so I can more easily see them. Interesting, and with implications for minds without such bodies.

Sitting in airport waiting until I can check in. Trying to make a dent in the mountain of neglected research tasks. Feeling like the conduit for a storm, and feeling somewhat content with that. Now if you’ll excuse me, need to make sure my makeup is not totally ruined by my silent weeping. Much love!

symbol of torment

Trans alignment not managed by transition is sometimes lethal. We go insane and take our lives, for example. I never will. But right now I understand those who do very well, and my current woes are even very minor, compared to what others have to go through.

My home country would formally let me change my legal sex with little trouble, I am quite sure – I fulfil medical criteria according to established international standards. They changed the rules a few years back to be more inclusive. From previously requiring citizenship for legal sex change, now residency is. This is a step up for everyone except for expats like myself. Because it means that while my application likely would be approved, I am not allowed to file it. So my passport has a little “M” in it, much like a malign melanoma forms a little dot on the skin of some other unlucky person.

Being the squares that they are, this means my country of residency – banks, public departments etc. – often claim they must register me as a man, meaning they will use male honorifics in communication etc., and moreover, means that my interacting them feels like a tacit endorsement of the misgendering.

How does that feel? Signing feels like taking on shackles, and the skin and flesh rots to the bone where they touch. Seeing the wrong label feels like that is about another person, like something I cannot bear to look at directly, like a wrongness or hole in the world. Discovering again in a new context (today, residency registration), that yields a clear view of immediate dysphoria; it feels like shock and sadness. I told them, across the language barrier, to do what they must when registering my address, needed it done for taxes to work. Left and remain with the pain hiding behind my eyes. Tears that must come out. I can only delay it, though I suppose if I delay it enough it dissolves into some grating salt against my bones and the inner surfaces of my empty skull.

This fucking hurts so much. Before I could ignore, but I have gotten used to feeling like a real person, so the difference is important. I must resolve this. Wikipedia says [citations needed] that my host country has prior court cases signifying my identity should be enough for documents and addressing, but without being able to point to them, this does not help me. There is no legal way for me to file the application in my home country, because they also do not want me to fake being resident there. Discussions ongoing imply the law may change, but who knows if this will remove the residency requirement, as that was always only a spandrel? A minor detail they did not care if it would expect someone. I am fringe of fringe demographic, as an expat trans person. My experience was never real to the lawmakers. Perhaps I will be lucky as they change it, perhaps not.

I could file in my host country if I become stateless but that does not seem like a wise idea. At this rate, I may end up having had bottom surgery before being legally addressed correctly. I never give up. I will continue to do what I do, I will realize my ambitions in this and all other fields. My agency is boundless and I will use it. I will make the most of this day, whether I spend some of it crying or not. Others have it much worse. I want to bite holes in my skin, walk carelessly through traffic, punch my hands through glass surfaces. I will not do those things. I will move forward. It fucking hurts. I will move forward.

loss

Another thing. Freaked out into anger and panicky anxiety when someone shot a water gun into my face during the parade. They thought they were being helpful and did so to everyone. My companions helped me get back into function. To me it is the same as what I blogged about here: https://lost-in-transition.tumblr.com/post/164705382944/what-messy-moments-feel-like

That is, I so rely on makeup or grooming to reduce dysphoria that I am deeply shaken from fearing its violation. I find this interesting as it points to how much dysphoria I actually feel, but keep away through coping strategies like these.

vortices

Extremely intensive days. I have loved ones near and feel bonds deepen even further. I know myself loved and am deeply safe and happy therein.

Emotional turbulence in some form really is a thing. It seems very clear that HRT mid-term like this makes me cry easier. I love that it does. I now cry from safety, from being moved, from empathy. I can stop it but don’t usually want to. I cry tears without knowing why or knowing why I am sad, and I can’t but suspect that it is related to wherever my missing emotions actually went (assuming they really do exist, and that my relatively neutral state is not human default). Excited.

Beyond support and safety – marching for LGBTQ++ pride was great, though hot and I am glad we did not do the entire route – I also note people looking, and at one point we were directly and clearly harassed by a fervent man speaking transphobic slurs in Russian. I was very glad to have my partner with me. These and other moments make me sometimes feel a dark and somber fear that I always will be read as male, no matter what my efforts. I suppose this highlights that I want to be able to “pass“ even if I downplay the value of that because the concept has some toxicity.

How much will I have to change to get there? How much can a few more years of HRT do? On patches now. How much more can dieting and posture training and voice training do? In the worst case, how much could facial surgeries do? I fear there are angles from which I look extremely masculine, and ways in which my frame does, especially from back. I will do my best, and I will not lose track of all else that matters more all the same. I am loved and I am blessed. Still these things suck. I knew what I was getting into, though, I never assumed I would become able to blend. But the fact of so much going so well so far has made me hope. I will carry two opposing factors in my mind at once and proceed as I must.

Be strong and be kind.

lacuna maris

I’ve really been crying a lot lately, for happiness, for stress, fear, sadness and without knowing why. Thinking thus I can likely conclude emotional volatility increasing, and loving it.

Also, I probably should find a short-form description of my gender model (e.g. “gender is the reflection of sex characteristic continua in the space of human perception, emotion and action, involving opt-in/opt-out clauses in modern contexts“) to make it clearer to communicate.

nocebo

I ran a tiny, anecdatal and flawed double blinded test of my estradiol HRT. I feel so much better on it that I wanted to see if I could demonstrate it as a direct effect somehow. In this case I tested 8 time points of consecutive 12h periods, for each taking either a placebo (biotin pill) or estradiol. Blinding was done by choosing a placebo of similar shape, place random numbers of each in individual envelopes, writing inside what each was, and writing a random number sequence on outside of envelope, taking them in turn. Then I would take the pills without looking at them.

Readout was whether I could guess from my mood whether I received placebo or estradiol, as checked upon final unblinding.

First night: Received placebo. Nonetheless remained calm.

First morning: Received estradiol. Remained calm.

Second night: Received placebo. Was restless and slept poorly, did not restore from day.

Second morning: Received estradiol, became calm, restored from night.

Third night: Received estradiol. Confounded by first feeling happy while drinking, then surprise misgendering here: https://lost-in-transition.tumblr.com/post/175757193179/lacrimosa . I believe I would
have been calm otherwise, but due to this, believed wrongly it was placebo.

Third morning: Received placebo. Stayed restless, also due to sleep deprivation.

Fourth night: Received placebo. Believed it was estradiol, and felt calm.

Fourth morning: Received estradiol. Remained calm.

In summary thus, guessed 5/8 correctly which is a minor success, but data really is too sparse. Out of morning doses, I was restless the one time I got placebo, and calm the three days I got estradiol. I was calm on all periods I got estradiol, excepting due to a misgendering triggering. However, there were several nights on placebo where I still was calm, possibly because of other factors. Nights I break my 24h intermittent fast, sometimes drink wine, and watch cartoons, not making any demands on myself; nights it makes sense I am anyway quite at peace.

So all in all, I cannot say I always become restless without estradiol, nor that I always am shielded from restlessness on estradiol. Placebo and good things may help and unlucky circumstances may harm. I also cannot rule out that there may be a short-term statistical mood effect, it would need further testing. There is a very slight tendency that there may be, driven by morning doses.

Beyond this, of course there may be long-term mood effects, and there are other types of nervous system effects (differences in sexy scent processing comes to mind), and there are all the bodily effects. This day I am on actual estradiol, and still quite moody, but getting better. Some part of me worries that it would be an issue if I overattach to the concept of mood effects, fog lifting etc., in case it really is mostly placebo, but what if? My trans alignment ultimately is about how my brain cannot relate to me as a person unless I understand myself as a woman; I think this applies analogously to cis persons but the fact of their lifelong lack of misalignment hides it. Ensuring my body and brain and social self has as little of statistical difference to other women as possible is what I need, alongside work in affirming my self-perception as who I need to be to be happy. If I become more calm and happy even as a result of placebo from the medication I take to change my body, that is not a problem, that is an opportunity. Part of me worries that if short-term mood effects really largely are placebo then it might become harder for me to summon them up, but I’ll look into ways of preventing that, and in the end, this study just shows one needs a larger, cleaner study to be able to tell, and that there also are other factors impacting.

Major limitations: First, this tests only short-time effects. It occurs under confounding that my 24h dose was half it should be. It was dirty blinding; my guess from mouthfeel of what pill I received was correct in every case though I never felt certain and think I did not use this for mood assessment. Sampling without replacement from a limited number constrains the readout. Statistical power is woeful, and most problematically, I had only one morning placebo pill, so the power for daily restoration under E vs placebo was not well tested. It also is a test of low-E, low-T conditions, not low-E, high-T, as I did not include my androgen blockers (and since intrinsic production now is low, that would also not have worked). A larger study could be done contrasting 3-day patches with identical placebo patches. This would simplify blinding, give more time for effects to be seen during days. Tracking could be done during this period at regular intervals of mood on a scale using app. Power could be made much higher. The relevant point I want to make is that I think meaningful tests can be done this with with randomly placebo-sabotaged extant HRT, it is not necessary to work on treatment-naïve subjects.

lacrimosa

Nice start of evening going to event for queer women, felt all accepted and OK except for my horrible deep voice. Was OK.

Then randomly sir:ed, I think, by the person selling me fast food. This in full femme presentation. Are my features and voice so awfully masculinized that random strangers can only parse me as some drag queen or something is that it?

Went home. Realized I would weep. Doing so, with support of moon and rain and a fairy child grown strong. Cannot really stop. Feeling, quite simply, sad. Crying because I am sad and despairing, right this minute. Later, I won’t feel that, it will be OK. I will cope and deal and grow stronger.

Right now wondering what the fuck I can even do, wanting to cut away all the despicable horrible flesh that makes me look and sound like something which is not even a person, like some corpse, like some dead thing. Wondering what I can do, not finding clear solution. Hoping my medication will work its wonders over years and years of alternate sexual differentiation. Remembering this pain and sorrow so I really will put in the 10K hours needed to master a voice that lets people hear me as me.

Remembering and habitualizing to ask, “sorry, what did you just say?” by reflex, causing trouble. Not for my sake, the harm will already be done. But a teachable moment for the sake of others.

Still feeling it. I suppose this is good, this is me finally not being an emotionless husk who could just choose not to feel, this is me feeling without having to decide to feel. This is new growth, this is life. Growth hurts. Healing hurts.