Tag: emotion

ertia

There are lead-heavy things in the beauty of our alchemy. Life moves, it’s powerful, I mingle pain and pleasure. I am in love, I feel weariness, I feel pride, I feel fear and I navigate it. Beyond anything else I am indubitably alive, and eternally hopeful.

It seems like these past few months my emotions have undergone a shift. It coincides with progesterone but not with cycle position within that or maybe even dosage. Possibly enough things have happened on many fronts. Whatever the case, I believe perhaps now I am experiencing some form of the increased emotionality I was hoping for from transition.

Basically, when I have fallen in love, it has felt very very powerful and continues to, with corresponding intensity and realness of emotions indirectly attached. I sense this especially because I can see the emotions making me act sometimes rashly or stupidly, without it being trivial to inspect and stop those actions. This is new to me.

Not always practical but I want it nonetheless. I need to work out strategies for monitoring and policing myself better, if I can act on emotion now in this manner. But well worth it for the aspect of being alive.

*

In terms of SRS prep, spoke with HR to check procedure for “being off work for two months, due to recovery from a surgical procedure done privately in Thailand”, not described in more detail and not needing to. It should work fine, my insurance should cover six weeks (need to verify) and I can combine with holidays + what does it even mean for me to be off work?

So it still feels surreal but I take the steps to test it in the external world. Moving forward. Probably will ask about dates again soon.

! pride

As I transitioned and dislike myself less, I simply don’t rush like I use to, and I spend more time preparing in the morning. This means I’ve began to be late for things and I am not entirely happy with that.

This morning I was just in time for the train. I was sure I would miss it, since the notoriously aggressive, rude and intrusive Babylon traffic inspectors held me up just at the main station. Their poorly coded ticket app froze and would not show my monthly ticket at first and they refused to let me leave for my train. Eventually that resolved and I only just made it.

Fear like that, even self-inflicted by not being properly ahead of schedule, made me almost insanely angry and I was screaming at them how useless I considered them, such a waste of space and time and human tissue, no meaningful contribution to the world in any regard but to try to enforce petty rules to the letter ignoring the spirit, focus on procedure over actual legality, how they compensated for their petty banality by this.

Well, actually less articulate shameful elitism and more just screaming profanity.

That makes me feel ashamed on several levels, for being myopic and unkind and unfair, for giving in to anger and fear which I do not want to ever, for being a poor LGBT role model and ambassador in the world of the cishet muggles, and for the way my voice drops when I am angry and shout.

It leaves me shameful and sad and dysphoric and I suppose that is deserved.

I hate these moments. Survival as a trans person while retaining dignity, then, means becoming extra careful, planning more, ensuring I never need to lose my cool because I always will stay in control.

noveau vag

“Should I have SRS (now)” is really the new “should I transition?”. I feel similarly over it – obsess over it, asking everyone, essentially looking for evidence and permission that this thing which somewhere deep down in my dissociate self I want, is something that I “get” to do, something that I won’t regret. It’s really exactly as things were two years ago, in the spring of 2017. I knew on some level what I wanted, and I was very worried that I wanted it for some other reason than I believed I did, and I was feeling reluctant to commit before I was certain enough that I would be OK if I did.It’s been two years of transition then. Woah. It really has. It feels like it should be less? Some of these posts are almost that old. I should perhaps go back and re-read myself, this transition account. I intended for it to become one, but it was also a venting space. It has become one. Maybe at some point I’ll bundle and edit all this. Maybe some of it is useful to someone.

So, going back to the analogy. I felt a longing to become sure I really was one of those who would be happier if she transitioned, but I needed external assurances – from reading accounts of others, from trying to evidence within my autobiography, from experiments. Eventually I got past all that by having enough experimental results and enough not-giving-a-fuck that I decided I get to decide. And moreover, that I got to decide because my will mattered. Which it does because I am a person like everyone else. Which I am because I am a woman. So I am transgender.

What I also did then was to process my fears. I was afraid of so much along the path that lay ahead of me. I was afraid of being seen as a freak, of being discriminated against, pitied, shunned, of being looked down on. In hindsight much of that was fear of coming out. It was also the fear of finally losing the choice of being able to pass as cishet or not.

I processed even before that point by stretching boundaries, going more and more androgynous. This was what I escalated back then. I got my first bralette almost a year before HRT and wore it thereafter when I went through airport checks. I started switching restrooms, presenting myself as trans, all these things before I was formally sure. I told my parents about my questioning. I know why I did this, I was trying to experience the awkwardness and fear and pain, socially speaking, before I passed the point of no return. I wanted to know if I could handle it, how bad it would feel, and perhaps also to dull the pain before it became compulsory. I LARPed being further along in my transition so that I would build resilience but perhaps above all to check, would I experience regret?

This afternoon I realized I’m doing the same now with SRS.

My increasing genital dysphoria and issues with sex may well to a large part be unavoidable and there, but I also focus on them and nurture them, let myself feel them, experience them. I open myself to the stone butch life, where I let myself feel the dysphoria of parsing my bare genitals wrong during sex, where I let myself get used to not wanting or be able to climax with a partner (or alone – I can but why the hassle? pfah). I’m actively riding the wave of these emotions, calling increasing attention to them.

In so doing I am testing myself for what my sex would be like if I had an unfavorable SRS outcome. Part of this which I am doing is this kind of emotional preparation, I’ve been asking myself the question: “Could you be OK with life if you never came again, if all your sex was breastplay and painplay and cuddles and topping?” I’m mildly melancholically sad about it, is the answer. I’ve looked to that melancholia as a putative reason why I should have SRS, and felt it’s not a big thing.

Where I should look, rather, is why I’m trying to get used to that sadness, why I’m preparing for the worst. Clearly it’s because some part of me deeply wants to be able to conclude she should have SRS. And it’s similar to the part of me that tested out being queer and at social awkwardness and risk as a non-passing trans person even before she had to, because she wanted to be able to conclude she should socially and hormonally transition.

I think one very likely conclusion to draw from this, though it needs more testing, is that to a large extent I want SRS for the same reason I wanted to transition in general. Underlying it all is a conceptual and existential dysphoria. I must be as much like other women as I can for the world to be OK. I felt that enough to take the steps I took so far, of which I would say that coming out and social transition was far costlier than anything medical – the latter I would say have all been pleasure and some interesting pain (when did I become so OK with pain? Ah, when I’d trained it enough…). So the question now is, is that same feeling strong enough to make we want the cost that is the risk of loss of orgasmic capacity (because ultimately that’s really the only realistic fear I have that I care about)?

I think it is, but I’ll take some more time to process all of it. I don’t have to decide just yet. In the next months. Perhaps by April I will.

(And if I just go by intuition? I want to be on the operating table already, so badly. Or rather, I want to know I am on track there. But I should not only trust intuition. Only more than I did in the past.)

hentai

So, the thought was raised and resonated with me, so I should inspect it deeply, what of effects of HRT and realignment on my person? More specifically, is there the possibility that continued further HRT and body awareness and happy sexual and sensual and mobile experiences will get me to a point where my genital issues are a sufficiently small obstacle that at that point, the distress they cause is less than my risk-weighted fears of unfavorable SRS outcomes?

This is relevant because it seems to be the core point of my process of decision-making for SRS. And while I can wait and observe (and will, as much as I need to), I also don’t want to wait more than necessary. I could wait for Godot forever. So I should actively inspect this part and it will require some significant effort to do so. Luckily it is within what I was planning already, actually, it is precisely what I was planning already.

So for dumping related observations, what came to me on it this day was the memory of what HRT has felt like, not the changes but my relations to the changes. When I came out and stopped trying to present androgynous, I accepted being seen however I am, however my body becomes. I have wishes of course for what HRT does to my body and mind, and I am an active participant in my treatment.

But more importantly, I remember now what I felt: I give myself up for puberty. I surrender to the best changes my regime and genetics give me. I’m not sculpting my body specifically, I am surrendering it to the becoming of womanhood. That changed a lot. I stopped fearing so much, started to anticipate so much.

On some level, at that point I accepted that whatever transition does to my body, it will. I will be whatever woman I can sail to within the scope of my biology. It’s not only my choice but it is how I grow. And on some level, that also reduced my fears of SRS complications. As long as I move towards womanhood, there is unpredictability in what womanhood I get. On some level I feel this way about the uncertainties of surgery also.

This is not by any means a reason not to worry. But it may be a part of why I don’t worry so much as I feel I should, intellectually. I accepted already that the details of this process are things I can influence but not control.

imbolc I

First year I celebrate it, my appropriative faux-syncretist Imbolc appropriately was exactly as not expected, which is to be expected. There was some drama which I am still unpacking, with issues colliding where I suppose everyone involved had hoped for synergy rather than malergy. I was nowhere near as graceful as I would like to have been, but think I did not do significant damage at least.

As for damage sustained, much more was gained than lost. At Imbolc is the Goddess in her Maiden state, naïvely receiving, adoring, fully open to being hurt and disappointed, and certainly not wise yet. So she makes mistakes and she hurts and she is hurt, and it is only through these experiences that she can come to understand her dynamics and learn to go beyond them when desired.

I’ll say that whether justified or not, at this point it would be counter-productive of me to not feel all I can feel. I must wallow in every cascade, every implication. Already I discovered new things, including facets of emotion I was not aware were there. It does not matter if they are desirable or not. I must stop censoring, and only after I have done that can I do other, more complex processing; how else will I be able to unlock emotion more generally? Two avatars of Chaos have both demonstrated this to me in words and action; both have hurt me in similar ways and I have love for them both.

All such aside, a dear friend suggested to me strategies for motion and increased body awareness. I took her up on some – for the first time today I was jogging (all right, briskly walking) to the Babylon Main Station, trying along the way to stay aware primarily of my body. It was exactly as hard as expected and I often lapsed, but I did sense the interconnectness much better while in motion (contra to body scanning lying down). Most interesting, and valuable going forward, was that there exists some extent of (controllable) hip sideways motion when moving. Not only can I sense this but also control it, and I could try to habitualize its increase.

Arriving at the station, this day I was all right out of bed without makeup, no shaving (but no stubble is visible since some time now), in old pre-transition bulky black exercise clothes. This too very much an emotional and social experiment which will be repeated. I was not really gendered either way, so I can’t assess it, but from mirrors, I think that if anyone reads me as male, it will be as a tall pre-teen effeminate boy. It probably confuses, and some fraction also probably saw a woman as they passed me. Since otherwise I never go out without makeup this may be a useful recurring experiment.

Did not take a sports bra on in the hope of feeling jiggling; I did not. But the body scanning approach while running seems like something I could slowly get better at, and I could also do it standing or walking.

We move.

cpt hook

So, learning things. I’m actually sad over things I decided many years ago I was not allowed to feel sad over, jeez Louise, who would have guessed? I needed “high hopes, low expectations” and mindfulness in relationships, and it has its uses, but all of me inside is needing to weep over all the times that still hurt, the breakups, the fadings out, the phases in relationships where I slowly got used to not receive any attention or focus, where I got used to being an afterthought or a complement. I can do that but I have to do more also.

I was happy – celebratorily so – at the milestone at finally having cried pre-sleep such that I have to blow my nose over and over again until I actually can sleep. Every teenage girl needs to pass this important milestone and I consider it an important step, a sign that I’ve actually grown. At some point, I will be Psycho Girlfriend, and I long for that day too.

On another level, when it storms, my past inclination has been to try to – usually with no success, but never mind that – seek hookups or escalations of play or whatever. Because validation. The thought of that now is… weird. So I want the perception of being alive and of things being meaningful that good sex brings. But unless everything relationally is Just Right, I don’t really feel that?

That’s sort of new. Thinking back at the last times I was with someone, I felt it interesting because of discovery and exploration and closeness and bonding and love. Not wanting to get off, and not wanting to seek sex in order to get off. After some time of intimacy, I can find myself warming up somehow and wanting to get off? Is this how other girls stereotypically function too? We want to be brought to sensory states and climaxes but we don’t have that wish saliently until we’ve already been at it for some time based in emotional connectivity and more conventional sensuality? Is this that whole foreplay idea?

For me then, getting off once I do want it, that is an issue. I can, with toys. I mostly can’t be seen naked, not even with other pre-op girl I am in love with, though I may be able to learn to. But coming is cumbersome, and cleaning up cum is something awful and I hate it. I really hope SRS will fix this part for me, will fix my parts while keeping them sensate.

So where does that leave me? I want to do hookups because emotion and symbolism and decadence and outlets. But I can’t easily because getting and staying in the mood is hard, without chemistry and with dysphoria, very difficult. And in the end, when I want to be stimulated, it’s a ridiculous and unsatisfactory hassle.

Perhaps once I’ve fixed my anatomy I’ll go out and have people fuck me, I’ll probably try it. May not assuage the need for connection and chemistry though. So how do I get what I need, except in relationships? Good question.

segmented

Before the holidays I felt a similar Earthiness to these days. I thought that was from starting progesterone, but apparently it is not so simplistic. This may be a hint of my actually having a cycle of my own, independent of dosages. If that holds, then in about 6 weeks I should have another Earth phase, with an intervening busybody Air/Fire phase.

balefire

CW: Not rational, overreacting.

I’m unlovable, useless, impossible to want. I’m too odd, too pretentious, too different, too messed up by dissociation and hypochondria and body issues, too theoretical, too skewed. I’m fat and ugly, aged, caught in androgynous limbo; my voice keeps going too deep. I’m clumsy, I can’t even remember people’s triggers or boundaries, I’m not empathetic enough, not caring enough, not sharp enough to be able to interact with anyone so that I will not hurt them, except possibly by being so focused that I myself can’t stay present as a subjective being.

I’m too selfish, too needy, too clingy. I know too little, I am too forgetful, lazy, undisciplined, I am not smart enough, I don’t feel passionately enough to be interesting, I am almost entirely fake, not authentic, not genuine, useless, uninteresting. I don’t have enough of genuine life or genuine interests or projects for anyone to want to participate in.

Well, more accurately, people sometimes want to try me. I can be a curiosity, a safe game for a night when someone first comes out of a period of celibacy, perhaps. But once anyone tries once, a few times perhaps even, no-one can hold any passion for me. I’m like a corpse that perhaps can entertain a little through dissociated touching and D&D-style fantasy narrating, or who can use a sex toy clumsily, but that won’t last. None can hold passion for me, for what is there to be passionate about? So people fade away and leave me behind.

Or perhaps I am scary? Too weird, too cold, not empathetic enough, too odd, elitist, weird.

What can I do? Well, I can build my own self. I can do the things I should to succeed career-wise, scientifically. Even if I am no genius, at least I can do that, maybe sometime even making a difference. I can be a good friend, I can help and support my friends, entertain them sometime, with no need for reciprocity, though my friends do indeed reciprocate.

I can do some about this disgusting body. I must continue strictly to lose weight, for if I do, my shoulders will slim a little more, by belly will diminish, and my tiny hips and breasts will look a little more feminine by comparison. I can get into shape, because then if I am fit then I will seem healthy, despite my increasing age, and that is something people like. If I like moving in my body, learn more motorics and grace, then I may become actually attractive to some.

I could fix more body things. Bottom surgery is all for me, not to look a certain way to others, but I could reduce forehead some, lower hairline, maybe change cheeks. Weight loss will help there too, as will giving hormones more time. That might make me look a little better.

I will fix my voice, I will somehow get around the laziness and lack of focus and discipline that keeps me from being able to maintain it. I will train, I will focus, I will maintain. I can sound more so that I like myself, and then perhaps others will catch on.

I can learn style. I can learn to tidy up and keep a clean home, not living in a pigsty. That would make me more impressive, and would make it easier for others to stay near me, to want to share some of my everyday life with me.

Getting in better shape should involve sleeping properly also, because then my brain may start functioning better too so I will be able to offer interesting conversation at least. If I can do that then I won’t continually bore or trigger people like I do. I will be able to keep my stupid shit together better, and maybe that will make me more likable.

What else is there? Get more control of my life so I have more freedom to follow the rhythm of others, again letting me become less uninteresting.

Perhaps.

I am a useless needy wreck in real need of therapy and to stop being stupid and passive-aggressive.

And it is very very real that I am loved, I have loving partners who would come to me when I need it, with whom I share crucial sides of myself, with whom I share passions specific to each relationship, whom I would burn continents to save, relative to whom nothing can be more important. They do love me. I cherish this. I treasure this.

Still, the sort of passion that so many other people do experience in their everyday lives, that is beyond me. I am not the kind of person that makes anyone want to prioritize me like that. I will always be less important than various other things, because there is nothing in me that could make me important to others in a way that would inspire romantic devotion.

I should dissociate and get to work. But I don’t want to. I need to stay in pain if I am to be able to heal.

line becomes a circle

Laser day, woke, went out without makeup, no time for estrogen before. My face and form and voice are flawed and this felt like weighted sadness. Receiving support made me safe to feel this sadness, love and music came my way and I listened and opened, and thereby could feel it more clearly.

The interesting part: I know I could step into “this has to get done, I feel nothing” dissociation and ride outside the body core in the enactment of tasks. I wouldn’t express sadness then or appear to feel it, might not even notice it.

I’m trying to stay now if I can. Because I’m thinking that perhaps I need to stay in sadness, even court sadness, if I am to be able to also stay to feel happy emotions at a greater amplitude than I can now. I think at this point I must learn not to dissociate and I think this is what I also am attempting.