New Year, New Me

New Year, New Me

I’ve never been one for new years. Yeah I’ve tried to make resolutions before, and like many of you probably, I’ve always dropped them after like one week. Over the course of my life I’ve learned that the best time to start a thing you’ve been putting off is now.

No, it wasn’t “when you first thought of the idea”, it wasn’t “the first time you really wanted to do it but then thought of an excuse.” The second best time to start is not now, as in the oft repeated aphorism. The best time, is now.

I started HRT back in July of this year. I’d been playing with the idea, rotating it in my mind, since as far back as 2021. Of course I would want to start hormones. Just… not right now. The smart thing to do would be to wait and see, right? To make sure.

To make sure of what? This is the question that I never wanted to ask myself, because of course I knew the answer. I wanted to make sure that I was really trans, that I wasn’t making it all up, that it wasn’t just a phase I was going through as I struggled to cope with the loneliness of graduating college and moving across the country twice, and ending up in a global pandemic in a new state, a new job with no friends and nobody I knew within 400 miles of me.

And maybe that was a legitimate fear. Maybe there’s a world where a parallel cis version of me has a gender crisis and then immediately starts estrogen, and regrets it. But I doubt it. I don’t think he’d have let it get that far, sure, but also among the handful of actual detransitioners I know, none of them actually regret trying, exploring, and coming back to the conclusion that they are cis. Estrogen doesn’t cause permanent changes right away, after all, and surely a cis version of myself would’ve immediately noticed the effects of the wrong hormone coursing through his veins. The fog slowly, almost imperceptibly settling on his entire world. Increasing difficulty seeing himself in the mirror. Executive dysfunction slowly growing to the point of not being able to get simple tasks done for hours at a time, and of course the slow settling of a constant, hellish depersonalization. The horrible feeling that your life isn’t real, that it can’t be, that it cannot be supposed to feel like this as time slips through your fingers like so much water.

Of course I know how all this would feel for him, because I experienced all of these things in reverse upon starting estrogen six months ago. And let me be clear for a moment, these things were not instantaneous. I’ve heard from many people that the mental effects of estrogen were immediate, and this was very much not the case for me. I noticed the skin softening, the smell of my body changing subtly, even small breast buds beginning to appear before I ever noticed a mental change. For me, the veil did not lift right away, as many have described, and two months into my regimen, I was terrified I was broken. That something even deeper was wrong with me, and perhaps even that I wasn’t trans after all. After all, doesn’t taking the right hormone immediately fix your brain? Can’t you tell at once that you’ve been putting gasoline in your diesel engine, and shouldn’t the difference be obvious and immediate?

As it turns out, no. It was September when I got COVID. My second time contracting the virus since the beginning of the pandemic, this time from my Uncle, who got it on a plane despite masking for the entire trip. It was a miserable week, but unlike my first tangle with the virus, I was able to burn my remaining vacation for the year and take the entire duration of my illness off. This allowed me to slope around and do absolutely nothing for a week, and this in turn prevented me from suffering any of the long term physical or cognitive side effects that my first encounter with COVID had left me with. By the time I was back home and two weeks had passed, I was basically back to 100%. But also, something else. I wasn’t just better, I suddenly felt like myself for the first time in I-don’t-know-how-long. I basically stopped disassociating altogether, I felt more able to regulate my emotions in a healthy way. Everything just felt… better.

At the beginning of 2024, I started revisiting the concept of HRT again, with more seriousness. I actually had set up care with an affirming GP back in 2021, but she quit seeing patients altogether shortly after our first appointment. I think she moved on to teach or something, which I can’t blame her for, but I do feel an ache in my chest when I think of it, because I had established care with her specifically with the intention of getting on hormones sometime in the future, and this setback cut me off at the knees for years. Having to find a whole new doctor and go through all the emotionally and (worse) logistically challenging steps to set up care, get an initial assessment done, then broach the topic of HRT seemed insurmountable for a long time. As things got worse for trans people in the public discourse, I shrank further and further away from this. Surely it would be best to wait until after the midterms, right? Surely it would be prudent to wait until we see how the next presidential election might go. Surely it would be smartest to not get on hormones until I’m sure they won’t be ripped away by the next administration right? After all, I’ve gone this long without them, what could be the harm in waiting another few months, another year?

Right?

Even with this line of thinking, I did establish care with another affirming GP at the beginning of 2024. Just to stay healthy and leave the door open in case I wanted to go on HRT sometime. Y’know. Later.

Early 2024 was not a good time for me. I don’t remember much of it now, frankly, and I don’t need to. There are flashes. January felt like an age. The mounting death toll in Gaza and the dull dread of knowing that there wouldn’t be a ceasefire, not soon, not ever. More anti trans bills, more anti trans defectors all the time. Dread. Horror. Sick, dull, screaming nothing.

I don’t remember what month it was, maybe March. I was deflated, dead, at the end of my rope. I made a silent plea to the universe that something, anything would change.

And it did.

The next month, April, I traveled to watch the solar eclipse in totality. It was utterly breathtakingly beautiful. Life changingly beautiful.

The next month, May, my friend Katthew bullied me (positive) into watching I Saw The TV Glow in theaters. It left me shell shocked and walking around downtown like a husk, eyes staring blankly as I tried to go about my business and pick up pizza for dinner. The waitress who served me was trans. I wonder if she could tell.

The next month, June, I went to Kentucky and attended my first ever pride, and saw Chappell Roan live. I got really really into her music. I stared at myself in the mirror while After Midnight played on repeat. I knew I had to do something.

After getting home, I went on my doctor’s portal and hammered out a message. Simple, to the point. I’m experiencing gender dysphoria and I would like feminizing HRT to alleviate this. Send.

I remember a scene vividly from the next morning. I was stuck in my remote daily meeting at work, half-checked out as usual. Then my phone rang. It said healthcare, and I immediately knew who it was, and what it was about. At the exact same time, two things happened simultaneously. My cat Skitty, menace that he is, dropped his mouse toy in my coffee, soaking everything nearby, and it became my turn to talk in the meeting. Frozen, paralyzed, fucking terrified. The phone stopped ringing.

There was a time, not very long, but maybe an agonizing fifteen minutes, where I really thought I had missed my chance. Where I was convinced that by missing that call, I had squandered my only opportunity to be happy. It was terrifying, soul crushing, but at the same time I knew it couldn’t be true. Of course I would be able to call back, to reach back out and get back to them. I just wasn’t sure I would have the strength.

As it turns out, I wouldn’t need to. In the doctor portal, they replied to my message with a request for an appointment. We worked out a time to be able to do it, and I went. And it was fine. And the next day I filled my prescription. July 6th, 2024. An utterly unremarkable day. About a week too late to fall on my real birthday, which I would’ve loved for synchronicity reasons. Two days too late to fall on the 4th of July, which I would’ve loved, to have something to celebrate that day that wasn’t the birth of this sick country in which we live. Two months too early for my Tranniversary. I would’ve loved to have the day I started HRT, the day I started remaking myself into the self I want to be, to be some significant day. But it wasn’t.

Until it was. Because now July 6th is a significant day. Now it is a day to be celebrated. Now it is my birthday, my independence day, my Tranniversary. Now July 6th is everything.

The best time to start a thing you’ve been putting off is now. It’s New Years. I’m a woman. I love my life. The best time to start a thing you’ve been putting off is now. The only time to start it is now. Start it now.

Now.

this post is brought to you by TRY HRT YOU FUCKING IDIOT

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