there is an anxiety in my trans circles that the future might become worse, that access to surgery, new passports and stuff might become harder. i feel like i should hurry to get shit done.
but i can’t. it took sooo long until i knew for sure, i wanted to go on hrt. i am now and it’s great. not for the reasons i imagined, but for all the small things i never thought about. yet i don’t know what i want my name to be. it is such a hard question for me. i start to rethink sexuality aswell esp. since my libido seems to have vanished under estrogen. this i like also. but what does it say about my sexual identity? or my gender identity? will there be a point at which i want a bottom surgery? there are so many questions that i can’t answer (yet).
meanwhile the whole world seems to demand these answers and wants them to align with their cis-het assumptions. health care wants me to display a binary persona for access to hrt (i played the part), and surgery. my aunt immediately fantasized about me “certainly” looking for a man to have a family with. everyone really wats to have an update on how to handle me. no ambiguity.
i realised that in my trans specific therapy group i get quiet and anxious when they are all discussing hospitals, doctors, procedures and all the technicalities. i feel like i am behind. always behind. i haven’t done my homework. i didn’t know forever that i was a girl. i don’t know today. i’m just starting to get a sense of self. something that was shattered and buried through thorough suppression. i am putting together fragments like an archeologist. but being trans is in a way still just a working hypothesis. it’s highly plausible, but i can’t see the bigger picture yet.
i am afraid, that all of this will take me too long, that i will have to jump over new hurdles, or old ones, like when the rubber stamps from my therapist will be too old. i feel like i have to figure out myself now. i feel alone with that. even in self help, and therapy groups everyone is always so sure about themselves. just not me. i should seek out enby groups maybe? plz hit me up, if you ever felt this way too. 😥
yes i heared that one too. i even said it to others: ‘go to surgeons/endos, let them inform you in detail. you can still say no after that.’ but all of these appointments are a lot of stress and at the moment i don’t feel that strongly like you reported. i think.
the only harmfull (or at least world-denying) ideation i had was that of being impaled by some angelic being (think of Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa or if you like Alucard vs Incognito). being pinned down, or picked out of the world, giving up all responsibilities and ties for and to it.
a few month/years ago i recognized that this ideation went away slowly. after i started hrt it shifted further. in those situations in which i would flee into this fantasy, i started to imagine spreading my wings instead.
that’s super corny but i guess there is a self somewhere that started breathing again. i wish it would talk to me more often and openly. this would be my motivation to do stuff. wether it told me through nausea or happiness, doesn’t matter i want this person to say something. i need that to motivate myself (the ego) throughout the stress and pain of surgeries.
you commented on my kind of genital dysphoria, that is a helpful comment. thanks alot, again. but phenomenologically its just that i don’t find particular pleasure in people doing things to my genitals. it’s rather boring. i feel like i miss data, in this respect.
ps: yes, i grew up within (liberal/leftist) catholicism. some motives of catholicism will be with me forever, i guess.
I do not recommend letting the surgeons or endos inform you in detail, in general my advice on that is to know more than your doctors.
I know you mentioned you felt you hadn’t done your homework, and I think this communicates both that you feel overwhelmed and like you’ve started this process that demands so much more knowledge than you feel you have, but also that you might feel like you don’t have the level of certainty or clarity about your own dysphoria or needs to direct the transition.
Both are aspects I struggled with in my transition, and the first 3 - 6 months after my egg cracked and I realized I was trans, I read quite a few books, articles, etc. to educate myself while I was also going through the earliest stages of social and medical transition.
You can absolutely educate yourself assuming you have the time and opportunity to read.
Regarding the uncertainty about dysphoria and imposter syndrome (wondering you’re really trans, whether you really suffer from dysphoria, etc.) - that has basically never gone away for me, it’s just a question that becomes less relevant as I get on the other side of major transition milestones.
Even now I still wonder if I’m somehow secretly a cis man who tricked myself into transitioning. Such thoughts I now realize mostly come from a combination of irrational fears and internalized transphobia - I am older and grew up during a very transphobic time, so on some basic level I don’t really emotionally accept the medical establishment’s claims about gender dysphoria, and I worry someday I’ll wake up and feel differently … that said, I’ve wished I was born a woman my whole life, so now that I live as a woman it’s never an issue for me, and objectively I’m much healthier and happier now. So everything objective and concrete makes it clear transition was worth it, the fears are genuinely irrational.
So, given what I know about my fears, I took transition steps with the understanding that I was probably a binary trans woman and it’s safe to take every measure to help me live as a woman, and so far that has worked out perfectly for me even when I wasn’t sure beforehand. I even had bottom surgery without feeling certain about it, and I’m glad I did.
im crying. thank you for caring so much and for your reccommendations!