I'm feeling really down lately after having my hopes of getting T dashed at the last second and instead of gritting my teeth, repressing it and pretending it doesn't bother me I'm going to get it all off my chest and hope it makes me feel a little better.
I'm not necessarily asking for advice or sympathy but it's always appreciated
This is going to be long, I warn you in advance.
I'm so sick and tired of waiting for my life to begin, there's so many things I want to do but I feel held back by my stupid body. Just yesterday my partner was talking about saving up some money to go somewhere hot and sunny on holiday and I said to him there's no way I could enjoy myself somewhere like that...binding and layering just to make my own reflection bearable would kill me in a hot climate. He said I didn't have to sunbathe I could just hang out in the pool. Right, a pool, because being half naked in public would be so much better than suffocating under a binder and baggy clothes. He looked so disappointed and I feel so bad that he has to suffer because of my issues. I would LOVE to just be able to do the things I want to do without fretting about my body but I just can't right now. Even day to day activities are such a huge effort for me and nobody seems to appreciate how much I'm struggling.
I've been unemployed for years because I simply don't have the confidence to do well in interviews. I get so much crap from various relatives for being a lazy bum but it's not like that. I would love to have a job and work my way up the career ladder but I don't feel like I can until I can actually project myself as the person I am inside. Even if my employers and colleagues turned out to be 100% supportive by using the right pronouns it would still eat me up inside that they know about my female body. My oldest sister gave me a speech a few weeks ago about how I HAVE to get a job and stop freeloading off my partner because it's going to breed resentment and he's going to turn around one day and tell me he's sick of it. He tells me this simply isn't true and he's happy to support me in any way I need on my journey, including financially....and I believe him...but there's still a part of me that says it's wrong of me to expect him to do that.
On a similar note I'm always looking at leaflets and websites for college courses and apprenticeships but I can never bring myself to actually fill out the application forms because I don't want anyone to know about my being trans.
I have a volunteer job but I keep ringing up to tell them I'm sick or I can't make it for various other reasons because I can't bring myself to go out and do it knowing all day I'm going to be hearing female pronouns from customers. I enjoy the work but I always come home feeling really depressed from the hours of misgendering.
I literally have one real life friend. I've known her forever and she's been supportive throughout my whole transition. I haven't actually seen her in person for years, because I don't want any of her friends or family to realise I'm not just a normal guy friend. I've never met her son and she's never met my daughter because of my problems. Her sons christening is in a few days and I'm not going, I'm missing important events because of this crap.
I'd love to make some new friends, just people I can invite round for coffee and do normal stuff with but I don't want to make any new connections and end up with more and more people who know about me.
I have a handful of good online friends who don't know I'm trans and the subject of us meeting in person comes up all the time and I have to make excuses because I don't want to get clocked.
I'd love to take my daughter to play groups for her to socialise with other children but again, don't want more people knowing about me. My health visitor is always on my case about it, I know it's important and I'd be happy to do it if I knew I wouldn't have to put up with everyone thinking I was her mummy. My health visitor totally doesn't get the trans thing. She's always calling me "mum" and then corrects it to dad a split second later. She also keeps asking me the same questions about when I start HRT, she seems to have it in her head that going on T will make me depressed and I'll need some sort of extra support caring for my daughter. Where do people get these ridiculous ideas? Make me depressed? You've got to be kidding me.
I go to the gym 3 times a week and run and eat perfectly balanced nutrition but my body simply doesn't respond to it. I put in SO much effort and barely lose any fat or gain any muscle no matter how hard I try. If I really really destroy myself with workouts I end up losing fat around my waist, arms, and thighs. It never ever goes off my chest or hips/butt. So I go through all the pain and effort only to end up with an even more pronounced hourglass figure and smaller shoulders....bloody marvellous. I've had problems with my weight for as long as I can remember and I'm desperately hoping that getting T in my system will sort it out a bit. If I got even slight muscle development or fat moving away from my hips from T I would be over the freakin' moon. My sister seems to think I hate my body because I'm overweight and often likes to show examples of big women who love their bodies and happily go swimming or on the beach with no shame. That isn't the point, I don't care about being overweight, I care about being womanly shaped. If I had a huge beer gut instead of huge hips I would be happy beyond compare. It's not the amount of fat that bothers me, it's the placement of it.
I'm terrified of getting pregnant again. I have recurring nightmares that I will go to the doctors with stomach pains one day and he will tell me I'm pregnant and too far along for an abortion. This has affected my sex life significantly, I make excuses and shy away from sex more often than not. My partner has had a vasectomy and we still use condoms but the fear is still there. Being pregnant was the absolute worst time of my life dysphoria wise; and I couldn't do it again. I love my daughter but I will never ever ever do it again. Until those parts are completely gone the fear will always remain. Of course hystio isn't an option because I'm too young and it's healthy and I may want more kids again in my future blah blah blah other nonsense doctors tell me every time I beg for one. Never mind that taking it all out would improve my quality of life exponentially, that isn't important or relevant, apparently.
Then we get on to the every day irritating things that make me uncomfortable constantly.
Boxer shorts simply aren't designs for a womanly physique. No matter what size or style I buy, the waistband migrates up to my waist and the legs shimmy up and sit at the top of my thighs, so I end up wearing what looks and feels like big granny panties. This drives me insane, it feels so uncomfortable and I have to pull them outta my ass and rearrange them 100 times a day. I don't find briefs any more comfortable, they just feel too much like panties.
Boobs, obviously, are a huge irritation. They're always in the way, unless I'm binding, but lets face it even the most comfortable binder is no substitute for simply having an actual flat chest. They make everything a pain in the ass. I can feel them there, all the time, just sitting on my chest and making me sweaty. Gross, and distracting. I try to get in a comfortable position to sleep and they're in the bloody way, when I lie down they seem to like to migrate upwards and smother my neck unless I prop myself up to an almost sitting position, which just isn't comfortable. So many times me or my partner try to roll over and end up pinching, squashing, elbowing or otherwise injuring a boob and I just wanna rip them off and throw them at the wall. I would enjoy sports and exercise a lot more if they weren't there too. The jiggling, even under a binder, makes me very aware of them and it skeeves me out.
Buying and wearing clothes in general never fails to annoy me. Shirts that fit my shoulders are WAY too small to do up around my hips and ones that do up around my hips end up way too big on the shoulders and way too long on the sleeves and torso so I look like a child borrowing their dads clothes.
Mens shoes are too big for me, period, I am a size 4. I was buying new running shoes not long ago and my plan was to get them in a boys size but the sales assistant talked me in to buying womens because of something about the way the foot is shaped differently and I would get better performance from a womans shoe. I don't know if that's true but it sounded convincing so now I have womens running shoes and it bugs me.
I also have a womans bike, because it was the only one in the store in my price range that wasn't too big for me. The childs bikes were the right height but the wrong length so my knees were hitting the handlebars. I got the least girly looking one I could afford but it's still obviously a womans bike, it's purple and has the womans style cross bar.
I'm aware that not all of these problems will be fixed by T/surgery - such as the height issue - but I feel like it wouldn't be such a big deal to wear womens shoes and have a womans bike if I was obviously a guy in every other regard. I wouldn't mind people seeing me and getting the image of a man riding a womans bike. At the moment they see a woman riding a womans bike, that's the part that bugs me. It's like it confirms to them that I'm actually a woman, if that makes sense.
I'm done, sorry for the pity party; and you deserve a medal if you read all of that.
