People are polarised at what I have done. Most people think it was the correct thing to do, TS persons won't so much.
My transition plan took a big hit a few months ago, and I am accepting the harsh reality. Having saved money for years, Now my plan was to wait for the SRS referral letters and get everything done at the same time. SRS, BA and a good deal of FFS. I would be complete, and it could restore my possibilities of finding a job to pre-transition. These last weeks I have dealt with huge dysphoria, including the genital one.
Sadly, I had no backup plan. Not having a job (and things are hard here even to work as a supermarket cashier), my only hope was that my accumulated work experience would help me find work soon, but things are not going according to plan I haven't been able to save any money in the year I've been living on my own and transitioning, and as time passed, I was more and more terrified that I could end in the worst possible situation: No job, no unemployment benefits and no savings would mean having to sleep in the street. Not to mention paying the hormones. I know of friends who haven't been able to work for years (it was my own situation for a long time), and people here keep being evicted from their homes. Things are that bad around here.
I had to accept it: I could blow nearly 3/4 of my savings in surgery, and with that I would look and be legally female (SRS allows me to automatically change name and sex legally instead of of waiting two years), but after that I would be in the same precarious situation: Once I run out of money, it's street time for me. My parents have declared that they won't allow me to come back, so I don't have a last resource if all else fails.
In the end, I accepted his "offer", the one he has been proposing me for a year: Buying a home between the two of us. We would split the entry fee, and the monthly mortgage.
- The good side: I'd have a place of my own. With the entry fee we can afford and how cheap homes are at this moment, it would be far cheaper than what I pay in rent every month. Renting a room would pay the mortgage. He agrees to keep paying my part if I run out of unemployment benefits, and if I find job in another community or country, We can rent the place
- The downside: This leaves me without transition savings. I'd have enough for doing just SRS, which would ease my dysphoria, but without the FFS the misgendering will continue.
I talked it with several persons, and except for some transitioners, most people, both TS from my country and cis persons agree that this is the right thing to do. That safety and a roof is a top priority over everything else, and the home can even generate some income. Regarding halting the transition until I can find a job again, most opinions I get are that it is still to early for FFS, and that if I give it the two mandatory years, maybe my face will improve a bit more. Another person, also Trans and in a hard situation, not only agreed with buying a home, but kept telling me that my only really problematic feature is the nose, and getting that fixed would solve a lot of misgendering issues.
The bad part is that in order to include the rhinoplasty and trach shave in the SRS Trip to Thailand, I'm sort on 5000€. And it would take me one year to save them, that if I can find a job. Right now I'd accept anything, the only problem is that while I am still hired and in sick leave (for psychological issues), any month could be the last one and be fired any time. I sued the company because of illegal working conditions (Which caused my sick leave due to all mobbing), so I can't even ask them it they have a job for me. My attorney is sick and I don't know when will I see her to do the actual suing (they may offer some sort of arrangement, and if they can give me a new client, I'd drop the charges). But until them I just live in constant fear, studying on my own, sending job appliances I would not be able to accept even if I was offered them (very hard), and worrying if anything I am doing will actually solve things.
Just wanted to say it loud. People would tell me that it would have been better to go on with the surgery and live minimalistically off my savings until something good happens again, but I'm too afraid about reaching the end or the road, while anxiety and depression keeps grinding me. I am taking benzodiopamines again, but I can't take the antidepressants, since they mess my capacity to study. I also don't see my friends a lot, and whenever money is required for some activity, I always back away. I don't have the courage to see them...
