I'm in a rather unique situation, as hormone therapy has left me unable to grow a long beard, though after just a few weeks I can still get short amounts of hair that are quite thick. This has its advantages when I'm not looking to present in girl mode, though when I do want a more feminine look it means I can get a really close shave. However, due to a condition I suffered from (during a period when I was still coping with the aftermath of a failed transition in my late teens), I am left with a few visible scars* that a little shadow helps to cover, but it's not as if I want to be dealing with that when I'm trying to pass as female. While I'd rather prefer to not run the risk of saying anything that could be seen as triggering, I genuinely do feel that sometimes it would have been a lot easier if I'd just decided to go all the way and become a woman instead of being genderfluid. On the other hand, my partner means far too much for me to give up the safe, loving and supporting environment we've built for each other over the last nine years. Besides, we've spoken about "it," and the door is always open for me further down the line - it's not as if either of us are planning to go anywhere, so if I ever decided to attempt transitioning again then at least we'd try crossing that bridge together. For now, I'm happy identifying as non-binary, which suits me better, anyway. Also, there's too much we want to do that may not otherwise be possible if I took this up sooner as opposed to further down the line, such as hopefully one day expanding our family.
*For the record, this wasn't self-harm or anything like that. To be honest, I let my teeth get in a pretty bad state, resulting in one of my saliva glands becoming infected. I very nearly died from a heart attack brought on by a particularly aggressive bout of blood poisoning, and one of the drugs used to treat me in hospital caused an allergic reaction that I couldn't possibly have anticipated, one side of my face ballooning to a point where I'm still probably never going to fully recover, thanks in part to the fact no dentist will treat my various problems until I've gone six months without anything flaring back up. Nearly eight years after my initial period of illness, this has yet to be the case, so I'm resigned to the fact I might not even be able to restart hormones and undergo gender reassignment surgery, even if I wanted to.
P.S. Back in college, friends used to affectionately call me Snake because of my long hair and beard making me resemble the main character in Metal Gear Solid. I guess it didn't help that I also used to chain smoke about 40 cigarettes a day, with 10 cigars on top of this, causing me to sound very much like him as well. These days, I've managed to cut right down to about 10 unfiltered cigarettes a day, the rest of my nicotine intake now coming from less harmful alternatives - mainly an inhaler or the very occasional electronic cigarette, though I'm not using one of these at the moment because I found they started to taste horrible just before running out entirely. If this means I've more chance of quitting altogether then I shouldn't complain, right?
