I guess this week has been less about the body and more about the mind.
I saw my pshrink for the first time in more than a month, with the insurance change I now have to see her at the hospital practice she's associated with and we still have to do the formal intake appointment and setup a regular schedule however she unexpectedly made time on short notice and so we met Wednesday. And it was nice - notably different than in her private practice, we met in a quite sterile office compared to her private office that's simple but nice and has a comfortable feel. Also she has to do note taking on a computer in this context - in her private practice it's always hand-written notes.
So this weird thing happened that's absolutely never happened before. She needed to make an entry about a supplement I take for increased dopamine levels and got a bit stuck on finding the right way to put that in. In that time her attention wandered from what we were working on. A simple thing, but it was very strange because this doc has always had laser focus on whatever I'm talking about and we're always relating, making eye contact and in every single moment I'm in her presence I feel heard.
I'm a big fan of technology bringing people closer together and *not* drawing attention from interaction and try to be very good about not letting my attention get drawn to my phone when I'm interacting with people but there we were with her professional obligation changing the dynamic -- happily only in a small way. It's all good and the session was fine, it was just very interesting for me to find a different experience from simply being in a different office.
A lot of stuff has happened in the time since I'd seen her last and it was really good to get back into the flow. It's also true that I'm beginning to see the end of a need for therapy. The year+ of getting ready for GCS was extremely stressful and if being on HRT was making my life better, the additional mental load definitely made things pretty turbulent. My pshrink and I are definitely friends, there is transference and counter-transference between us (I was honestly surprised that she said she'd missed seeing me, however she did so 3 times, hard to miss).
Anyhow, otherwise this week has involved a bit too much of not feeling good about my body, too conscious of not passing and as it happens of having been either deadnamed or misgendered quite a lot more this week than most weeks. On the other hand I've been glad to observe that my GF has been correctly gendering me which is a hurdle that's taken some time.
Happily the GF and I are going to the cape this weekend,. we have a free place to stay and while my work has all been going fine, it will be nice to not be working a weekend for the first time in quite a while. Plus I'm going to get to visit the gallery where I have some work up for sale.
I guess right now what I'm feeling is I hope in my next life I can come back as a happier, prettier female. I don't even care about cis vs trans. In this life it took me 60 years to begin to feel OK about myself. That's too long. This week I've let most of my dilation time be spent either reading vintage lesbian pulp fiction or browsing tumbler images of women kissing. Nothing pornographic, everything romantic with femme touches.
Yep, a bit of tears forming. HRT lets me be emotional in ways that I always was before but which were experienced through such a fog, even on the last day of my cycle, the low ebb of my estrogen levels, inside I'm such a girly girl.
I always thought that GCS wouldn't change much and admittedly I have only experienced my correct hormone levels in the context of a very accelerated year of getting ready for surgery. Still, making my body right has had a profound impact on my mind. I consider my experience as absolute validation that body and mind cannot be divorced, that health in one is very tied to the health of the other.
