I've gone into it with barely any expectations.
I wasn't expecting T to do anything good for me. I wasn't expecting to feel much different (definitely not daring to use the word "happier"). I wasn't expecting others to acknowledge my new state. I wasn't expecting people to be kind to me at all if they knew about it. I wasn't expecting the NHS to be quick or easy. I was mostly just expecting it to make my life more complicated and difficult (and expensive), with the slim hope that I might find at the end of transition a more palatable flavor to my existence? I have deliberately avoided thinking about the sort of body "I would like" because that probably isn't going to be close to what I will get.
So I haven't been too disappointed. T has been very good, it's acted like a combination anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication, along with other benefits. I'd say it's been worth doing just for that alone, as I don't feel negatively any more (I feel like I've moved a notch up to "neutral", which is a decent improvement over the rest of life till now, and sometimes I just feel very content). I put a lot of emphasis on my own mental health and it's been great for that. I'm not an unstable person at all, but being stable and depressed just means you get to experience a slightly more dignified personal limbo. It's done the various things I was expecting physically and fast too. I'm still not sure how I feel about the voice, but I like it better than before. It's enabled me to relax a bit around the topic of sex which for my entire life felt was some sort of cruel joke because the adult brain demands it, but my adult brain and body was also equally disgusted by having much to do with it. The most powerful desire being to disregard any drive and avoid it. I'm still not 100% happy about it, but at least it doesn't cause me religious-level feelings of aversion any more. I can almost enjoy it like a "normal" person.
There was nothing much wrong with my self esteem or feeling of internal sense of maleness beforehand anyway so no change there other than affirmation. I was surprised by an increase in general confidence and sociability with people. I don't mind shooting the breeze with strangers now, which was something I would avoid before due to some compulsion to keep to myself. Less self-conscious.
But on the whole there haven't been profound changes or discoveries or revelations, as expected. The most unpleasant thing I've found so far about transition that I didn't expect is it has brought home to me the crushing weight of the "malaise" of this trans condition I've had all my life. It was as if I didn't know just how many balls and chains I've been dragging behind me holding me down for 38 years, and that some of them are still going to be there when I finally croak. I find it a lot more difficult as a result to feel like a "normal person". I swear, before I knew this was my problem fully, I felt I could understand other people. Now I think that was an illusion and assumption on my part - I don't think I know what it's like to feel fully, instinctively/viscerally/naturally at ease with so many things and I don't think it's my lot that I ever will be. Coming to terms with this state that's apparently been passed onto or put onto me is still in progress. That said, there are abilities/proclivities and viewpoints gifted by that state as well that the average person just doesn't seem to have and that I do. Just settling in to this new realization that my child self seemed somehow instinctively aware of, but that my adult self had somehow lost sight of is a bit strange; I'm surprised how astute my child self really was about itself. I was under no illusions about not being the average and not ever being able to live the average person's life easily or having the average person's goals. I always knew I was going to be quite isolated, and that never bothered me up until I got it into my head that I could conquer the "normal person's realm" and have a regular life. Not to say this applies to anyone else transitioning - but it does to me. I can see now I will not ever know that sort of life. I'm not sure if I'm sad about it, or just don't care.
