Quote from: MissKairi on July 03, 2017, 01:50:45 PM
Its been a peaceful few days in my head. No dysphoria whatsoever. I had a lot of other pressing things on my mind so thats helped a lot and Ive been very gender neutral. i.e. no thoughts about gender whatsoever.
So I have been sitting here and in runs dysphoria in a bright yellow dress, giggling and running around screaning "hi! did you miss me?"
The thing is, I did.
Nice description, haha!
I hadn't been thinking too much about gender for an hour or so, but then I got "ma'am"ed a couple times... the first time, I actually didn't even register it right away. Like I only realized it had happened after I'd been "ma'am"ed a second time in the same conversation. That's how I've always felt about female references or pronouns being used toward me... it takes me a second to even realize they're talking about me because I've just never connected to those terms and they've always felt... odd in a weird way I couldn't quite describe.
I didn't correct that person; I haven't even asked many people to use male pronouns yet. But I'm realizing my dysphoria takes two forms: the anxious, itchy, painful, must-do-something-about-this-NOW dysphoria, which I find easiest to recognize, the one that drove me to buy men's clothes and a binder and to come out to people; and the heavy, crushing, defeated, depressed dysphoria. That's the kind of dysphoria that makes me think, "You should just give up. No one will ever see you as male. There's no point." I didn't recognize it for what it was until today.
I used to experience a lot more of the second one than I do now--it would squash the first kind within an hour of its beginning. That kind of dysphoria doesn't lead to action, which must be why I never took steps toward transition before. I'm just now understanding it. I used to go weeks or even months without experiencing dysphoria. Now I don't go more than a few hours without it. Things have definitely changed.