Okay, so like the title suggests......I hit my one year mark!!! It was a few days ago, but I've been too busy to make a post. ha ha. I recorded a video and uploaded it to my YouTube Channel, but also just wanted to post a little update here.
Wow what a year this has been! When you set out on this journey, you really have no idea all of the different directions life is going to end up pulling you in. You hope that one day you will be perfectly comfortable going out in public presenting as your true gender, but it can be such a tremendous struggle to get there, along with a LOT of struggles and situations that you had not forseen. Little situations that arise that you find yourself standing there like "Huh....I had not anticipated THAT!". ha ha.
About 5 months ago is when it turned for me, that I suddenly felt far more comfortable and normal presenting as "female" in public than as my old usual, comfortable male self that I got so used to. When I get up in the morning and put my makeup and skirt on now, no longer do I feel like I am trying to make myself into something else than what the world saw me as. But instead I honestly feel like "Yep, I'm a woman, getting ready just like any other woman.
As I talk about in my video, there are still certain situations in women's changing rooms and certain restrooms where I am still nervous and harbor some unhealthy anxiety. But at least I recognize that, and am working to get over it. Time is a great healer and processor of emotions that hold us back in life. And I am giving myself the proper time to experience these things in a way that I can learn and grow from them.
Being trans causes some very interesting perceptions in life. Things that we notice and focus on, that others would not even pay any attention to at all.
I am so very happy because the most incredible thing is happening to me now. I finally, after all of this time, truly "feel" female in my body. Even though I still have my penis (Hopefully not any longer than 2 more years) I am able to truly feel now like the woman I really am. After a year of hormones, by body is softer, far less body hair, my boobs are a very decent size for my liking, my legs look very feminine and soft, my hands look far less masculine as do my arms and feet. My laser hair treatments have almost completely eliminated all of the dark hair on my face, and now I need to think about starting electrolysis to get rid of the rest. I've been living full time everywhere I go, other than like I mentioned in my video, if I am working on one of my cars, I don't like to risk damaging my wig so I tend to not wear it, and also I still deal with wanting to be taken seriously when I go to the auto parts store so sometimes I will go in "boy mode" and I hate it. I feel like I'm so out of place, and almost like a fraud. That I don't have the strength to dress as myself in those difficult situations.
For the most part, I have gotten way better at just making myself deal with the hard situations. Because I have learned that if I allow myself to not have to deal with the uncomfortable hard situations, it is far too easy for me to just not deal with it, and I don't learn and grown from that. If I allow myself to avoid every uncomfortable situation, then I will never get better at handling them.
For example........I love to sing. It has been my dream for many years to be known for my singing. Not that I think I'm all that amazing, but I think I'm alright. However.......I have always been such a quiet individual, that I could never make myself sing in front of people. I would get waaaaay too nervous and I could not sing. However.......with all of this learning to be unappologetically myself, and learning to deal with the most uncomfortable of situations, I have discovered an inner confidence that I have never experienced before in my life. An inner confidence that literally feels almost unstoppable now, where I can finally see myself achieving the dreams and goals I had passed off my entire life as mere pipe dreams. I am now making the real me, into reality, and it is amazing!
But yeah, a couple weeks ago my wife and I went to karaoke night at a bar. I was perfectly sober, only had one beer a couple hours before. So it definitely was not liquid courage that got me up there. I was wearing my most favorite butterfly dress. This one:
IMG_6257 And I was only mildly nervous. It was amazing though to see everyone in the bar immediately start clapping and cheering and things. I had never experienced that before in my life, because I had always been far too nervous to do such a thing. Now here's the funny part.......my voice is still very much my biggest issue. I have been working on talking more feminine. But still have a LONG way to go. Singing..........depending on the song I sing can either sound somewhat feminine or......completely not. Ha ha. That night I chose to sing Jason Aldean's Hicktown, in my country male singer voice. And......I have mixed feelings about that now. While it is a song that I know incredibly well, and was the safest possible one for me to sing for that reason.........I now feel incredibly weird about getting up there, presenting 100 percent as female, but singing in front of everybody in my low, very male voice. Part of me recognizes that "Hey, you are trans.......they liked it.........Get over it and move on." But the other part of me feels like I basically betrayed myself. Here I am presenting everywhere in life as female, my driver's license identifies me as female, but I stand up there in a crowded bar and sing my heart out as a man. And that makes me feel bad about having done it. However.......aside from that, it was an amazing learning and growing experience for me. I was for the first time in my life, finally able to do something I had wanted to do for many years. Got up and sang in front of people. And it was amazing! I just wish my voice was such that I could sing with a female voice and not seem to betray everything I am working toward here. ha ha
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Here is my YouTube Video
Another thing I am currently experiencing.........a couple weeks ago, I started getting really bad migraines. The kind that come with stroke like symptoms. Inability to speak, vision goes out, arm goes numb, can't remember my own wifes and daughters names. I usually only get one or two a year. But all of a sudden a couple weeks ago, I started getting them almost every day. So I've started to try to eliminate things trying to narrow down what might be causing this seriously debilitating condition. And currently my Sprironolactone is on the chopping block. I have an appointment with my endocrinologist in a couple days to discuss it, but in the meantime I have stopped taking it in order to see if maybe that's what's causing the problem, after researching online and discovering that many other trans people have experienced severe migraines while on the stuff as well. So.......I am experiencing some pretty severe worries right now that the testosterone is going to start destroying my body again. I know it will take a long time to undo all the amazing progress I have done, but there is still that terribly debilitating fear in the back of my mind. I am so happy to have made the progress I have made, to where I truly feel female now, that the thought of ever going back, makes me severely depressed and worried. So I need to get with my endocrinologist and figure out what we can do. If it IS the Spironalactone causing it, and I have to go off of it, I sure hope there is something else that will work just as good. Also I am going to see what she thinks about estrogen injections as opposed to the pill. The pill has been great, and I have seen a LOT of changes with just the pill, but I know there a MANY transwomen out there who insist that it wasn't til they started the injections that they really started to see serious improvements. So I don't know. It is possible that the estrogen is what's causing my migraines, and I refuse to even give that thought any attention, because I cannot fathom having to go off of the estrogen. But yeah, I am currently suffering some pretty serious struggles with having to go off the spironolactone for a while. Yesterday I found myself getting super agitated at every little thing. An agitated feeling like I hadn't felt for quite some time. I really don't think it would be possible for my body to start creating testosterone again that soon after going off the spironalactone, but maybe it can. But......now it's been a few days since I last took any, and I'm pretty sure I feel yet another migraine coming on right now. Having a hard time seeing the words as I type them. This really sucks bad!!!! So maybe it's not the spironalactone afterall. Who knows.
So anyway, yeah! That's my one year on HRT update. So much more I could say, but you all have your own experiences to have. ha ha Thanks for reading and watching and things! Take care!
