Not gonna lie. I have been struggling extremely hard with depression, anxiety, and dysphoria lately. Started a few weeks ago but it is building up very badly. I don't know what to do. I constantly feel lost, desperate, frustrated, and just outright broken.
I also don't feel that I have anyone to really talk to about it directly, in person, and wind up just venting on the internet as I am now. I love my girlfriend dearly, but she is unfortunately not really someone who is able to help at all. She is not a patient person, she admits it and is working on it, and has a very strong "just do it, don't think" attitude to things and is prone to getting frustrated when others don't. But that is not how OCD and anxiety works. That attitude only makes things worse. I made her read a "what not to say or do to someone with OCD" article last night, and it only made her more frustrated. This only adds to my feelings. It's a spiral, and it terrifies me for the future of our relationship if we don't figure this out.
But that is only a complication, its not even the core issue. Mostly it's just I am extremely unhappy with where I am transition wise along with weight loss... I feel like I have given up on things I used to find a lot of joy in doing. I virtually never wear earrings. I haven't put makeup on... hell, in over half a year. I don't try. I can't muster up the energy to. I desperately need to feel like I can walk out of the house and just be me without jumping through hoops. My hair transplants haven't done near enough on that front and I have virtually 100% growth of the grafts at this point, so it's not going to get magically better. I'm still bald/extremely thin as hell. My beard is getting a lot better with my new tech, but I am still a very long ways off from full removal. i am probably going to total 2 years+ for removal while others average 1 year for laser on beard. I know it's still better than having to do electrolysis, but being so far behind the curve within the comparison to other people doing laser just adds to my feelings of failure and lack of progress. I've mentioned before numerous times my hair is my major sense of dysphoria, and it just continues to feel so hopeless. i try to wear the wig to certain events, but it feels so oppressive and strangling and even if I feel I look better, the fact I'm having to wear it at all makes me feel like a failure and extremely dysphoric. I know, it's very common to have to wear one even for cis women, and that is a completely irrational feeling, but I can't help but feel it nonetheless. Yay for OCD irrationality... What is almost the worst thing as it should be the issue taken care of without extraneous intervention, is that body hair persists. It's reduced, but I'm still on the high end of body hair even for guys. I always talked to people, including my gf, who said "I began super hairy, but it was all gone by a year, no problem!". Well, that year and some change has come and gone and here I am. Again, failure.
(CONTENT WARNING FOR SEXUAL ISSUES)
i also am just a total mess sexually. I don't just have the usual issues people have while on HRT, I have some that I have found virtually no references to (though one person has told me what I am describing is something they had while on Finasteride, so I am going to stop that and see what happens, that is about the only direct connection I've found). I still function and things will "rev up" so to speak, but after a minute it's just like... everything goes numb. I lose all sense of pleasure, all sense of being in the moment, all sense of emotional attachment, all sense of attraction and feeling in general. It just disappears and I'm left feeling empty and sad. But if something is painful or even slightly uncomfortable, I sure as hell continue to feel that so there is no continuing to sort of power through it. I have yet to experience any of the post HRT joys others have described with sex. And as I never experienced them prior to HRT either, I feel like I have been robbed of a fundamental human experience. I've experienced nothing. I've felt almost nothing.
Then of course there's the good old fashioned dysphoria issues with the rest of my body, frustrated heavily by weight! I see the makings of underlying figure change and things of that nature (if I have one positive to report in the midst of this, my boobs and butt have done quite well), but that frustrating male fat is still there covering it up. I don't look like a woman. I look like an overweight guy with some gynecomastia. It doesn't matter what I do, the needle doesn't budge on weight. Doctors have told me to try things, put me on phentermine, none of it matters. It's like once I started HRT everything froze in place and then eventually started going back up. I'm on the third floor and between various things get almost enough daily exercise just going up and down constantly. Even when I am not actively sticking to diet, I shouldn't be eating enough to gain, much less put back on 25 pounds! And to put a real cruel twist on things, even the male muscle mass won't go away! I sit there and I look at my stomach fat and my upper arms (I despise my biceps with a passion, almost a bad as hair issues) and I just feel crappy. What's super frustrating with all of this, is my face? The thing that is usually people's largest issue? My face is fine aside from the beard shadow. But for me it's like a cruel taunt, and makes me even more dysphoric when taken as a whole.
I tried to alleviate some of these issues by attempting to make progress such as looking into GCS surgeons, but after an initial mental boost everything collapsed as it settled in that even with the relatively cheap pricepoint for Macphee, I still am nowhere near being able to afford GCS. Particularly since I think I'd have to prioritize another hair transplant first.
Money of course continues to be my daily, run of the mill life issue. I'm not sure at this point how I'm going to fully pay for my master's degree program even at the extremely cheap price point, and I realized a student loan isn't even an option there because for graduate degrees you have to start paying out immediately and I don't have the money to. And I know I need to be in therapy, but as with everything else, I can't afford it, which then in turn sets off my anxiety and makes it all worse again!
