[Okay ... I didn't mean for it to get this long ... and, no, I haven't come up with a title for it ...]
I stop checking up for a few days and this topic comes up, I can relate this so much. So, so much. In fact any time I try typing about it I have to back up and rephrase (expletives ahoy!). I don't believe I could hate my binders much more than I do at this point.
I've been binding for seven-ish years and I am so frustrated with it. Like everyone else--I can't go out/or be around
anyone without it. Which is a joy, because I work a very movement orientated job, we're encouraged to sweat ("I want to see smoke comin' off of those heels!") and the temperature of our building is controlled by HQ--all the way across the country--we can complain about it all we want (especially during summer) and there's nothing that they will do about it because the heat sensors in our building are under whatever they consider 'hot'. So, lately I've been removing my sweaty, disgusting binder after work for a breather, and if I have to see anyone/go get the mail/whatever back on it goes. Lovely.
Plus I'm naturally very warm (and since starting T, even warmer)--I bike to work in 8*F winter weather wearing a t-shirt and jeans because otherwise I'm too warm ... Luckily I'm fairly small (A-ish, I guess, I've never measured) so I don't have to layer but the fact is I wouldn't--I don't think I'd make it, I'd die in a pool of my own sweat.
I also hate been touched and binding feels like a perma-hug to me. When my dad asks for my help/offers me jobs to do around the yard, I'd love to, but I know I would get hot and sweaty and miserable very quickly--especially when I then have to see him work shirtless knowing that I can't. Same with hiking, biking around for fun, swimming (which I haven't done in ages for this precise reason)
... and on and on.
I figure with all of my negativity, I'll include what gets me to through wearing it ... What I like:
I (really, really) love the effect of wearing a binder, I can get pretty flat, although I still suffer a bit of paranoia about it; I like that it prevents shirt-to-chest skin contact which, with the offending materials, feels really wrong. Um, lack of movement up and down stairs. Being able to fit in small spaces (between pallets at work). All the women I work with who handle freight throughout the day also end up with a very ... discernible pattern on the front of their shirts from all of the dirt transferred from the boxes, which I neatly avoid due to binding.
I also like that my time of binding is coming to a close soon--I'm scheduled for top surgery next month and after the post-op binder I am so looking forward to being free of it.
Worst binding experience:
I got a new binder, my last one had worn out enough to replace it, and the first day of wearing it (ie beginning of the breaking in time) I crash my bike, breaking my clavicle. I lose pretty much all of the ability to push/pull stuff with my right arm and I couldn't get the darned thing off. There was no way I was calling someone if to help me, because nobody gets (has to?) to see me shirtless--it's brand new so there was no way I was cutting myself out of it--$30 down the drain ... so I wore it for four days/3 nights non-stop. I finally get enough strength/gumption to reach back and pull it off, quickly but painfully. I sit down to catch my breath for about ten seconds, when I hear my mother call up the stairs to me saying that she had time to take me to work to turn in my doctors note. So I had to turn around and do it again, putting it back on. I don't don't think there is an emote capable of successfully encompassing my reaction.
So ... uh, fear not, you are not alone!
Oh, and I don't get any chest pain from it--I have had more back pain recently but I don't know whether that's from gaining more muscle there, sleeping funny, mild scoliosis, working, any of those things in conjunction with binding, or anything else I could have done.
