EDIT: For those concerned about how this story sounds: I’m leaving out a ton of detail for the sake of brevity. The history of how I’ve felt about possibly being trans technically goes back since I was a kid. And over the past years its been more notable and its intensified in the past few months. Past few days are just sort of a sudden cracking of the egg.

EDIT2: Also, HRT doesn’t bring about any permanent effects for the first few months is what I’ve read. Just softening of the skin basically and emotional changes. Some of you freaking out about me immediately starting HRT are being alarmist. If by some incredibly unlikely situation I end up hating being on HRT I’ll figure it out within the first month or three and stop. But I know that’s not going to happen TBH.

So, let me give some quick explanation on how I got here: Last Thursday, a girl I was essentially obsessed with told me to fuck off forever, even as a friend. To be honest I alienated my entire friend group surrounding her. I deserved this by any conventional measure, but that’s not what I want to litigate.

I had been on a mental loop essentially obsessing over her, and when it was clear I’d not get to even be her friend anymore, let alone be with her romantically, I realized I had absolutely nothing to think about or put my energy into. She was kind of part of my last (I’m autistic) hyper fixation of romance that had crumbled before me. I went from Video games to Politics to Romance. I cared about nothing for a few days, purely operating on survival mode, work was absolutely miserable and free time I sat around doing essentially nothing but thinking and watching garbage youtube. I did not want to live anymore, though I had suicidal ideation even before she rejected even my friendship.

Saturday night and Sunday morning, in bed I ruminated about the only thing left basically all night waking up randomly: myself. My identity. Who the fuck am I? I wont get to heavy into details but I realized I was in denial with my “gender ambivalence” I wasn’t ambivalent. I’m a transwoman. I told a friend and they immediately called me “Girrl!” and called me by a feminine form of my name via text. I immediately liked this to an extreme degree. And I think this kind of confirms it. I literally had a strong emotional sense of pleasure. I’ve never been excited to be a guy.

I feel both amazingly good about this revelation but also extremely… sad. I’m 38. I feel like I missed out on literally the best possible years to be a woman and I’m about to go into the worst. And the years I lived as a man were pretty terrible. I feel like I’ve been cheated.

I’ve realized the only real way I’m going to manage any real romance is to embrace who I actually am and stop pretending. I thought all my masking was to appear allistic (I’m autistic) but I was also essentially masking my gender. Pretending to be a guy. And I fucking suck at it.

Fortunately, I’ve aged surprisingly well despite being 38. I have all my hair. I already have a somewhat elven-esque pretty boy face even today that I think will not really require facial work. I have a “sing-song” voice for a guy. I am naturally relatively lanky/thin. Because I’m an indoors and night time person I’ve suffered minimal to zero UV damage to my skin and I don’t smoke.

This almost stings more though: god how cute I could have been! What an absolute waste. But there is something to be salvaged at least. I plan to start HRT ASAP. I intend to call Planned Parenthood today.

Anyway, the actual question is: Other than HRT, what do I do now? What do I need to be careful about? What should I avoid? What should I try?

  • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
    2·
    4 days ago

    i was in a similar situation to you physically, it’s really never too late to start. i repped for over 20 years before starting transition in my 30s. i didn’t have a huge crashout but hanging out with other trans women made it feel a lot more approachable. it finally got to me and i started hrt.

    once you start and get used to hrt, i highly recommend getting on shots if you can tolerate it. multi-day cycles are way better than having swings during the day or based on your metabolism. injectable also doesn’t hit your liver and is pretty easy to stockpile.

    if you have any way to get laser or electrolysis, i found that made a huge difference in my mental health as well as how other people interpret my appearance and address me. you can find places to do it on the cheap, esthetician schools often let you get that work done for deep discounts. i started doing that as soon as i started hrt, the androgen suppression means you won’t get as much regrowth.

    eating food is another big one, you will get fat redistribution on hrt but it requires that you have some fat to redistribute. i really had to work through a lot of restrictive behavior patterns that i’d accumulated over the years, but it’s been worth it to grow tits and ass.

    • HalfSalesman@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      4 days ago

      i didn’t have a huge crashout but hanging out with other trans women made it feel a lot more approachable. it finally got to me and i started hrt.

      My old friend group hates me because of the fallout of my obsessing over a transwoman within the group. They are basically all LGBT. It kind of hurts that a huge swath of local LGBT people now basically hate me with basically no hope for them coming back around. That’s going to make things difficult.

      What is funny though is I kind of care less now? Like, as a guy my thoughts have also been very socially tactical because it was mostly a hollow mask anyway. Sure it was partially made up of aspects of me, but the presentation was purely extrinsically motivated. But now its like… I’m just being me so fuck it you know? My north star is just being me. Let them be haters.

      once you start and get used to hrt, i highly recommend getting on shots if you can tolerate it. multi-day cycles are way better than having swings during the day or based on your metabolism. injectable also doesn’t hit your liver and is pretty easy to stockpile.

      I was thinking patches, I heard they’re just as good? I’m not afraid of needles, I get every vaccination basically. Though I don’t like the idea of administering such myself.

      if you have any way to get laser or electrolysis, i found that made a huge difference in my mental health as well as how other people interpret my appearance and address me. you can find places to do it on the cheap, esthetician schools often let you get that work done for deep discounts. i started doing that as soon as i started hrt, the androgen suppression means you won’t get as much regrowth.

      I intend to acquire HRT this Friday. I suppose I could look around for laser hair removal but I’m little worried about my budget. I’m not a rich transgirl. I’m not entirely broke either but man I know this shit is going to be expensive.

      eating food is another big one, you will get fat redistribution on hrt but it requires that you have some fat to redistribute. i really had to work through a lot of restrictive behavior patterns that i’d accumulated over the years, but it’s been worth it to grow tits and ass.

      Yeah that makes sense. Also exercise to my understanding can speed things up.

      • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
        1·
        4 days ago

        I suppose I could look around for laser hair removal but I’m little worried about my budget.

        i had saved up a bit in advance, but not a ton. doing it through a school definitely made that money stretch out a lot.

        I was thinking patches, I heard they’re just as good?

        they are okay, i used them very briefly when my insurance was giving me shit. too much skin irritation and the dose you end up with depends on how well it sticks to you. plus the dosing on those is more for cis women in menopause unless you use a bunch. to get to a therapeutic dose with those i’d need 3-5 of the largest patches, rotated twice a week. they are also relatively expensive and not always easy to source. compared to that i found sticking myself every 5 days is way easier.

        you definitely don’t need to start with that, but it’s very easy to do subcutaneous injections. i rarely draw blood and barely feel a thing these days. i ended up injecting in my torso because i’m pretty thin and when i was doing it in my leg i’d always be hitting muscle.

        It kind of hurts that a huge swath of local LGBT people now basically hate me with basically no hope for them coming back around.

        that does hurt, i hope you are able to find some community. i do hope you are reflecting on this though, it’s not fun having other people (including other trans people) obsessing over you. if someone in any friend group becomes the focus of someone else’s fixation, the group is going to close ranks around that person.

        the reason i say to reflect on this is that if your takeaway is that they’re ‘haters’ you’ll carry that and associated behaviors into the next community and it’ll happen again.

        if the takeaway is ‘i did something that made someone uncomfortable and i need to understand what that was and not repeat it,’ that’s a thing you can actually work on. plus it leaves the door open to rebuilding somewhere, maybe even with some of these people eventually.

        obsessing over a transwoman

        i know you don’t mean anything by it, but in my experience ‘transwoman’ with no space is the preferred spelling of people who tend to argue that trans women aren’t women. not passing judgement, just fyi. i prefer to use trans as an adjective, like ‘tall’ or ‘loud’ or ‘annoying’.

        I intend to acquire HRT this Friday.

        good luck, i started via informed consent at pp and it was not difficult at all, but definitely recommend getting your primary care doctor in the loop for running ultrasensitive estradiol bloodwork routinely

        • HalfSalesman@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          2·
          4 days ago

          that does hurt, i hope you are able to find some community. i do hope you are reflecting on this though, it’s not fun having other people (including other trans people) obsessing over you. if someone in any friend group becomes the focus of someone else’s fixation, the group is going to close ranks around that person.

          the reason i say to reflect on this is that if your takeaway is that they’re ‘haters’ you’ll carry that and associated behaviors into the next community and it’ll happen again.

          One certain member really doesn’t seem interested in giving me an another chance, to the point that they’ve told me they don’t even want to see me again and called me a “miserable little creep”. At this point they’re at least specifically a hater. Its surreal to think they started off hitting on me when they first met me.

          There is a few that are mostly just extremely annoyed with me or dislike me and a few that are still friendly that I can talk to. But they hang around the specific unforgiving individual and it makes it extremely difficult. And the woman herself started off pretty forgiving (more so than the main hater) but as I tried hanging with her thinking she was cool with me still I realized she was using the main angry hater as a sort of proxy shield because she finally told me to just go away.

          if the takeaway is ‘i did something that made someone uncomfortable and i need to understand what that was and not repeat it,’ that’s a thing you can actually work on. plus it leaves the door open to rebuilding somewhere, maybe even with some of these people eventually.

          I’m not entirely sure how I stop myself from obsessing that’s just kind of how my brain works. There drugs for this maybe?

          Its also how I engage with basically everything in life. I don’t do “balance” lol. I go all in.

          Which is what I intend to do with this transition.

          i know you don’t mean anything by it, but in my experience ‘transwoman’ with no space is the preferred spelling of people who tend to argue that trans women aren’t women. not passing judgement, just fyi. i prefer to use trans as an adjective, like ‘tall’ or ‘loud’ or ‘annoying’.

          Oh, no genuinely did not know that. Thank you for the heads up I’ll avoid doing so in the future. I’ve always kind of swapped back and forth I think. Kind of makes sense. Its sort of like Autistic person vs person with Autism. (or Autist… lol)

          good luck, i started via informed consent at pp and it was not difficult at all, but definitely recommend getting your primary care doctor in the loop for running ultrasensitive estradiol bloodwork routinely

          Thank you <3