#dont tell your (one) grandma

[sharkneto]

Hey, sorry if this is a bit of a personal question - and feel free to ignore it if it is - but how did you know you wanted to start hrt? I am someone who IDs as transmasc and knows in an ideal world, I would've loved to have been born a guy. But the idea of going on hormones is terrifying because I can't figure out if I really want it... I worry about regretting it, or it making me 'unappealing' physically, or my friends judging me for it. Did you ever struggle with similar worries?

I think every person thinking about and starting HRT goes through this. A rite of passage, if you will, and also not a bad thing to do. HRT is a big step, some of the changes (especially on T) are irreversible. It's good to think through if it's a choice that's right for you or not.

That said, it's also Just A Thing You Can Do. I first started really questioning my gender at the end of 2020 (thank you, Elliot Page, for coming out and making me go "oh shit, you can do that?"). I got a therapist to talk about gender... Mid 2022? And started hormones spring 2023, top surgery a year later.

Before getting the therapist, I spent over a year Just Thinking About It. And a lot of the thoughts were around the changes on T and if I'd like them or not or if I'd regret them. If I'd be ugly, after being conventionally attractive as a woman.

It hits a point, though, where eventually you have to pull the plug one way or another. I spent a lot of time thinking about how my body would change on T. A Lot. With longing. I caught myself putting things off Until I Knew For Sure and because I didn't want to do it while being perceived as a woman. I was sitting, treading water for a hypothetical Later that I could start moving towards at any time. I was scared for the Teenage Round 2 phase, and didn't want to spend months being "ugly and awkward", but then the months passed anyway and I was still in the same spot.

HRT isn't an all-or-nothing thing, you can ease into it on a low dose. My doctor started me on a low dose and we ramped up over months. Some T changes can start pretty quickly (voice dropping, bottom growth - this isn't true for everyone, but was true for me). If these changes excite you, make you feel good - great! Keep going! If they scare you, feel wrong - stop. Assess. Figure out what about it isn't right (a gender therapist for all of this process is a Huge Help). In early days if you stop T, the changes can revert, for the most part. But you can always stop at any time.

The bigger thing I actively worked to wrap my head around before starting HRT is - Who Cares If You're Wrong? What's right for you now might not be right for you later. The idea of detransitioning was scary to me, society has such a weird spotlight on it, the Right uses people who have detransitioned as props against transition. But it shouldn't matter. At the end of the day, if I do change my mind, I'll know myself better, and I don't think it's wrong to chase and find comfort in your own body.

A year+ on T, I've mostly made it through the ugly duck phase, I think. I was lucky, I didn't get bad acne or get too oily or anything (after having horrible acne in my first puberty). Most of what I dealt with was the chronic baby face, where I was getting read as male but a teenager - I'm almost 30 and a woman wanted to card me over a free T-shirt at a baseball game because it had beer logos on it. After some middle months of changes and going "oh my god what am I doing" and not feeling confident in how this was all going to turn out, I think of myself as relatively attractive and I think I'm just going to get more vain as my beard comes in. Some of that is physical, sure, but I think a significant amount of that is me feeling more confident in myself and liking the body I'm in more. I was never a selfie or picture person, now I am. I joke I'm like a budgie, always looking at myself if there's a reflective surface nearby. I'm more excited to exercise, I'm interested in lifting weights for the first time, I'm curious what my body on T can do and become. Keep your eyes on the pieces that are going well, the changes exciting you, and let the rest catch up.

My social circle helped a lot. I'm very lucky and blessed to have great friends and family, all of whom are supportive. If you don't have friends who are supportive of you, that are judging you for exploring yourself rather than lifting you up for it, it's a sign to expand the social circle and find ones that are. Family is harder, but that's a thing you have to navigate for yourself and find your own boundaries for.

So, there's no ~one moment~ where you're 100% certain that medical transition is right for you. It's a huge unknown and you're changing the body you've had your entire life. At some point, though, you just have to jump and see how it lands. Part of being alive is making mistakes and doing things you might regret.

That said, the regret rate for trans people is something like 3%. The regret rate for knee surgery is something like 20%. Trust yourself.

[todayisafridaynight]

Is that character gay? *points at Mine*

Allegedly.

[kathrynmjaneway]

i came out to my parents last night 😄

[lunar-fey]

ohhhh my god. okay. so. my aunt does like, she buys random junk in bulk from retail wholesalers and then resells it on like, facebook marketplace and ebay and stuff. whatever. so my mom works for her. makes a flat $50 a day, regardless of the fact that shes disabled and doing hard labor for at least 8 hours a day, often 10+. and min wage here is $10 an hour but mom argued that $50 a day is still more than what she would make working the same hours at an actual job because of taxes...like girl that would be 50% taxes. you do not pay that fucking much. so thats already Bad.

but today mom shows me a video of a knife theyre gonna sell, and i watch 2 seconds and i realize its an automatic knife, and i tell her hey. thats illegal to possess in this state. let alone sell! and mom is like ohhh [aunt] knows what shes doing itll be fine.... we sell knives on there all the time she just doesnt put pictures and calls them something else on the listing to get around fb/ebays policies :)

LIKE. HELLO. THATS NOT BETTER. YOURE COMMITTING MULTIPLE CRIMES. *AS YOUR JOB.* and she was just like "its not a big deal she knows what shes doing." folks, this is the same aunt that, very illegally, paid me to sort through her clients confidential tax documents and bank records and stuff. because she works for a bank. and took the records home to sort them. i dont think she DOES know what shes doing, actually!

[cute-chamomile]

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[orcelito]

Having lost my cat, my uncle, my great grandmother, my grandma's best friend (& one of the people who helped raise me), AND my dad all within the span of 9 months,

I have little sympathy for people who use deaths as an excuse to be an asshole. I get it, it sucks. Get the fuck over it. Your grief is not an excuse to treat others like shit. What the fuck.

[lucinagoosina]

alison im not your dimitri you arent my anastasia. you wanna be a bisexual woman? go find your own dimitri to try for kids with i dont care. im the queen of france. fuck you and fuck ukraine and fuck russia. youre not my dimitri anymore but you were my last friend when i lost everyone and everything and you abandoned me to homelessness and stole my cat

[meirimerens]

Oyun knower of transgender because he is king of memory and old of man but bad keeper of secrets but good and pure of intentions

Oh this is why I couldn't figure out what you mean 😭😭 babe if you come to my blog with a headcanon I don't ascribe to I'm going to have no idea what the fuck you mean... it's like telling me about Artemy’s ex wife. I adore it for you I do and I love it in general but like. Babe at least mention this is what you mean because otherwise I'm gonna high_cat.jpg!

[stinkrascal]

You were being such a bitch to the slash fiction person, glad to see they’re an upstanding person about it and you acting as a thin skinned loser.

They weren’t even coming off as condescending. Christ.. and to call them grandma, blindly insulting them shows your mental state.

Enjoy your new house I suppose, you don’t deserve it at all for the way you treat people who weren’t being hostile to begin with, please grow up.

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 anon who hurt you

[rottingcompost]

I dont believe in ghosts personally but sometimes its fun to think that it might be a thing, even if I highly doubt they are real.

One example is how my grandma has a small cabin in the back yard of her home and her old dog, as well as my cat Kohga, are both buried behind the cabin.

The interesting thing is that my little brother was supposed to sleep in that cabin in a bunk bed, and one of our cousins had the other bunk, and my brother kept insisting there was something in the closet, or that someone was knocking on the door and windows. I have no idea if my brother actually believes in ghosts because I havent really heard him talk about it at all, but it's interesting how he couldnt sleep out there at all because he was too scared to and kept insidting there was a ghost with them there, when our cousin didnt believe him at all and tried to tell him multiple times that there werent any ghosts there.

Grandmas current dog also REFUSES to go inside that cabin, he will come to a dead stop outside of the cabin and refuse to enter it, and the few times he has been taken into it anyways he has just been standing at the door whimpering and whining and waiting to be let out. He also doesnt go in the general area where the two graves are.

While I dont believe in ghosts, me and my grandma joke about the dog and Kohga haunting the cabin (maybe haunting isnt the right word really but idk) and its kind of nice to think that maybe there is a reason to why the dog reacts like that. I wonder if the same would be true if the cabin was in another spot, or if the graves were somewhere else, or if the dog along with my brother would still react like that.

It's also interesting how my brother is scared of possible ghosts existing, when he has no problem watching horror movies. To be fair I can handle horror pretty well too but ghosts in horror is the one thing I cant handle, so its possible that he is just like me where he doesnt really believe in ghosts but the concept scares him.

Im not sure tho, since I have never heard him talk about ghosts and whether he believe in them or not, but it's still interesting to think about him being scared of sleeping in the cabin as well as the dog being scared of even being in there, and also the two graves being right at the back of the cabin.

Maybe there is something going on there or im looking into it too much, im not sure. Im leaning more towards the latter tho since well, I dont really believe in ghosts. Me and my partner will probably go there some day when they are here tho, since they expressed interest in checking it out.

If anyone else has any input on what they think about that situation or similar ones then please do tell me. All i ask for is that people dont call me dumb for not believing in ghosts being a thing, and for people to not say people who do believe in ghosts are dumb for believing in them. I just want more people's input on this situation and what people think about this specific situation.

[belladonnaprice]

.

[risingsunyoul]

b

[moonisagremlin]

Okay, so a cool thing about me that I discovered today is that, when I was younger, I used to be ambidextreous (Is that correctly spelled? Who cares.) I also discovered that my grandma is ambidextreous (I don't know how I didn't know.)

Well, the thing is that, when they noticed this at school, they basically told my parents that they were going to force me to be right-handed. Why? No fucking idea. And it worked btw I have been right-handed since I can remember

So yeah, that's weird.

[gender-euphowrya]

my grandma has invented the revolutionary concept of a mobile phone you leave at home

[yelloworangesoda]

genuinely like passively suicidal at this point bc i literally dont know why i bother. im not gonna kill myself but like someone deal with me im just dead weight

[kyurilin]

"plan ahead for a healthy and happy holiday" YES THANK YOU CVS I TRIED TO PLAN AHEAD BUT YOU DROPPED THE BALL ON REFILLING MY ADHD MEDS FOR THE THIRD TIME IN 2023 and frankly if they fuck me over again on today the 29th when they've told me since the 18th that it will be ready i will be punching a pharmacist for flat out lying :)