#so i rly gotta make an appointment with like. my actual doctor

[snowflakeb0ttles]

i need . to go to the doctor

[ozlices]

i have to make appointments & also let my doctor know id rather continue one of the new meds she put me on bc it actually helped but ive been completely unmedicated for 2 fucking days & the thought of doing Anything makes me wanna throw up im so over being a person

[loghainmactir]

hewwo! i was wondering if u could pls give me some advice on starting my transition? ive been so scared to start bc of family and costs but ive decided to just. do it. yknow? like if i don't ill probably die lol. u look amazing and rly confident in yourself in all ur selfies and one day i wanna be Like That ✌️❤️

hi! ok, so first of all: yeah, i absolutely can give u advice, and second of all: i remember feeling exactly like you did. it literally wasn’t that long ago, either, it was like. 2013/14/15 (i can’t remember, time is fake, whatever lmao!). third of all: bless u yr so sweet. i still have a lotta issues with confidence (i doubt myself, my talent and what i can do literally hourly), but honestly? i love my body right now. it’s a good, genderless body, goddamnit.

long, long post ahead bc i’m trying to think of things i did and good god please take it with a grain of salt because a lot of this is just me ranting about things i wish I’D done in my own position. i’m also coming from a place where HRT and surgeries AREN’T free, so that’s also A Thing. everyone’s experience is different.

transitioning (particularly medically) really super fuckin varies country by country (and honestly probably even state by state, age by age and fuckin gender by gender because cis people won’t let us fucking BE goddamn): i don’t know where you are, so my only tips there r: find a trans friendly doctor/endo (i was kinda forced to go through a hospital bc That Was How It Was here in good ol’ Australia), and one people wholeheartedly recommend, if you wanna go that route.

my first point is make sure you find safe spaces in every goddamn aspect of your transition. medically, socially, physically. if you think your doctor is refusing you treatment or is discriminating against you, you NEED to ditch that doctor. if your friends and family are really verbally or physically violent against LGBT folks, you NEED to leave that space if you can (or not come out and wait until you can leave. seriously. i’m kinda lucky– my grandma was verbally violent against LGBT folks, and initially my mum was skepitcal, but i convinced them both to go to a group for LGBT+ parents and friends and they slowly turned around). get yourself friends, get yourself allies.

i cannot stress that enough. my first doctor refused to send my referral letter to the royal children’s hospital gender clinic because even tho he presented as a “nice” guy, he believed that because this was “”””out of the blue”””” for me, he figured he’d just Not Send It (and tried to tell me that a lotta kids there didn’t actually helpo, lol). so there i was, a young 15-16 year old alister, waiting like 2-3 months for something that didn’t even get fucking sent.

join trans groups on facebook and in real life. seriously, they’re a godsend; there’s buy-and-sells, advice posts, encouragement posts. ESPECIALLY local ones. most of them on facebook are private, meaning no one can see if you’re posting/in the group, and it’s easy to check if they’re not. these fb pages + local groups are good ways to find trans friendly spaces and doctors. i found my current doctor, who’s actually one of the very few doctors who knows what the fuck he’s on about re: trans people, through a real life trans group. they were like “oh, you should see x”, and even though he’s about 30-40 minutes away from me, he’s brilliant and honestly saved my life.

along those lines: figure out what you want from your transition, and then realize & accept that this may change (and it also may not change!). very early on, i was super insistent that i wanted phalloplasty and to wear packers, and now i couldn’t care less. at first, i identified as agender, and then as a trans guy/ftm, and now i identify as a Black Hole (i’m kidding, don’t @ me). like, a lotta people DON’T change their minds. but i did, some people do, and it shouldn’t be anyone’s business but your own what you want to do with your body 

(sidenote: this also goes for detransitioning or stopping medical transition but continuing to socially transition/present differently. literally, it’s fine. it’s your body. fuck anyone who says otherwise.)

again: FUCK ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE.

your body is literally your body. do NOT let anyone tell you what to do with it or who you are. i had people very early on scream at me (legitimately scream and throw me out of home, thanks grandma), tell me i wasn’t actually trans, and harrass me for this shit: but frankly, if i’d put myself back in the closet, i wouldn’t be alive right now. i would’ve killed myself years ago, and i wish i wasn’t kidding. if it’s safe, you need to stand up for your own body and your rights and put yourself somewhere that will allow you to follow through. you need to keep going and keep living.

my only other two pieces of advice are “patience, baby”– like, for real, every single part of transition takes time. this varies from where you are and who’s supporting you, but it’s generally true. it takes time for people to accept new names and pronouns 

(lotta people get furious about this, and i used to be one of those people, but hindsight’s a bitch and you gotta realize that… like, it’s hard for some cis people. you gotta give them a little bit of wiggle room, especially if they’ve never ever met a trans person before. it’s about reminders, reminders, reminders: which is SO hard if you’re not safe/don’t have the confidence. there IS a flip side to this though: if chad and stacey have known your new pronouns for months, now, and they keep “””slipping””” up, they’re not slipping up, honey. they’re doing it on purpose. kick their teeth in i’m kidding please don’t do this you know what i mean.)

it takes time for HRT to kick in. it takes time to gather a Look™ of your own you like, it takes time to build confidence to even tell people, it takes time to save up money for surgeries and it just… takes time. sometimes because it’s a naturally slow process, sometimes because cis people are Cis People and like to gatekeep. i remember being very young in my transition, sitting in the car after one of my appointments with the afformentioned shithead doctor bawling my eyes out because he’d told me i wouldn’t be able to access t for x amount of time and it was bullshit. this year i’ll be 2 years on t. wild, huh? there’s a lot of us and not equal amounts of resources (ESPECIALLY in public systems) depending on where you are, so you gotta be prepared to WAIT.

i’ll tell you what super helped me through those years: hyping myself up for other things! i still have the ticket from my first twenty one pilots show. that show meant SO much to me. i cried all through it, because waiting for that show kept my mind off of the wait for my royal children’s appointments (and even waiting to go up to melbourne bc my mum and i would go and get kebabs was a good thing to focus on!). keep things that aren’t trans related on hand (seriously i struggled with this because dysphoria and shit is fucking hard!! it’s easy to say but really fucking hard to put into practice).

(one day i’m gonna tell tyler and josh just how much they saved my goddamn life. i know they hear it weekly, but i will.)

my other thing is that uh. it won’t solve all your problems especially if you’ve got mental illnesses. this is a really fuckin depressing thing i had to drill into my brain, but it really helped. transitioning solved SO many of my issues. i no longer have back issues (thanks, like, literal kilo titties, lmao), i no longer have sore ribs and i can breathe and wear shirts. i lost so much weight (and am kinda gaining it back, but whatever). i no longer have anxiety about whether people can tell i’m binding– which is WILD because i used to stress the fuck out about it to the point where i never went out anywhere. i used to sit on the bus wondering if the person next to me could tell i had titties. now it literally doesn’t even register.

my issues now stem from PTSD, depression, BPD and ADHD. how do you fix this? you don’t. but what HAS helped is finding a therapist who won’t pressure you into talking about trans shit. lemme tell you: this shit gets exhausting after the fifth time of “oh i googled ‘can you become a boy’ when i was, like, nine” (this is my go to story because this memory is so vivid). of course, there’s gonna be moments where you HAVE to: my therapist recently actively asked me to briefly run through it for my PTSD report. but otherwise we literally haven’t talked about it and that is a GODSEND (because i don’t need it. if you need it, that’s good, too!). having a therapist that you can just wordvomit at wrt anything is literally the best thing and can be super helpful– seriously, there were a few trans-related sessions where i just snarled about the bullshit gatekeeping and the bastard i had to see for my therapist letter (oooh, every time i think abt the fact that it was something like $400-500 for two fucking sessions i get so mad lol), but outta 14 it’s really only like 2-3 of them.

but yeah. that’s it. i dunno, these are things that i’ve learnt and sorta… like to think as helpful for myself. of course, this could be different for you: you’re not me, you’re entirely different, in no doubt an entirely different country, social, financial, mental state. i was FUCKED UP when i first came out. i didn’t know that then, but i do now. i spent a lotta time by myself and that’s not healthy, so i really encourage you to reach out to our community, local and worldly, because oh my god, we’re here for you. we are SO here for you.

[transrightsjimin]

i have SO much to do and write like..... three courses for my minor.... of which i have to do actually a workload of 2 weeks bc i didnt do my homework the first week... i cant find that good free book / pdf download site anymore (hmu if u know some pls!!) .... i got internship to finish which i now have few time left for esp bc of school.... i got my autism coach / support person, my therapist, i just got called abt an appointment soon abt the new indication i got for autism care, i now need to tell my autism coaches that they arent allowed by the municipality to be present at this appointment bc of a new regulation, i'm waiting for an email back to my question on how many pages we had to read for a certain book, im just lost in general on what to do first for school since i dont know everything on the planning yet like what pages or where to find a book, i got my occasional trans support appointments, i want to write a letter to my doctor abt an instancy w conversations / consults abt transgender stuff and they have a shorter waiting list ("only" 3-4 months instead of 2+ years) but i need papers and a form and it all is such a hassle and urgh, i soon can go to an information meeting (in the evening) for trans folk at the hospital where im on the waiting list and id love to go bc its in the evening but i also have an appointment on that morning and throughout the day theres a national strike going on by mail personnel, which reminds me i just sent an email to someone from the union abt another mail she got but apparently didnt see bc i asked for flyers abt the strike to be sent my way so i can leave them at work, so i emailed her again if it cld be sent at my address or the addresses of my work locations and if there is an english version available bc many of my colleagues dont speak dutch and URGH the strike is next week why didnt i fucking get in these flyers!!, and i havent made illustrations for the young adult section of my union in months and then theres also my exhaustive but doable job itself which i gotta travel to my parents for every weekend (i obv stopped working on tuesdays bc of school now), i still need to work as mail deliverer at another location bc ive moved but idk when that will finally happen, i have to vacuum my room, i have to wash my hair, half my curtain rod fell down yesterday so i have to wait for it to be fixed next tuesday, im still skinpicking and eating candy nowadays, im financially in a shitty place but i dont want to sell my bts tickets bc ill just have to make ot theough this one week and i still have €20 my dad gave me so i should be fine, also i owe my parents €350 by now, my ankles hurt more nd more bc i still didnt order those special insoles bc they cost €105, nd other topic but i just realized i have tons of blogs of which i often update 2-5 often and then theres also twitter and fb and yt and instagram and NEW BTS CONCERT EVERY SECOND and im just. boom my brain cant handle this

theres also fun stuff to look forward to like the kamijo concert, my birthday, the bts concert, the halloween lolita event, but AGAIN ITS SO MUCH ACTIVITY

im doing better mentally, i rly am! but now that school started its rly just a bit too much and its no wonder rly that ive been popping skin so exessively this week and got such strong headaches, im super stressed unconsciously fhsfshshdhs

[toytulini]

Goddamn I've been feeling "out of it" for like the past week or so now?

[neureaux]

anyways, yesterday was pretty stressful. i had the big traumatic stress clinic appointment that actually was hours long, then more therapy, then i finally had the discussion with my doctor about my arms like failing lately and he said some pretty stressful shit i’m ngl! i gotta get more scans obviously and i’m obv nervous because the last ones were wild and we want to see how bad the progression is and how badly my actual spinal cord is being affected this time, but more importantly he genuinely said to me as an afterthought ‘you have spinal arthritis here in your notes’ and i was like that’s interesting because?? this has?? never been formally?? discussed w/ me???? and with a cervical spondylotic myelopathic spine what do we find then, bone spurs at the very least with the symptom increase? i don’t want to deal w/ those scans my sweet dudes, i literally have enough trying shit to focus on. so, idk i’m just like doing my best or whatever. i went to a hotel last night (i’m still here) because i haven’t slept in a bed in two (2) months and honestly i started to feel sooo overwhelmed by things yesterday, as well as the fact that my spine seems to be just like disintegrating and i’m doing my physio (more starts next Monday) and simultaneously i’m also like treating it like garbage bc i’m forcing it to conform and actually twist to the shape of my hard as fuck sofa cushions and not in any way a bed, let alone an orthopaedic support bed like i’m supposed to bc i can’t be in my bedroom alone?? so. that’s giving me hardcore anxiety today so i thought, let me not maybe for a day.

oddly enough though, i’m kind of okay still? i know there’s a lot going on but i feel like honestly the best thing to do is try my best to think about how best to protect my energy and survive, instead of just really staring down all the things that are stressful; they’re not going to get less stressful bc i’m looking directly at them, so literally what is the point except for like actively distressing myself? there does come a time where u have to be real w/ yourself so that’s the tea on that.

in other news, the relationship thing is hard as fuck obviously bc the perimeters are confusing and i hate ambiguity, but the main thing at the forefront is ‘he got therapy, he deserves the space to do it his way and for as long as he decides even if he doesn’t actually wanna be in your life after’ and i feel pretty strongly about adhering to that, but at the same time i always just want to check on him and those are my more human instincts, i want to ask if he’s okay and if he’s safe, but it’s not fair that it’s like for my peace of mind imo. i don’t really feel like i have a right kind of & if he’s doing therapy he’s probably fine, i shouldn’t rly be letting my fussiness and worry make me go anywhere near his headspace when he’s cleaning it out, especially as i have my own feelings about the situation to work through - i think it’s hard for me bc all stress in my own life aside for a moment, he’s been gone from my life for like 4 months and i haven’t been able to check on him for a lot of that time and it’s been hard, i can’t even talk about it actually lol. but it’s tough to navigate. my conclusion despite a slip-up or two in my texts - which i should fuckin lock myself out of at night because nights are the hardest when u go from being in a relationship for years to what feels like being like left on a continent on your own - is just obviously to leave him alone to get himself together regardless. it’s tough but life is tough sometimes, and i may as well worry about my own feelings for when i’m actually in a position to receive the kind of love that i probably deserve