#started HRT on his birthday. HUGE day for ME SPECIFICALLY

[jellyboy-arts]

GOZUMARU'S BIRTHDAY WAS TODAY 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 FEELING QUITE INSANE ABOUT HIM AGAIN

trans flag background because I see Gozu and Mezu both as transmasc (see below) & also it's the 2yr anniversary of me taking HRT!!

[pbscore]

Not gonna lie, I feel like the most unintentional but insensitive thing that I was told when I expressed discomfort at the way men looked at me when I literally was just wearing a dress was ‘Oh, don’t take it so seriously. You have a nice ass, so of course they’re gonna look lol’.

This was during my birthday week and my family and I had walked by a group of boys who decided to make it SUPER OBVIOUS that they were looking at my butt and I immediately walked as fast as I could away.

Instead of trying to understand why I was uncomfortable and upset, my family completely disregarded my feelings and laughed about it. I remembered how it ruined my day and made me keep pulling my dress (that was already past my knees) down even more for fear of leering eyes. For the rest of my birthday week, I wore men’s shorts and button down shirts. I refused to wear my dress for the rest of that trip.

After that, it really made me hate my body and anything ‘feminine’ that I wanted to wear because it would be ‘inevitable’ that a bunch of men with hungry eyes would just stare me down just because of the way my body is shaped.

Like, the primary reason that I’m even trying to lose weight or consider starting HRT is because of those kinds of insensitive, sexualizing comments that I literally don’t want nor feel ANY empowerment in. I hate having thick thighs, wide hips, and a ‘big butt’. And I shouldn’t have to feel any shame about having them but I do because there’s this stupid expectation that once I ‘get into a relationship,’ I would ‘appreciate’ these features and become a confident ~sexy~ woman that men would fall over.

I honestly hate it and I feel like anyone who isn’t a woman or presents in a stereotypical ‘feminine’ way from time to time, really don’t understand how ashamed and uncomfortable it makes us. It’s one thing to look at someone you find attractive but it’s a whole other thing when you LEER at them and make it obvious that you’re talking about their body and it’s clear that that person is uncomfortable with the way you’re looking at them. It’s also crappy when friends and family join in on this ‘trend’ and think they’re ‘helping’ by trying to force this ~sexy~ beast out of you by continually battering you with phrases like ‘uwu but your ass looks so good, of course people are gonna look’ or ‘one day you’ll appreciate having those huge boobs!’ or ‘omg I’m so jealous of your thicc thighs gurl’.

I ain’t sayin none of this can be empowering to certain folks but it’s the context in which it’s said that I think causes a lot of internal problems with young girls, specifically. I remember being 12 and being told that I had a ‘nice body’ and immediately feeling disgusted by it. I was a 12 year old nerd who didn’t want to have a ‘nice body’ if it meant people constantly stared at me and made gross mature comments like that.

Idk...I’m just tired of fighting with myself internally about my identity and trying to embrace my own natural beauty and femininity only to feel absolutely deflated when some crusty ass dude thinks it’s his right to immediately sexualize me when all I’m tryna do is get groceries or something mundane like that. I know some people will be like ‘uwu you can wear WHATEVER you want and screw what other people think’ but that isn’t the problem. The problem is if I decide to look stereotypically ‘feminine’ and wear a dress or skirt, I’m immediately hyper aware of the stares by primarily cishet men and I dread any encounter where one of them feels like he has the right to speak to me based on his assumption that what I’m wearing is for show. His show.

I know I make a handsome dude with my hair short and my button down shirts and snap backs but there are times when I am so consumed with wanting to wear something more ‘feminine’. I wanna look delicate and pretty and angelic; all the words that are often NOT associated with young women of color, especially young women of color who don’t wear make up (like me). But it’s so much safer for me to wear baggy pants, baggy shirts, wear a binder, and work boots when I go outside and not receive any unnecessary commentary from strangers than it is to throw on a dress that isn’t even ‘sexy’ and suffer through a bunch of leering eyes and sinister giggles.

[amethystblack]

I've got a question, I messaged you quite awhile ago telling you that you were an inspiration to me as a closeted trans girl. I was curious as to how you started on your journey for all of it, it seems quite overwhelming at first. You don't have to answer this publicly if you don't want to ^.^

well, I don't mind... of course there's always that veil of anxiety in talking about this kind of thing, but i don't really believe in keeping quiet about that kind of thing, especially if it could help someone else.

so... how i started on a journey. well, i wonder...

to tell the truth, i wasn't really responsible about it at first. i was already in university by the time i realized this was something i needed to do. i'd done enough research to understand that it's hard to reverse many effects of T-- so i felt like the younger i started the better. i was always getting older, and therefore i felt like, i was always getting worse (as in, more masculine). the pressure was on. i had been very lucky to be able to pass, in terms of both appearance and voice, even before treatment, but i was worried the longer i waited the more of that i would lose (and i think i wasn't wrong. the last year before i started felt... especially harsh).

of course to start hrt you gotta get approved by a therapist, and gosh, that can take forever, you know? if it happened at all. the process was certainly daunting, and i'm historically not the best at talking about myself anyway. plus money... i really wasn't keen on the matter. i didn't think i had that kind of time. so, i was referred to a certain website of questionable legality where i could order hormones for myself. rather impulsively, i went for it.

i didn't want to tell my parents. i didn't want to tell my family. i didnt think they'd understand. if it meant being happier with myself, i'd resolved to just cut them off entirely anyway. i'd find a place to move out to, i thought, by the time that effects started showing. i'd make it work. this was naive.

and in the first place, it never had a chance because my mom actually intercepted the package i ordered when it arrived-- apparently a box from new zealand is out the ordinary??? nonsense. anyway i was super evasive about it and made up some lie to cover it and she made me send it back and i was a Sad. in retrospect, this was probably a good thing. the friend who had referred me to that site got in some trouble for it later on and wasn't able to transition fully... i sincerely think that that is a major component of why she chose to take her own life.

my girlfriend at the time was pretty critical in the matter. i had actually told her some time in the past-- which lead to her breaking up with me. eventually we got back together and she was an irreplacable support for me. especially as i was first transitioning, she lent me a lot of clothes and helped me shop for other ones, which was huge for the sake of getting me started.

eventually i had to accept the fact that i'd have to at least tell my mom if i wanted things to work out. she had always told me she'd support me if i was gay-- but this was a bit different. i didnt think she'd be ready for it. i wasn't wrong. when i finally came out to her i was able to in no small part because my girlfriend was there with me. my mother didn't really take it well at first. she started crying-- and saying some less than helpful things. but it became clear that she was mostly concerned for my safety above all else... in the weeks following she did some reading on the matter and came around to it fairly well. i was surprised.

my girlfriend and i eventually broke up. the bottom line was i was way too uncomfortable with myself to continue being intimate, and that didn't work for her. it was a nasty break, but the harsh end encouraged me to just go full time. i'd seen that i wasn't going to be happy with myself otherwise. but i had a year and so of classes in uni left, and i was -all- kinds of nervous about it. the advantage that i had was that for the past 2-3 years, i had talked to barely anyone on campus at all. i had been really uncomfortable with myself, so i just avoided everyone... meaning nobody knew me. i wouldn't have to worry about being recognized at all.

... except for by those from my on-campus job. although i knew my employers were the type who would have supported me, our clients were the type who absolutely would not have-- so i made the choice to withdraw. i found a job at a tea shoppe in my neighborhood instead. it was family owned and i made sure the owner supported me beforehand. i often felt out of place there-- but it may have just been the dysphoria (and my boss, despite being supportive, was a very Intense person which totally didnt help at all)... nevertheless, it got me through.

thanks to that, i was able to afford therapy. i found therapists known specifically for gender therapy just so i could get the letter to a physician to approve HRT. i picked the closest one and started meeting with her ASAP. i was really more interested in the letter than actual treatment there, but even so for the most part, i found that i just needed to answer honestly and it worked out fine. the therapist had some key points to ensure before approving me-- first, that i had experience living full time. check. second, that i could come out to my family-- not so check.

she and my mom eventually convinced me to come out to my grandmother, and my father. i felt the rest of the family would be fairly "sure, whatever" about it, but those were the two i was most worried about. i came out to them both by email. my grandmother is a classic right wing christian-born trump-supporting ol' gal, and she is also very particular about how she prefers people and matters of the family to be. ...but defying all expectation, she accepted it without any hesitation, and expressed some amount of disappointment that I didn't feel like I could trust or rely on her for that kind of thing in the first place. So okay, point taken. To this day she still struggles with remembering to use the correct pronouns, but we have kind of a running joke with it... at one point she messed up and she was just like "oh! shucks, just call me Harold." misgender for misgender i guess. still awkward when it's in public-- but kind of funny, and i know she means well.

then there was my father. his initial response to my email was basically a brief paragraph refuting the reasons i'd justified being trans with, and telling me why, in psychological terms, they probably were not actually the case. but frankly that was about what i expected. he and i have been rather distant, and he was not the most accepting or open kind of person in the first place. later that summer we met for the usually one time per year we typically get to see each other. he asked me what i wanted for my birthday. i told him that the only thing i wanted was for him accept me for who i was. he got me a 3DS instead.

but he eventually quietly came around though, i think. to tell the truth intimate discussions are not something we really have so it's hard for me to know his true feelings-- but at the least he goes along with it.

then there were just classes. i hadn't changed my legal name yet so i was still on the roster with some wrong information. so on the first day of class, i pulled each teacher aside and explained my situation to them. the campus policies were in my favor, so they had to oblige when i asked them to refer to me appropriately. fortunately they all seemed very understanding about the matter. i'm lucky to live in a city like this after all. i was able to reach out to other students a little more that year. at the least, i had a few people i could have considered friends, even if i never saw them out of class. but avoidant habits are hard to break. in the end, i graduated without making any lasting connections from university. i would chose not to walk at my graduation ceremony, for the obvious reason.

at some point during that school year my therapist finally approved me to transition. god bless. after reviweing the options i decided to get my hormones from planned parenthood. did you know planned parenthood offers transitioning hormones??? i sure didn't. anyway pls no defunderino thx.

and then i found something out-- i was under the impression that, of course, i wouldn't be able to have biological kids after surgery, but i had not known that HRT would rule that out as well. i wasn't really sure if i wanted to-- and even now i'm ambivalent. but i figured i should leave the door open for it. so despite being approved, i paused everything and took some time and a lot of money dear god what, to store cells for the future in case i ever do decide i want kids. that ended up taking frankly way too long. when it was over with i jumped back on that HRTrain ASAP.

the process of changing names was... tedious, and drawn out, but ultimately unremarkable. there were various forms to fill out and turn in and state regulations, fees, gotta visit this office except jk that's the wrong one try this one except jk that's the wrong one too try this one except jk does this office even actually exist???? and eventually i had to stand in front of a judge and hope he approved it. he took one look at the forms and approved it without even announcing the reason (as i saw him do for other people there) so that was really considerate of him. i was ready with like a full essay in defense, but in the end it was totally okay.

as for the HRT... i mentioned before i felt like i was always getting worse, you know, right? of course due to the nature of hormones, after i started taking them it would be a couple weeks before they kicked in... but it was an immediate improvement for me. from the first night, it completely turned around. everything was getting worse-- no. from then on, it was always going to get better.

oh... and there was one more place i forgot i had to come out to... reborn. people online always "mistook" me for a girl anyway, and that was always a huge compliment to me. so i think a lot of people weren't really surprised. the most awkward thing was actually... my in-game character. the game was already four episodes in or so and i had just used my generic custom trainer sprite from the site generator before for the intro... haha, it's a little silly, but for a long time i had just been editing it a little bit by bit to make it more feminine. it was a little too long before i actually completely replaced it.

...anyway, that was the start of things. beyond long-winded, but hopefully some of it can help somehow. honestly before and after transitioning is really like night and day, so hang in there. i promise it'll be worth it, and you'll surprise yourself in ways you'd never expect.