So here we are, the last two years of my life has marked my transition. The first year of HRT I was on Estradiol and Sprionolactone. The results... well the results sucked. The estradiol was fine but the spironolactone didn't do shit. My testosterone levels were basically unchanged and nothing really happened. Me and my unkillable T. After the first year of an honest college try I would switch to cyproterone and fuck did it work. 10/10. If Spironolactone is a T-seeking gun, then cyproterone is a fucking trans-hydrogen bomb -- a T-Bomb. And I finally started to see some changes. There hasn't been a ton but it's been improving.
The first year was a lot of trying to figure out what my style was. You know, what I felt comfortable in, what I liked, how I wanted to look and how to feel more feminine. I got a proper hair cut which gave me a bit of like a curly bob/shag type cut with a framing fringe. Which was pretty cute honestly. Then I would dye my bangs orange. It was fine... I definitely started to feel more comfortable wearing skirts and stuff, but my wardrobe still wasn't really filled out and my preferred style still wasn't discovered.
Then at the end of master's I started to lean back into more alternative stuff. I was dressing more emo/gothy and that was helping a lot. I always liked having split hair dye, I had it a few times before (black/pink, orange/blue), so I decided I wanted to try black and blonde which I always thought was really cool. So I conned my partner into bleaching it for me as a master's completion present and once that happened, holy fuck it was like I finally felt like myself again. It was so great for me. It suited me well, I liked it, and was I suddenly in love, like never before, with having my photo taken.
And that really takes me to where I am now. I shaped my eyebrows, which is honestly one of the most feminizing things I've done. I got good at makeup and honestly really fast (credit to my partner for teaching me). And now I just love myself more than I ever have.
But I will say, I don't think this is wear I was "meant to be" or whatever. I don't think that's really how this works. I could look back on my childhood and say shit like I've always been trans. As long as I remember I loved playing dress up, polly pockets, y'know, girly stuff or whatever. I always wanted an EZ-Bake oven and every christmas list I would put this boardgame called Mall Madness which I would never get. My dad was extremely homophobic and transphobic. One time he found out when I was very young that I was being dressed up by my neighbours (who were my age of course) in their dresses. My dad dragged me home saying "my son won't be some faggot". Classic shit.
So yeah I could look back at all of that going "wooww I should've known". But you know what else I loved doing? Riding dirt bikes. Watching and playing hockey. In fact I played lots of sports; soccer, football, baseball, all of it. If we're going to gender shit like Polly Pockets and EZ-Bake ovens, we're gonna do that on shit like sports and dirt bikes. So which is it? Am I boy cuz sports or girl cuz shopping? It's a weird way to think about our histories and it's very gender-essentialism-y. I can't subscribe to that shit. I liked all of those things because kids don't have a gender. I mean that. Gender is levied onto them, but what gender means to them isn't really understood. Since the rest of the world can barely comprehend what gender is, why should we expect kids to really figure it out? Kids don't do things because girl or boy but because those things are fun. And they're fun because they're made for kids and that's what really sells.
To me, since gender is not tied to anything tangible, physical or biological, then is stands to reason that gender is subjective and everchanging. In this way your gender is constantly changing, like a continuous function. It ebbs and flows whether on the feminine-masculine spectrum or some other measure. So In some ways, we all transition from genderless into our first gender identity, and I've transitioned into another. I mean, even further in some ways we're constantly transitioning every moment, but perhaps that's too nebulous. Nevertheless, this is why I think people who "detransition" are actually re-transitioning. See, when we live for any amount of time as a gender identity of our choosing, we are that identity. To say that you are only where you end up is to say that none of that identity or experience is invalid. While for many trans people who loathed their life pre-transition we can understand why renouncing that might be desirable, for people like me who were happy with who they were before and then transitioned, then that view point doesn't make sense.
So here I am, my heart in full, once an enboy, now a femby, happy in a way I used to be, but with me now. While there are times I wish I could have some of those years back, and I wish I could undo some of what my toxicity did to people, I am so proud of who I am today. And that's why I'm sharing all of it with you. This journey has been a rollercoaster but a good one. And I still love that enboy I was long ago, it's just that they aren't me anymore. I wish other trans people could have a similar feeling about themselves, but I get why that is so hard. And it's pretty privileged of me as someone who has always been pretty attractive to be so positive of themself pre-transition. I won't deny that, and I'm aware of how that sounds. But I still wish people could love themselves through it all. I hope this little history of me reminds people of that.
Thanks for reading <3