On the road to HRT
Today I went to my third visit to the gender therapist, and my last one! She is going to write the HRT letter and send it to the endocrinologist.
Today, 6th of February, is the first concrete step of my transition. I have not started hormones themselves, but now, except if I have any major medical issue, nothing is going to stop me. So it feels like the first day of my new life! I have been so happy the entire day, the excitement is still there, I think it will be hard to sleep from it.
The beginning of the talk with the therapist was about my coming out to my parents. This is still hard for them currently, but since they said they still love me despite the shock, I am feeling confident, they only need time. I am not going to pressure them, I will now just wait for their questions as they come, otherwise I will just continue having smalltalk about random topics as we used to. I am worried about my father, and he is having severe hypertension because of that news. I am trying to make my parents understand I am the same person, except that the external appearance will now match the inside. Based on our discussions, I think they still do not understand the difference between sex and gender yet.
After that, I talked about coming out to the human resources of my company. I got an incredible support from them, and very unexpectedly, the person listening took a printout of a PowerPoint he wrote earlier and put it right in front of me. It was called "transgender dynamics in the workplace", with a photo of the company logo outside our building. I was blown away, and the therapist too when I showed the printout. It was about 50 pages about educating the people I am working with, to make them understand what being transgender is, and how it is important to understand my motivations, and to respect my choice. The goal is to see me as a woman ultimately, rather than a "trans woman". I know the transition will take time, and people I work with will get used to it, but I don't want to rush it. I am still planning to slowly change my appearance even before HRT does visible changes to my body. I will become more androgynous, I will thin my eyebrows like a woman, make my long hair hair cut in a more feminine way, wear unisex clothing to gradually change. During that time I will also work on my manners, posture, voice (right now, my vocal cords don't like it, I have to take it easy). It is great when I get the support from human resources like that. They also told me they will help me for the name change on the green card, using the same immigration attorneys who helped getting my green card in the first place!
Towards the end of the session, I talked how I was starting to feel really stressed when going out in public places. When I see women that wear similar clothes I have, I feel like I could be in that body, I feel like I already completely belong to that group of people. But my guy appearance definitely shows I am not. And the more it goes, the more I am feeling like I don't belong to men. I feel like I have been acting all those years, just to fit in the social mold. But virility in general makes me uncomfortable. I was at a club for about 4 hours, a trance music celebrity was in town, I went to the concert. During that entire time, the girls around me made me want to be inside their body (I had a strong regret not having dressed that night, I was scared of the large number of people), I was feeling that, for several hours, I was crying, but it was inside, I had no tears (that I did not want to show), but I felt very uncomfortable. I also get more and more uncomfortable in my body, I start really hating it. I originally despised my body hair, but now it also starts to be the rest of the body. The therapist told me it was normal at that stage of the transition, that's the dysphoria talking.
At the end of the discussion, I expressed how ready I was, and how impatient I was. For the therapist, I was completely ready, and when I said I was going to be reasonable and to not rush the different steps, she was asking why. She told me I should just take it at the speed I want, and not that the others want. It is my life decision to change gender, it is one of those moments where I should follow my own emotions rather than overthinking everything.
So happy right now!
Originally Posted by Karolyn
I even had 3 cases of crying at work in front of some of my coworkers (in the last 5 years). Looks like they will see that a lot more! And for this adventure being a journey, not a race, I am reaching a proper pace now. In the last few months I was trying to catch up as quickly as possible, due to many regrets to not have done it earlier. But now that I have experimented a lot (going out, makeup, hair, pedi/mani, shopping, restaurants, coming out, meeting friends en femme, etc.), I slowed down, and I start to have more time for other activities (I have plenty of hobbies I have not done for months).
