Personal thoughts below the cut, CW: dysphoria, dysmorphia, fat
it's a double edged sword to know these things, but it doesn't have to be.
when people talk about things like "only 0.8% of people ever permanently lose weight", two thoughts hit me, almost the angel and the devil on my shoulders.
The angel says, "See, you don't have to feel like a failure for this, you are who you are."
The devil says, "See, that means you're trapped like this forever."
Transitioning for me has been a strange journey. In many ways, hell most but a couple, I really don't get much gender dysphoria anymore.
But since the pandemic, that dysphoria slowly gave way instead to dysmorphia, to a different kind of self-hatred, as my imposed isolation manifested across my body. I've gained at least 100 lbs in the last 3 years. Unemployment induced cuts to my diet let me drop a few pounds but I was still 280lbs at my last weigh-in.
I struggle to feel attractive anymore. I stopped sending selfies to my partners. The sight of my stomach hanging can ruin a whole day.
And in turn, the dysphoria has returned in a new form: lingering frustration with bottom feels, because I know my weight has probably permanently destroyed any chance I'll ever be able to have bottom surgery. Basically every GRS surgeon I know of sets BMI restrictions which I can't meet. While orchi improved things considerably in that regard, I still sometimes can't help but mourn a feeling I know I'll probably never have outside my imagination.
The closing paragraphs hit especially hard. Because I do. I can't help thinking about the me back in high school, rail thin, and questioning her gender already by then. If I'd just known, if I could've ... at least ...
But it's nonsense. Maybe I'd've gotten to be the skinny chick for my 20s, but every other woman in our family, and some of the men even, was my size by their late 20s or early 30s. It was gonna come for me sooner or later; I was even warned of it.
So here I am, at 41, a fat girl. I guess ... I have to start accepting that somehow, but it is so hard to undo the part of me that says I should hate the way I look.
