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in reply to @kda's post:

I'd say the main thing is that it removed a lot of emotional baffles. How I think and feel didn't change radically or fundamentally, but it did get much less muted, and I feel less pervasively dissocited now. I just get like episodic RSD instead of regularly fully departing from my body in the middle of a grocery store, and it definitely smoothed my moods out in a way where get less severe despair/panic/hypomania swings. My focus on tasks and projects is much better, too, as is my motivation to finish chores and projects.

My main advice is that it's not going to fix someone's problems, but it can take the edge off and bring them into focus instead of just being this pervasive fog, if it's what someone needs. The way binary, ministerial trans healthcare works disincentivizes trying small doses of E and seeing how it feels, unfortunately. I ramped in slowly and totally of my own accord, on my own terms, because informed consent allowed me to ger a prescription "just because" relatively easily.

That's a really big question especially depending on how you define transition. I've been transitioning for nine and a half years now so it's impossible to say what is different because I decided to transition or because I aged.

Do you just mean the effects that HRT Has had on my emotions?

I was a gender nonconforming kid so I don't think I was ever really getting read as a man for much time.

As for HRT, I have described it as getting glasses for your emotions. Everything is more clear and easier to understand but also more in focus and harder to tune out. It's easier to cry or get very upset but you also recognize specific emotions easier than than Feeling Bad. You kinda have to relearn what the emotions feel like because they're so much more clear and in focus you don't even recognize them anymore. Like fuck leafs don't all look blurry??? They have veins?? Kinda feeling.

My big big big BIG piece of advice is that HRT is second puberty and that means you will have mood swings and extreme emotions just like when you were a hormonal teenager again. It'll get easier over time but for the first few years you should keep a mental post it note that says "REMEMBER, YOU ARE GOING THROUGH PUBERTY, YOU MIGHT OVERREACT TO THINGS LIKE A TEENAGER. CHILL OUT." Also definitely include progesterone in your routine it really balances out the emotions, but make sure you take it consistently because if you miss a dose or take it at a different time of day it causes really extreme mood swings until you stabilize. In general every single time you change your dosage in any manner you will have mood swings until you get used to the new dose.

Everything felt like it wasn't just grinding against itself, so like... emotional anxiety and anger and the depth and intensity of those feelings really fell away. I still don't know if the prompt change to (what now) feels like a much more placid and enormous emotional sea of feelings was HRT specifically or just finally taking steps to assume full agency over my being in fundamental ways.

Like some people describe having more emotions or bigger emotions but for me it felt like there was a lot more headroom for emotions to just swell around, and they didn't become noisome with intensity anymore. I feel deeper and more simultaneous feelings without losing the details of the picture. They come on more slowly, i feel them longer, and they move away without feeling like fireworks. I cry a lot more freely, but it isn't just this painful thing that feels like it's tearing out of me.

I have noticed a lot of like... small, day-to-day feelings that I didn't notice before, sometimes in the way a light, casual touch sits with me or the way I just really understand what my own feelings are doing. I know what I want a lot clearer now, especially when it comes to interactions with others.

So far it's amazing? I'm happy in a way I couldn't have been before. Not just like 'this is my life and it's mine' but even the worst days now feel more rich and satisfying and real than the best days before ever could. I smile a lot! I love TO smile and I let myself enjoy those feelings without worrying I need to temper or moderate them anymore. Is that HRT? Is that existential satisfaction? I don't know. I like it though.