What? Hormones Were Life Changing?

Recently (who am I kidding, it was months ago!) a reader of this blog, Stana, a most awesome blogger herself, asked for me to expand on this section of one of my posts:

Hormones – This one was life changing for me.  It really opened my eyes to my reality.  I laugh at who I thought I was prior to last July and changing my hormones to the right ones.

Changing my hormones did many things for me.  Physically they have done very little, in my opinion.  That is super tough, which is weird.  At some point I was super afraid of what the physical changes would be, and now I’m bummed there hasn’t been more.  The fear was that I wouldn’t be able to hide the physical changes, which is now irrelevant. And hey, surprise surprise, I’m a woman, so I’d kind of like to look a bit more feminine. 

The number one thing that changing my hormones did is it allowed me to accept who I am and go with it.  When I first decided to do this I had no intentions of going full time.  I never saw myself as actually being a woman.  I figured I would give hormones a shot and see if that would help with some concerns I had.  Now, after having been full time for about six months, and having been on estrogen since July 2017, I know I will never go back.  I can see now that hormones didn’t make me want this, it allowed me to admit what has been there all along, I’m actually a woman.

Which brings me to the number two thing that changing my hormones did, rewriting the narrative that is my life.  Here is a brief summary – as a young child I cried over everything, once I hit puberty I was frequently angry over everything, as an adult my wife and I super struggled to get along, sprinkle in a large obsession with sex throughout it all, and that was pretty much what I thought my life story was.  Well, pieces of my life story, but they were pretty big pieces.  I figured that as a child I was sad because I had a fairly dysfunctional family, so obviously I cried often.  Once I went through puberty that sadness turned to anger because yeah that is what testosterone does.  And I had a bit of a sexual obsession, well because there is testosterone again.

I figured that my job on this planet, with this body, and this brain, with my interests, temperament, and desires, was to figure out how to be who I wanted to be without being uncontrollably sad, irrationally angry, and inappropriately sexual.  Also I wanted to get along with the love of my life like we are long lost soul mates.  Easy right?  Ha! Ha! HA!  No.  Not so much.  However, I change my hormones, just sort of on a whim, right?  No, not really, it was a multi-year, possibly decade long ponderable.  In the end it became sort of a hmmm….. nothing else has seemed to help, so why not try this?  And then things shift.  Life begins to change.  Memories fade and old mental boxes open to show long lost secrets. 

So, how about this for a life rewrite?  1 – I was sad as a young child because I couldn’t rectify the discord between my male body and my female brain.  2 – I got super pissed as a teenager, because my body began developing secondary male characteristics.  3 – My vast sexual drive was actually a combination of an intense attraction to the feminine and an attempt to be as close to anything feminine as I could without it appearing to be anything related to my gender.  4 – The difficulties with my wife have actually been me being just a bit pissed off because, you know, I’m actually a woman who was trying to live life pretending to be a man. 

In short – I have spent about 30 years or so thinking that I am a sad, angry, almost sexually addicted individual, and in reality as it turns out, nope, it’s just that I’m a woman.  Simple right?

Hmm…… yeah, that’s a pretty life changing realization.  Now, who really knows why exactly I have done what I have done and why I was who I was, but I will tell you the whole, I’m a woman thing makes so much more sense. 

How about this flashback image – hopping into the way back machine – It was the summer of 1991.  Jules, my girlfriend at the time, and I had just completed our first year of college.  We were back home in Northern California for the summer.  The night before we had hung out with our friends and had a pretty crazy night!  We were in my room of my childhood home and it occurred to me that this woman was who I wanted to be with for the rest of my life.  I got down on my knees and proposed to the most fabulous human I had ever met.  She said yes and the rest is beautiful history right?  Hmm….. not so fast there trigger!  It took a bit for us to find her a ring, but we found something she liked and I could afford.  And for the next few months I was fucking pissed!  Wait, what??  Right?!  Well yeah, my explanation at the time was, it is stupid that only women get engagement rings, men should too.  Sounds logical enough, right?  Yeah, just like that bullshit that says women’s underwear is just more comfortable! Hahahahahahahaha!  Sorry to my gender diverse friends who still use that one.  How about a much easier and simpler explanation, (especially considering the vast majority of men could care less about engagement rings, except for possibly how in the hell are they supposed to afford them,) it’s just that I’m actually a woman. 

Damn! 

This has become my life as of late.  Realizing where the bullshit was laid, figuring out how to pick it up, and deciphering the truth hiding underneath. 

Recently, well maybe somewhat relatively recently, I hung out with my sister in Las Vegas for a little bit.  It was the first time she and I hung out, while I was actually being me.  She said to me “you move differently, has Jules mentioned that to you?”  I asked what my sister meant and she explained that she felt I was moving in a more feminine manner.  I mentioned that estrogen has changed my musculature, but she said that it was more than that.  If you don’t know my sister was super super super close to being an Olympic athlete, majored in some sort of body-science thingy, was a licensed massage therapist, studied reiki, so yeah.  I mentioned this all to my wife and she said that she has never mentioned it to me because I have always moved like that around her.  I was kind of dumb founded.  I didn’t realize at all that I hid myself so well from so many people, including my sister, one of the closest people to me.  Bummer. 

So, it is for sure a fascinating process.  There have been highs and lows.  Most of the lows are simply realizations of who I have been my whole life while I was too whatever to actually see what was going on.  Vocabulary people!  Having the proper vocabulary to actually explain who the fuck you are is amaze-balls!  So a low for sure is coming to the understanding that if I had the vocabulary to explain myself at an earlier age, I would have.  When I was young I was sure there were only two types of humans with penises.  1 – regular men and 2 – gay men.  That was it.  Two types.  Period.  I did research, with pre-internet BBSs and such, I was trying to find an answer.  I knew I wasn’t a regular guy, but I also knew that I didn’t like guys.  Thus, I was lost.  All I did from that point forward was to misread pretty much every signal I sent out.  That is kind of a bummer to finally grasp the reality of. 

But really, those sorts of thoughts have been the only low bits.  Everything else is fabu!  It’s just kind of a trip having to get it through my head, wait, damn, yeah, that makes sense, it’s just that I’m a woman. 

This post has been in my drafts for at least a couple of months.  It has been a total block for me.  Why?  Because In order to expand on this (switching my hormones was life changing) I felt as though I needed to offer up some sort of undeniable, obvious, easily digestible, proof.  Now that I have laughingly attempted that in this post, what I really see is that I can answer this question in a far more direct way.  Switching my hormones was life changing because, for me, it was the first undeniable proof that I am a woman. 

So yeah, it really is just that simple.  Hmm, so I suppose there is a long and short answer.  That is actually often the way it is with me.  Lately I have begun calling myself Mrs. TMI.  I often give WAY too much information!  Ha!  Ha! Ha!  Of course if you have read my blog at all, you should really already know this.

Another reason that this post has taken me forever and that I have not blogged much is that I have been working on another pretty dang important project – I am super close to beginning to start public speaking.  Yeah I’ve done a small piece, but that was different, what I’m trying to get going is a one woman show.  Me, doing what I do, giving way too much information.  In reality it is a 30-90 minute presentation aimed at college students informing them of what this 1 transgender humans life has been like.  Trying to bring a bit of humanity to some labels.  Anywho, it has been dang hard for me to get something together that has a beginning, middle, and end!  But, at long last, after many months, I have something I actually like!  Woo-Hoo!!  I will keep you informed, as I am sure you waiting on pins and needles for my world tour to commence right???  Hahahahahaha!!  Damn, this girl is funny! 

Love you!

Love yourself!

Love yourself damn hard!  Damn hard I tell ya!