Posted Mar 14, 2024 by ginny mae the gay

today is my 1 year HRT anniversary!

today is my 1 year HRT anniversary!

i am doing feminizing HRT; a once-weekly injection of estradiol valerate (~10 mg intramuscularly). this suppliments my body’s ability to create estrogen to fix the imbalance my body naturally produces. when i first started i also took a pill daily to reduce my body’s testosterone levels too, but now the estradiol does that well enough on its own. yay!

so i’ve poked myself with a needle now over 50 times along with about 10 blood tests to monitor my hormone levels. i don’t like pain. i don’t enjoy having to stab myself with a needle weekly, and if given a choice i would not.

but hrt isn’t a choice for me (or for many trans folks) \ it is a medical necessity that keeps me alive and functionally human

when folks - even trans folks - discuss hrt, it’s often in context of the physical effects of hrt. makes sense - how i present as a woman is a large part of how i am recognized as a person. having a more feminine appearance makes me more likely to be seen as who i identify as.

hrt does a lot of things to the body; the most obvious ones are causing breast growth and changing where the body stores fat. some aren’t visible: my body runs about 5 degrees cooler than it did before so I’m cold all the time. I smell different and no longer have boy smell. and exactly like cis women, I no longer poop.

what doesn’t get talked about a lot is how signifcant an impact hrt has on the mind.

i’m old to be this early in transition. i have little to no chance of ever presenting as a gender-conforming female. the small changes are nice to see and make me happy… but hrt hasn’t had a signficant impact on my appearance. if the only positive changes were physical, i might not bother taking hrt.

(an important note here: hrt isn’t what makes a person transgender. hrt isn’t necessary to validate someone’s transition or transness. I would still be transgender, still be a woman, and still be entirely valid in both of those things if I had never started hrt or chose to stop.)

here’s something i’d like you to try to take literally: i did not exist in any meaningful sense before i began hrt. not in some backwards looking, “oh i was so differnt then. oh how ive changed” way. i mean those words quite literally.

before HRT, i had access to about one emotion: anger (and sleepiness if you count that as an emotion). it was easily accessible and effective. i experienced other emotions through the lens of that anger. Sadness is easy to turn into anger. Happniess was a lack of self-hatred and anger. Love was whomever stuck around through all my bullshit. if you’ve ever seen me truly off the rails angry, that’s how i acted and treated myself every day of my life for over thirty years

my “self” was a stack of coping mechanisms built out of fear and self-hatred. i only existed in context to other people, because who i was at any moment was derived from what i thought they wanted or needed from me.

with access to positive emotions like happiness and joy, relationships are based on more than just what can be lost or taken away. my focus isn’t just how can i not be abandoned by this person, because there’s so much more to feel.

i’m still working to not fall back on my old behaviors, especially when i’m feeling negative emotions. i have the tools and mental space now, but it’s so much fucking work unlearning 30 years of mostly-subconscious behavior. becoming a whole person is a lot of work!

there have been some moments i’m proud of, though. things i never thought i would love and respect myself enough to say and do. i never thought i would feel the same protective love and energy i have for other people, for myself

but i have someone important i need to keep safe now