coupleofdays:

Once again, I’ve been thinking about the possibility of me being transgender, and my feelings about transitioning. As usual, before I go on, I want to make it crystal clear that these are my thoughts and feelings about my transitioning, they’re not intended to be opinions about what I think about trans people at large, I’m not saying that all trans people should feel like I do. But also, if there are other people who feel like I do, I would like to know about them, because I’ve had a hard time finding them on my own.

I would also like to warn that this is a post about my doubts about being trans. If reading about those kinds of doubts is upsetting to you, or triggering, or might be harmful in some other way, then maybe you shouldn’t read it, or maybe you should at least be aware what it’s about before you do.

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Strange to see this right after having a conversation about my own similar feelings with my former partner and current dear friend, who’s very trans, very much on hormones, and very much has a history of helping others crack their eggs.

The conversation I just had was long, and touched on many things – such as my various different interests that society tends to categorize as masculine or feminine; my various mental health struggles not directly related to gender but possibly connected on some deep level; my familiarity with the healthcare system and thus my understandable reluctance to get used to using any new medication that I could possibly get by without; and so on.

I, too, want to stress that this is just one conversation, between one trans person and one possible egg of some type, and is also not in any way a generalization. But I do want to say it was a very loving, open and accepting conversation.

She considers me nonbinary or agender, but understands why I don’t feel any particular connection to specific words. She emphasized that only I can discover what works best for me, but also encouraged me to try a few things, just to see how it goes.

She told me she thinks I might benefit from testosterone, but encouraged me to research the different forms it can be taken in, and other meds that can go along with it, to make sure that if I do try that I will pick the most likely method to help.

She said that taking estrogen, for her, had its effect more directly in the brain, like a mental health medication, instead of through the visible effects on her body. She said it was like her brain suddenly had a chemical it had been missing, and it helped her focus in ways she’d had no idea were related to gender (if that’s even the word for what they were).

She thinks the same might be true of testosterone on me, and that specifically it might help clear up some of my issues with executive function, direction in life, and how I tend to shift all the time without control between different interests, and get less done with any of them than I really want.

But she also suggested other things, like using a packer, that might help in similar ways without taking the step of hormones. She believes that the exact steps I take with my gender – how far, in what way, and what I call them – is my own business, and she trusts me to make my own best decision.

I think she’d agree that if your life is fine, you don’t need to mess with it. I think she’d encourage you to keep experimenting in little ways – which could be as little as wearing a skirt sometimes and roleplaying feminine characters– and try more if you feel like trying more, and that there’s no amount you must be doing in order to be considered trans (but nor do you have to use the word trans, or any of the others under that umbrella, if it doesn’t serve you in any way).

I think she’d agree that there might be a path you could take that would lead to the optimally happy life for you. And you’re more likely to find it (or something like it) if you try more things – but I also think she recognizes that this is true for everyone, in some way. And that pretty much no one ever finds the absolute best possible path for life… and lots of people still have perfectly satisfactory lives anyway.