In which I lose my shit over baby bats

I've now been on hormones for six weeks and I am very happy with how it's going. Before I started I wasn't 100% sure about it (and I think that showed in my previous post a bit), but there is now no doubt in my mind whatsoever that HRT is the right choice for me. It's hard to even say what's different but I just feel... better.

Predictably, the physical changes have been very small so far. Sometimes I see my face in the mirror and think it looks a little rounder, other times I think I'm just imagining it. There definitely has been a bit of breast tissue growth, but it doesn't look like boobs yet— my chest just looks slightly "puffy." My nipples are a little bigger and a lot more sensitive than they used to be. And that's about the extent of it. And yet, even though my overall shape is barely any different than it ever was, somehow it just feel different to be in it. I am much, much more comfortable with my body than I've ever been before.

The only makeup I'm wearing here is a quick smear of lipstick. The fact that I'm happy with a selfie that didn't involve a ton of face effort is a testament to that increasing comfort.

There have been some mental changes as well, though they're a little harder for me to put my finger on. One thing I've definitely noticed, which I was not expecting at all, is a stronger, more visceral reaction to cuteness. It first happened a couple weeks ago: I was hanging out with some friends and for some reason the topic of conversation turned to bats. I brought up a Youtube video of orphaned flying fox pups being wrapped up in blankets. Watching something like that when I was hormonally male I'd have gone "Awwww cute!" and had a big smile. But this time it was more like "OH MY GOD YOU GUYS I ACTUALLY CANNOT HANDLE HOW FLIPPING CUTE THESE BATS ARE!!!!!!" It caught me completely off guard, but it felt like a good thing. Since then I've found other trans women on the internet describing the same experience, so it's not just me. Perhaps the perception that girls, on average, have a greater appreciation for cuteness than boys do has a basis in biology.

I'm still looking for a doctor, but I am so glad I chose not to wait for the medical system to let me through its gates. I'd still have at least half a year of misery ahead of me if I had. At least another six months until I could feel this good about my body or lose my shit over baby bats.

On another matter altogether, I didn't post anything about the holidays at the time, but I'd like to mention them briefly. It was a pretty unusual Christmas this year, both for myself and for my family. My mom was sick and in the hospital for a few weeks, my brother and sister-in-law were out of town, and there were (and still are) some other ongoing issues in my family that I won't get into in the blog. On top of all that, my parents got rid of their dogs, who were also family to me, around the same time. So it sort of felt like everyone was everywhere.

Anyways, I ended up not having any plans on Christmas Eve. I was getting ready to spend the 24th sitting at home alone and drinking, which was a bit of a bummer, when I got a text from a friend. Remember a couple posts ago I mentioned meeting this girl online with whom I was supposed to have a date or something? Well, we never did go out thanks to one thing or another coming up every time. But she sent me a message wishing me a "Merry Christmas Eve!" We started talking. It turned out she didn't have any plans either— she was intending to sit at home with her cat and drink. Since that was basically what I was going to do, we decided to do it together. I drove over to her apartment and we drank and listened to music, and then she taught me how to use a bong and we got stoned and we watched Mean Girls. Not a typical Christmas Eve for me, but lovely all the same. :) I left her place early Christmas morning (after crashing on her couch, nothing exciting lol) to meet up with my dad, then he and I went to visit mom in the hospital. Not a typical Christmas either, but parts of it were very nice in their own way.

Starting HRT

On Monday, for the first time, I placed a tablet containing 2 mg of estradiol hemihydrate under my tongue and let it dissolve. I found myself thinking: Huh, I guess I'll probably be doing this every day for most of the rest of my life.

The pills taste slightly sweet.

Honestly it doesn't seem like nearly as big a deal to me as I once would have expected it to. I'm certainly very happy about it, but it's less of a giddy excitement and more just a calm, contented sense of peace. (Though, perhaps not unusually for a girl at the beginning of puberty, I do occasionally find myself wondering how long until I have boobs, lol).

I'm DIY-ing things for now. I saw a doctor at a walk-in clinic in August: he put me on spiro but wouldn't give me a prescription for hormones until I saw a psychiatrist. And the psych's waiting list was nearly a year long. So I faced a choice: start HRT without medical supervision, putting myself at risk of liver damage and thrombosis; or wait a year, putting myself at risk of self-harm, substance abuse, and suicide. Those are two very different types of risk but it seemed like the odds of me coming to serious harm in either case were roughly equal. Given that, I of course chose that the option that involved not being completely miserable.

And before you start worrying about me, let me assure you that I'm being very careful here. I made sure to get a blood test done before taking the first pill so that any future doctor I see will have access to what my natural hormonal levels were. I intend to get another blood test after one month— (I haven't quite figured out how to get the referral for that yet, though I imagine that simply going to a walk-in and explaining my situation to a doctor is worth a try). I'm not taking a high dose, 2 mg/day is on the lower part of the recommended range for someone like me. And of course, I will try to get proper medical supervision as soon as possible. I just think it will be easier start HRT first and then find a doctor I can work with, rather than having to convince a doctor to let me get the treatment I need.

I've heard several trans women say that they didn't know for sure that HRT was right for them until after they were already on it. I'm only on day four so perhaps it's no surprise that I haven't had any such magical moment of clarity just yet. At this point what convinces me that I'm doing the right thing is how horrified I am by the thought of stopping— I don't even think I could. But now that I think about it, that's how it's always been for me. When I started presenting in a more feminine way I had doubts whether that was right for me until I considered going back to my old presentation and I realized I wouldn't even be able to. Likewise my horror at the thought of asking people to call me by my old name again is, more than anything else, what convinces me that I need to go by Ashley. And the thought of going back to a male hormonal mix makes me feel the same way.

Huh. Maybe that is my "magical moment of clarity." And it happened just now writing this. I guess that's why I'm a blogger. :)

Well anyways, time to start thinking about the next step: banking my sperm before they all shrivel up and die. I'm not 100% certain I'll want biological kids some day, but I am 100% certain I'll at least want the option. Better get on that posthaste!

I'm Facebook official!

My existence is now 100% certified official on Facebook. Last week I finally changed my name and pronouns on there. And gosh does it ever feel good to be able to check Facebook and not have to see my old name all over everything. Yeah!

It was sort of on a whim, to be honest. I hadn't really planned ahead of time when I was going to take that step, and wrote probably the one of the worst "coming out" status ever. It went like so:

Alright, so I was I planning on waiting till I was a little further along in my transition to change my name on Facebook, but it's friggin bugging me seeing my old name on here all the time, so Ashley it is. For those that don't know, I've been using that name within the trans community for about two and half years now, and in my day-to-day life for just over four months. So yeah... I'd really appreciate it if you could try to refer to me by that name instead of Tyler. Thanks! :)

Oh yeah, and PS: I'm trans, for anyone who hasn't figured that out yet.: P

Heh, pretty terrible. The thing is, I wasn't even thinking of it as a coming out. I had long since largely stopped caring about the distinction between out and not on Facebook. And by this point I felt like everyone to whom I actually "owed" a proper coming out had already gotten one. (And perhaps I was mildly resentful of the fact that I'd felt like I owed that to anyone in the first place.) So I saw this less as letting people know that I'm trans and more as just explaining why my profile suddenly had a different name. And, you know, so that the next time I came up on someone's feed they wouldn't be like: who the heck is Ashley??

Of course I got lots of "likes" and supportive comments. My paternal grandmother left a comment saying "whether you are Tyler or Ashley, trans or otherwise you are our grandchild and we love you." Awww. ♥

I also got a bunch of questions in my inbox. Most of them were good or at least reasonable. For example, one of my aunts asked me if I had any advice on how she should explain it to her children, or if there was anything specifically that I wanted her to say or to not say, which is like the best freaking question ever seriously I wish everybody asked questions like that. I also got one kind of weird question from someone who was wondering if I was still a Christian and if so, how I reconciled my "transgender existence" (his actual words) with the bible. (If you're new to this blog, I have a dark mysterious past as a conservative Christian, but left the faith several years ago and now identify as a non-theist or atheist.) So I told him that I wasn't a believer anymore, but also pointed out that the bible doesn't really talk much about trans stuff anyways. He also asked what it was like growing up trans in the church and I gave kind of long-winded reply about how it actually totally sucked and how much better it could have been if I'd been raised in a church that was queer\trans-affirming.

Of course I'd been intending to eventually change my name for some time, but what finally pushed me over the edge and got me to do it was, of all things, wanting to add a new friend who's only ever known me as Ashley. Remember my previous post when I said I might have a date with a girl I met on the internets? Well, she and I still haven't gotten a chance to hang out yet for various reasons— she had family visiting, I was busy, she was sick— but we've been texting for a while now. I went and found her on Facebook, but felt super weird about sending a friend request from my old name. Hence my new-found motivation. (Afterwards she was like "aww you could've just added me before, I wouldn't have cared...")

Anyways, we're planning on getting together this weekend, so hopefully that works out. Oh, and I should mention that, of all the bizarre things, we discovered that we have the same birthday— how weird is that?! So now we're already planning on having a joint birthday party, even though it's not till February. :D

It seems I'm going about transition in totally the "wrong" order, at least according to the traditional trans narrative. I'm now fully out (except at work) and I haven't even started HRT yet. Sometimes I can't help but feel that people are going to expect me to start looking "more female" soon, when in reality that's probably still a fair ways off. But whatever. Obviously there's no right or wrong way to be trans— doing it this way works for me, and that's good enough. :)

I'm still here (and I'm on spiro now!)

It's been a while since I updated this blog, but I'm still here and not dead. And also I'm taking androgen-blockers.

In the last week of August I finally got around to seeing a doctor about the fact that I'm trans. Ironically what actually compelled me to go to the clinic was a bad skin rash, but I figured since I'd be there anyways I should bring up my trans-ness. (This is in keeping with my uncanny ability to put off doing important things, like seeing a doctor, until I absolutely have to do them).

I went to a walk-in clinic because I don't have a regular practitioner. After checking my ID and healthcare card, the receptionist asked what the issue is.
"Uh, well, actually it's two things," I said. "The first is a skin rash..."
She made a note of that.
"And the second is that, uh, I'm transsexual and—"
She stopped me right there. "I'll just put down 'personal' for that, okay?"
"Uh... okay."

 Wow lady, way to make me feel weird.

Thankfully the doctor himself was a lot more professional about it. He asked me a few questions, but they were all ones that made sense— how long have you felt this way? have you been experiencing depression?— that sort of thing. He gave me a prescription for the androgen-blocker spironolactone, which I've been on since then, and a referral to a psychiatrist I'm supposed to see before I start HRT.

Spironolactone

He said the waiting list for the psych would likely be close to year (ugh) and that the current psychiatrist was retiring soon and someone else would be taking over his work, so I should be proactive about contacting their office. I figured I'd probably call them in the next couple of days.

And then the depression hit. Apparently one of the side-effects of spiro is that it can exacerbate depressive symptoms. Beginning a couple days after I took the first pill and lasting for a couple weeks I had possibly the worst depression I've ever experienced. Needless to say I did not call the psych's office during that time. That's also largely why I stopped blogging.

But I guess after a couple weeks my body just got used to the drug or something, because I gradually returned to my normal baseline emotional state, which is a much more mild and intermittent sort of depression that I can usually manage.

Now I just need to phone the psych's office and see if I can still get put on the waiting list even though my referral is for a guy who doesn't work there anymore. I'm not really sure how all that works.

Other than that there hasn't been much noteworthy stuff in my life in the last couple months, but things are, for the most part, going well. I got moved to the afternoon shift at work, and while it sucks not having my evenings free I've found I enjoy the actual work a lot more: the shop's almost empty so I don't have a bunch of bosses looking over my shoulder telling me what to do, I mostly get to just do my own thing. Last Sunday I had a really nice Thanksgiving dinner with my parents and brother and sister-in-law: my contribution was the apple pie, which actually turned out quite well (and only my second time making a pie from scratch too). Today I cleaned and tidied my house and bought some cut flowers for the vase on the table and now it feels all nice and homey for a change. And at some point in the near future I probably have a date with this girl I met online (we said we'd go out for coffee or something, but haven't set a place or time yet) so that's kind of exciting.

Altogether I feel like I kind of have a handle on this whole "life" thing. I suppose I should enjoy that while it lasts. :)

Nouvelles lunettes

As of Saturday I can finally see shit regardless of what gender I look like! That is to say, I got a new pair of glasses that don't make me look totally like a man, lol.

If you only know me through the internet you probably didn't even know I wear glasses. The fact is I actually wear them basically all the time, but with my old pair I always took them off for photos 'cause I really hated how they made my face look. I'd often take them off when I was presenting female, but carry them with me in case there was something I wanted to look at. It was annoying having to choose between not feeling ugly and being able to see properly.

Well, I shouldn't have that problem anymore, check it out:

I gotta be honest with you lot, I think I look pretty darn hot in those photos. :P

For comparison's sake, here's how I looked with the old pair:

Yeah... it's a big improvement. I'd had that last pair for three years: needless to say I was still trying to be a man when I bought them. (And they did look good on my face in a masculine way when that's how I was presenting myself).

Incidentally, I posted those first two photos on Facebook. It's funny 'cause I'm still not technically 100% out on FB, but I've obviously stopped giving a shit— I mean like my bra strap is showing for goodness sake. It'd be pretty hard to misread all those gender cues.

If I'm going to be that out on FB it brings up the question of why I haven't changed my name on there yet: my account is still under my birth name. I guess the main reason is that I still haven't told my parents that I go by Ashley, and I don't really want them to learn it from Facebook. It's kinda weird that I've been out to mom and dad for well over a year now and, as far as I know, they're still not aware I even have a girl name, let alone what it is. I definitely need to have that conversation with them and probably should have done it already. It just feels weird, like I'm rejecting something they gave me, and so I keep putting it off.

Anyways, that was Saturday. On Sunday afternoon I went to a friend's birthday get-together at a park. There were a few people there I was friends with, one person I'd only met a couple times, and then a whole bunch of people I'd never met before. I went as myself and it was the first time where I was meeting lots of new people and introducing myself as Ashley.

I wore a vaguely hippie-ish skirt and stuck a bow in my hair, which was fun. :)

This event confirmed something for me that I suspected would be the case: that while I am more comfortable around people as a girl than I was as a boy, I am definitely still pretty socially awkward. Sure enough, changing gender does not change me into a confident extrovert who loves meeting new people. I just went from awkward boy to slightly less awkward girl.

But I think that's actually a good thing. The point of transitioning isn't to become someone else, it's just to become yourself. If who I am is awkward and shy around new people, then maybe that's who I should be.

Coming out more (and female Tylers?)

Good news! I came out to a bunch of folks on Facebook recently, and it went very well. (Well actually, this happened like three weeks ago, I'm just really slow at blogging stuff apparently). I'm now out to most of the people I'd be likely to see on a typical day, except for at work. I'm also out to most of the friends I really care about. I wrote the following status update, changing the privacy settings so that only the ones I wanted to come out to could see it:

Hi friends! Okay, first of all, only a few people can see this post. Some of you I've specifically talked to about this, while others of you I'm not sure how much you may know or have guessed. But regardless, I wanted to put this out there so that we're all on the same page, and more importantly because I want you all to know me as the person I actually am. :)

So yeah, I'm transsexual. The very short description of what that means is that I'm actually a girl on the inside. I'm guessing that's probably not a huge surprise for most of you, but if it is, well, there you go. :P Anyways, I've started the process of changing my body to better match who I am. So far that just means getting electrolysis for my facial hair, but I do hope to be on female hormones some time in the not-too-distant future, and eventually living full time as a woman.

In the meantime I do intend to start presenting myself as female more often than I have been, simply because I find it profoundly distressing pretending to be a boy all the time. In light of that I do have a request to make from all of you. Within the transgender community I've been going by the name Ashley for the past couple years now, and it seems to have stuck. So, when I'm in girl mode, if you could try to call me by that name instead of my boy name, it would be seriously deeply appreciated. Likewise if you could use feminine pronouns (ie, "she" and "her") to refer to me instead of masculine ones, that'd really be super. (When I'm in boy mode you can use my old name and pronouns if you prefer, I don't really care that much).

Now, I know it's pretty weird to just change which name and pronouns you use for someone, so please take whatever time you need to get comfortable with it, and don't worry if you screw it up. If you're ever not sure what to say, just ask, I promise I won't be offended or anything.

And please, if you have any questions about trans stuff in general or about my own experience with it, feel free to ask. I know sometimes people have trouble understanding this stuff (even I did, and I've had to live with it my whole life), so I'm definitely willing to explain things in more detail if it'll help.

Making a transition of this sort is kind of a big deal in some ways, so I hope I can count on you all for support. :)
Peace

And the response has been very positive. One guy sent me a message saying he was checking to see if I could have kept my old name when he found this. It's the Urban Dictionary entry for Female Tyler, as in, a girl named Tyler. "Female Tylers are very rare and if you come across one you are a very lucky person," it reads. That and apparently they're also "extremely skilled in the sheets and so wild they'll make your head spin." Ha! That gave me a pretty good laugh. And to be honest, It actually made me feel a little better about my birth name. I've never liked the name Tyler, even before I knew I was trans. But just knowing that someone out there thinks it's a "cool" name for a girl, somehow that kinda helps. (I'm definitely still sticking with Ashley, though. My old name represents too much for me to not change it.)

Of course I also got all the more usual responses of "I'm so happy for you" and "I'm so proud of you" and "you're so brave," all of which were certainly appreciated. I do feel a liiiitle weird being called brave because I don't really think bravery is what drives someone to transition— often it's more like suicide prevention— but I think I knew what she was trying to get at so I accepted the compliment.

One friend commented on the post asking if she could call me Ash and I just about died with elation. A nickname based on my girl name? That's like the best thing ever!!! ^-^ It took a great deal of effort to respond with a calm "Yeah for sure! :)" instead of "Oh my gosh yes please call me that!! :D"

The best parts of all this are that I'm now getting to hear my real name outside of the internet, and that even when I'm presenting as a male there are a bunch of people who know that's not who I really am. Together that makes all the gender issues so much easier to deal with. I feel like, overall, I've been doing pretty good lately, but that doesn't mean the dysphoria isn't still an issue. Last Thursday I felt totally kicked in the gut by it and ended up spending basically the entire evening just lying in bed watching transition slideshow videos on Youtube. That was instead of going out to an event with friends, one of whom I haven't seen in a long time. So that was pretty shitty.

But that just means I need to keep moving forward. So let's see... I've been getting electrolysis for almost four months now, I'm currently in the process of socially transitioning... what's next? It's time to start thinking about hormones. It's time to talk to a doctor and get this girl some estradiol.

Teaching and sisterhood

This story starts off on kind of a sour note, but it has a good ending so figured I wanted to share it with you guys. Remember about a month ago when the whole internet was abuzz with Caitlyn Jenner and that magazine cover photo of her?

Oh God, there's Jenner everywhere!!

Yeah I'm glad that's over too. But anyways, right around the peak of that, a cousin of mine wrote a very unpleasant anti-trans rant about the whole thing on Facebook, stating among other things that "Bruce" would never be a "real lady." This particular cousin happens to be someone I generally like so I resisted the urge to simply comment "Fuck you, [name]" and unfriend her. Even so I figured I should still address it somehow.

By the time I got around to commenting, several others had called her out on it and she had already apologized for the tone of her post, if not exactly it's content. I responded the only way I really know how to respond to these sorts of things: by making a joke. "Well that's a shame," I wrote, "I'm sure when Jenner began this transition her fondest hope was that some random ass person on the internet would think she was a reel wummin."

After that I made a few brief comments addressing some specific things that had come up in the massive thread which had by then been spawned. I didn't explicitly say I was trans but I did use the word we to refer to trans community so it couldn't have been too hard to figure out. And then I left the thread, because it's not my job to educate people and I had more important things to do with my time than write an essay on why trans identities are legitimate.

But then something interesting happened: my brother started commenting on the post. Now you need to understand, Carson almost never does anything on Facebook. The most recent item on his wall is from... *checks* ... January of 2014. So it was pretty unusual.

His first comments seemed to be more along the lines of "Being a decent person and respecting someone's pronouns is more important than whether someone's really a man or woman." (Which is nice but like, I dunno, maybe a little patronizing??) Carson's always been totally supportive of me and has always accepted the fact that trans-ness is a thing, but I feel like up until this happened he'd never really made a huge effort to actually understand it. But now he was trying to explain it to someone, and he needed to know what he was talking about, so he started texting me questions. And I did my best to answer them.

He and I ended up having a long texting conversation over the course of a couple days, going over a lot of the details of what being trans is and why it makes sense to consider trans people as the genders they say they are rather then what they were assigned at birth. I think he gained a much better understanding of the whole thing, and this understanding was reflected in his continuing comments on the ever-growing Facebook thread. He ended up quoting one of my texts (saying it was from "an actual transwoman" he knew), as well as linking to this academic paper which I'd sent him.

And he got through to her.

The next day there was a PM in my Facebook inbox from the cousin who'd started the whole thing in first place. I won't quote all of it, but to condense it somewhat, she wrote:

I feel I owe you an incredibley earnest apology. I spoke from my emotions when I posted that status and didn't give it nearly enough thought with respect to how it would come across and how it would disrespect you and many others. [...] When I realized just how much my comments had the potential to hurt, I felt, and still feel, so wretched. You are so gracious to even respond, honestly. [...] I would love to hear your thoughts on this stuff. To hear it from someone who lives it is really, I think, would give a clearer picture to someone like myself.

That's nice, eh? I thanked her and accepted the apology, (while being careful not to downplay how hurtful the original post had been). She specifically mentioned in her apology that Carson's replies had helped her understand things better. I think it's really cool how I had the opportunity to teach my bro and he in turn was able to teach our cousin, not to mention anyone else who may have been following the thread. It was also nice for me to not be the one on the front lines, so to speak.

But the perhaps the best part of the whole thing, as far as I'm concerned, is that during the course of Carson asking me questions, this happened:

(And yes, I took this photo with my camera 'cause I couldn't figure out how to just take a screenshot with my phone. Don't judge me.)

I've been thinking for some time now that at some point I would have to address with him the issue of whether I was his brother or his sister. I was kind of hoping it would just come up naturally, and it did! Definitely glad about that. :)