there is an anxiety in my trans circles that the future might become worse, that access to surgery, new passports and stuff might become harder. i feel like i should hurry to get shit done.
but i can’t. it took sooo long until i knew for sure, i wanted to go on hrt. i am now and it’s great. not for the reasons i imagined, but for all the small things i never thought about. yet i don’t know what i want my name to be. it is such a hard question for me. i start to rethink sexuality aswell esp. since my libido seems to have vanished under estrogen. this i like also. but what does it say about my sexual identity? or my gender identity? will there be a point at which i want a bottom surgery? there are so many questions that i can’t answer (yet).
meanwhile the whole world seems to demand these answers and wants them to align with their cis-het assumptions. health care wants me to display a binary persona for access to hrt (i played the part), and surgery. my aunt immediately fantasized about me “certainly” looking for a man to have a family with. everyone really wats to have an update on how to handle me. no ambiguity.
i realised that in my trans specific therapy group i get quiet and anxious when they are all discussing hospitals, doctors, procedures and all the technicalities. i feel like i am behind. always behind. i haven’t done my homework. i didn’t know forever that i was a girl. i don’t know today. i’m just starting to get a sense of self. something that was shattered and buried through thorough suppression. i am putting together fragments like an archeologist. but being trans is in a way still just a working hypothesis. it’s highly plausible, but i can’t see the bigger picture yet.
i am afraid, that all of this will take me too long, that i will have to jump over new hurdles, or old ones, like when the rubber stamps from my therapist will be too old. i feel like i have to figure out myself now. i feel alone with that. even in self help, and therapy groups everyone is always so sure about themselves. just not me. i should seek out enby groups maybe? plz hit me up, if you ever felt this way too. 😥
for what it’s worth, in a context where you have access to informed consent care like in the US, being completely honest about my uncertainty with my gender-informed therapists didn’t cause problems for me … obviously with old-school doctors and gatekeepers, you will run into issues (but maybe avoid those doctors anyway). I only mention this because you don’t always have to lie or pretend you always knew, in the right context it’s OK to be vulnerable given it’s safe.
though it’s hard in my case, because when I was 5 I distinctly knew I was meant to be born as a girl and felt there was some kind of “cosmic mistake”, and when I was 4 years old I was trying on my mom’s heels in her closet … so even if I’m on the far end of having stereotypical signs early on, I think what’s important to clarify is that I didn’t know I had those early signs until after my egg cracked as an adult, and I suppressed my awareness of it until then. I didn’t think either of those signs were indications I “knew” I was a girl or anything like that - I just thought it signaled I wanted to be a girl (not that I was one), and I didn’t know this could be roughly the same thing in terms of experience of gender identity.