*Biological Content* My Transition - Month 5

This is continuing off my introduction post. If you haven't read it yet, click here to view it.

Biological Content Material!

This post is mostly about social and emotional changes, but there is much talk about hormones, and there are a couple references to sexual body parts and their functions. If you can't handle that, you best not read ahead.

Month 5 - August

There was no doubt about it, my breasts were female now. By this point I was regularly wearing 34A push-up bras as my standard attire, and I was proudly wearing low cut shirts and tank tops, because I actually had something to show.

I played with some Snapchat filters, and seeing how feminine I looked with some of them it actually made me question whether I actually wanted face feminization surgery after all. After seeing my face through the filter and seeing it again without, I looked so masculine without it in comparison. Eventually as some time went by I came to the conclusion that I was holding myself to too high a standard. But also, this is a problem that cisgender women have, so I guess it's gender affirming? 

Seriously, who can live up to the standards of beauty that Snapchat filters give you? Or the photoshopped models on all the magazines and websites? These are images of beauty created by computers and airbrushes and professional makeup... People often hold trans women to higher standards than regular women, but this is not the kind of thing I should be stressing out about. I came out as trans to respect myself and who I am, to be myself. If I'm trying to live up to these magazine expectations, am I being myself, or am I being what society standards think I should be? Anyway, so yeah, I'm not letting something like this dictate my surgical decisions.

I ran into an issue in the bedroom around this time. When turned on at a fast pace, it felt like my prostate was stretching painfully. The erection itself was fine, but the prostate area hurt, and it was very distracting. I discovered that going slower seemed to help.

Around this point, pickles became a staple that I needed to always have in my fridge. I was eating them doused in a little lemon juice, because apparently they needed to be slightly sour, as well as salty. At the point of writing this, I'm at month 9, and I still have a constant stash of Nalley garlic dill pickles in my fridge. If I'm craving pickles and there are none in the house, I will either cry or scream. Do not get in the way of my pickle cravings, or you will face my womanly wrath. But if you ask nicely, I might share.

I craved salt constantly, possibly because of the lack of salt absorption from the Spiro. I didn't know it at the time, but I had a hormone imbalance, and my estrogen was too high. From a biological standpoint, based on my estrogen levels, I was in a constant state of ovulation. To you guys out there, that basically means I was in a perpetual period, having constant PMS. That meant I was having constant strange food cravings, erratic nausea, muscle cramping in my abdomen/testicles, and lots of mood swings.

I came out to my grandma on my dad's side, she she took it delightfully well. When we were talking on the phone she said, "It's no business of mine what's in people's pants." Upon seeing me for the first time since my transition, she exclaimed with a mystified smile, "You look just like your mother when she was younger."

During this month I saw the solar eclipse at the Oregon coast. This was kind of my first real vacation trip with my boyfriend. We rented a motel and explored the Oregon coast, and during the entire trip in Oregon, I was not misgendered once by the various people. And I only got a couple of weird looks from passersby. Overall, surprisingly enough, I feel I was more accepted around the Oregon coast than I typically am in Seattle. The general feel seemed more positive as well. This took me by surprise since I have always thought of the Seattle area as being pretty progressive. In any case, I've gotten pretty used to people staring at me or giving me weird looks at this point, so it doesn't really bother me too much.

I began to develop what's called a "Patulous Eustachian Tube" issue. After some pretty minor physical activity, I could hear my breathing, voice, and heartbeat directly in my ear drum for about 20 minutes. Sometimes it even got triggered a little by yawning and driving up and down hills. It's quite disorienting and makes it hard to talk when you hear all your internal body sounds directly in your ear. Lovely isn't it? This is definitely something I needed in my life. I'm at month 9 while typing this, I still have this issue nearly every time I'm driving, yawning, or exerting any kind of physical activity.

While working on a computer during this month there was a loud beep during a hardware diagnostic I was running that caused me to yelp loudly and pull back when it beeped. I've done this hundreds of times before, and when this sort of thing has startled me in the past I didn't yelp, let alone yelp that loudly.

I'm noticing that my reactions to things that surprise or startle me seems to have changed. I was running downstairs last week and encountered a spider at the base of the stairs; I fell backward onto the stairs and screamed. I'm a bit confused about how I didn't start to notice that this is new behaviour for so long, because this behaviour change probably started about a month or two before this. Maybe it developed so slowly it passed over my radar. I became rather more moody, and my mother started to realize that dealing with me was like dealing with a teenage girl going through puberty.

Quotes from Facebook, posted during this month:

• You know... Cisgender people get misgendered sometimes. And that feeling they get when it happens is probably uncomfortable, conflicting in their head with "But that's just not true. That's not my gender." It might probably offend them, as an insult would.
  Is that really that different from misgendering a trans person?
• Waiting in line at Snoqualmie Ice Cream behind a couple. The girl looks back and sees me behind her, then turns back forward. Then she does a double take, looking back at me again slightly faster. She pokes her boyfriend and says something to him. He looks back at me, then looks at her and says something with a half smile.
  Okay, guys, I get it. You don't need to make a spectacle of it. My hair, boobs, legs, and butt look awesome today. I know it's controversial for me to look this fabulous in public, considering I might cause traffic accidents when walking down the street, but I felt like getting some ice cream, so you all can deal with it

There is a distinct lack of pictures of me from this month. But luckily the ones I do have are direct natural/makeup comparison I did. Left side without makeup, right side with. Not the greatest pictures in the world, but it's neat to see the direct comparison. Even if my eyeliner didn't match with my eyelashes perfectly.

You can view the Month 6 post by clicking here. >>>