Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Hey hey it’s July, and that means you’re gonna get my FIVE YEARS OUT AND ON HRT CHECK-IN! Let’s see where everything’s at, half a decade in!
If you’d like to chart my entire journey on hormone replacement therapy, and my entire journey being an out trans woman, check out my ONE YEAR, TWO YEARS, THREE YEARS, and FOUR YEARS OUT AND ON HRT RETROSPECTIVES.
As usual, I’m going to follow the same order of talking about things as my past retrospectives, simply because it helps me be sure I’m not forgetting to track anything.
So I’m gonna start with new things first, since there’s nothing to compare to for those.
In my fifth year, I realized I’d been wrong in estimating how long it’s been since I knew I was trans. I’ve mentioned so many times in so many of these essays how I had a hard date in 2020 that I knew I couldn’t transition before (for personal reasons), so I took my time figuring things out.
But I wasn’t writing essays or even journal entries back then, so I don’t know exactly when it was that I became sure of who I really was. I was estimating it at 2015, but this year I discovered a clue that made me realize it was even earlier.
Because I knew, I knew, when I made my character for Dragon Age Inquisition, which released in November of 2014. I downloaded it and began playing that day. And I always played women every chance I got (for reasons related to TRANS TABLETOP ROLEPLAYING GAMES). And the woman character I made for that game? Well it has very detailed sliders for facial customization. And… I gave her an Adam’s apple.
So she’d be like me.
And I remember doing it at the time, and being like… well, there it is, huh? And I’m mad I didn’t realize the Inquisition connection sooner, because I could’ve celebrated ten years of knowing who I really am last year. Alas. So it’s been eleven years for me now, and ain’t that somethin’.
This past year I got my first pair of heels! For a while I avoided them because I’m already pretty tall, and I didn’t want the extra attention that being even taller would bring. But now… uh, I do actually? So as relates to CONFIDENCE and CONFIDENCE 2: INTO THE UNKNOWN (aka what is happening, aka whole new world), I guess my confidence has grown even further. Aw yeah.
I got them for the Monster High “graduation party,” which was basically the season two cast and crew party, but themed around graduation because the show sadly hadn’t been picked up for a third season. My wife Susan and I wrote six episodes for season two of the show, including the four-part “Monster Fest” Halloween special that’s just so, so trans.
Anyway, they encouraged folks to dress up on theme, and so I did!
I’m not super great in walking in them yet, but I think I did okay! I definitely need to practice more, but… I wore them outside, and now I can’t wear them around the apartment to get more used to them without grossing up the carpet. And I haven’t been able to afford another pair yet to practice walking in at home, so… I wait.
But I drove in them, spent two and a half hours hours standing and walking in them, which kinda killed my legs, and after taking them off the flat ground felt bumpy? That’s weird. It’s a work in progress.
I still think I’ll be mostly a super cute girly sneakers/stompy boots girl, but then again… until I can practice more, who can say.
I also got my first bikini last year! It’s the first time I felt comfortable enough with my body to not only get one, but then take photos of me in it… because wearing it felt absolutely amazing! I still haven’t had anywhere to wear it to, but I only got it right when it started cooling off last year, so we’ll see what this summer brings.
Still shaving my face every morning, and my entire body once a week (see BODY HAIR for more). Still can’t get laser or electrolysis for my face for the same damned reasons I wrote about back in A PANDEMIC TRANSITION.
Not only am I furious that this last major source of addressing what dysphoria I still have remains inaccessible to me because our society collectively decided to abandon the disabled and immunocompromised (again), but that with the current administration’s anti-science anti-vax stances, things are likely to just get worse and not better on that front.
Kind of feels like I’ll be doomed to shaving my face for the rest of my life, and I’m fuckin’ salty about it.
PHOTOS remain great for me, and even video has held out as being okay, due to a combo of facial changes from HRT, my HAIR, and my VOICE. I was able to record the intro video for the crowdfunding campaign for the trans sci-fi short film that my wife and I wrote and directed without issue! That’s super cool.
Btw that film is an adaptation of a comic we wrote, which itself sprang out of my essay PARENTS WHO WILL NEVER KNOW THE REAL YOU (aka my dad), if you’re curious.
As a reminder tho, seeing ourselves in video can be a huge hurdle for many trans people, and certainly was for me for years. See PERFORMATIVE ALLYSHIP for what happens when cis folks refuse to make the very simple, easy accommodations we need.
Let’s talk BODY HACKING, which if you remember was about the very first thing I did to transition in a “socially acceptable” way: exercising to make my body look less like it did and more like I wanted it to.
You can kind of see where things were at for me last year in the bikini photo above (with more detailed pics in the FOUR YEAR RETROSPECTIVE).
Here’s where I’m at now:
I don’t know if it looks like I’ve made any gains to you, but it certainly does to me. I’ve mostly only had the time to struggle to maintain what I’ve had for years now, but I’ve recently eked out a little more time that’s allowed me to increase my workouts some. I feel stronger, and I think I look it a little too. But I’ve only had this tiny bit of extra time for about a month as of writing this, so there probably isn’t really a lot of visual difference yet. It’s likely all psychosomatic. But if I have to will them to get bigger, I will!
We’ll see where I’m at next year, if I have the time to keep up the increased intensity of my strength training.
I’m also biking regularly on a stationary bike, which is new, because on the day of posting my four year retrospective last year… I have to give up running. And it was devastating. Not because I loved it (I hated it actually), but because I’d never not run since using exercise to start my transition. And without it, I felt like I was losing a vital part of what shaped me into who I am.
Again see BODY HACKING for more on how and why this was actually much more serious for me than you might think.
Luckily the stationary bike has allowed me to keep things up, and is even in some ways better. But there were a few weeks when I was in emotional anguish over not knowing what I was going to do.
But biking indoor for my cardio means I don’t need to wear my hoodie anymore, my cape, my very first piece of women’s clothing that I ever owned, that gave me early hits of GENDER EUPHORIA and made me feel like I could fly. It sounds silly, but I miss it. I haven’t figured out what to do about that yet.
I plan to write more about the loss of running and what it did to me emotionally, but I just haven’t gotten to it yet. It’s on the list for someday.
My HAIR again remains vitally important to me and my identity and who I am, but I had a bit of a setback with that this year as well, which is also another essay for another day.
But otherwise, all is well in that department and I love it with all my heart.
MY TATTOO remains amazing, and last year I mentioned I’d figured out what was making post-transition photos of me without it feel “wrong” and… I said I was gonna do an essay about it. Also haven’t gotten to that yet! Ha ha, good times.
The list of future essay topics just keeps getting longer.
VOICE remains good. I feel really secure in it most of the time, and though I still catch it slipping sometimes if I’m really tired or emotional, for the most part it’s been pretty great. And I even feel like resonance (the hardest part) is starting to come more naturally without my thinking about it. Slow and steady wins the race, sometimes. Especially in transition.
Let’s talk HRT! My estrogen injections are still going really well. Or rather, the results from them are. Sometimes I still struggle with giving myself a shot, and it’s been nearly two years of them now. And sometimes I mess them up and have to do over. That’s probably just the way it’s always gonna be, and that’s okay.
I did change up how I take my progesterone, however. Other trans women have long said that boofing it (taking it as a suppository) gets you better results, because it doesn’t get processed by the liver… which destroys most of it when the pills are swallowed. But boofing just didn’t work for me. (see ANECDOTAL TRANS HEALTHCARE for more)
But then I remembered that when I was on estrogen pills, before they entirely stopped working for me (see TRANSITION SETBACKS), that common knowledge among trans women was that taking those sublingually (letting them dissolve under the tongue) got more of the actual estrogen into your body, because the liver destroys most of that when you swallow it, too.
So… I tried taking progesterone sublingually.
I’ve tried to explain the taste of it to people, and the best I’ve come up with is:
It’s like despair wiped through a dumpster, a medicinal peanut left in the sun for eighteen years.
And y’know… I stand by that.
But… I cannot argue with the results.
I still wish they didn’t seem to be miles apart (I have a broad shoulders and chest thanks to the wrong puberty, hooray), and I certainly wouldn’t mind if they were bigger. I’m still at a C-cup, though a fuller one than I was before. I don’t think I need to go up a cup size again, but if they keep goin’ I am not gonna complain.
I’m 99.99% sure I don’t want top surgery. It was something I considered at the beginning, and while it could certainly make them bigger and potentially also get them to be closer together… they wouldn’t be the same as they are now (obvs).
But I’ve come to love how they are now, because they’re all mine. I grew them. Me. And all it took was the right hormone telling my genes to activate the info they’ve had in them all this time. These were always in there waiting for me, they just needed to be switched on. And I find that incredibly beautiful.
Which is not to make anyone who wants breast augmentation feel bad about it! We all have to do what’s right for us and what makes us happy. And right now? My boobs make me so exceedingly happy just the way they are, even if they live in different zip codes.
No other changes to my (tiny) butt or my (little) hips, sadly.
ARGH C’MON GROW MORE DAMN YOU.
But! I recently got the first photo where you can actually see that my hips are there and hoooooo the GENDER EUPHORIA.
Weirdly the period symptoms I used to get have all but vanished over the past year. Why? Who knows. Will they return? Who knows! Why study trans people, nobody cares. Ugh.
I don’t really miss getting periods, though they were a little affirming in their own awful roundabout way. But it’s interesting they’ve hit the road… maybe they just went on vacation, and will come back with a vengeance to see I’ve been partying while they were out of town.
Still not overly thrilled with the backs of my hands or my fingers… I have seen trans ladies that’ve gotten visual shifts in how their hands appear from HRT, but so far nothing like that has happened for me.
The mental changes HRT has brought remain just as good as the boobs and butt and hips and facial shape and other physical changes. I feel calm and at peace and delighted in myself inside my own head all the time, and it’s an absolute miracle. (the, uh, state of the world notwithstanding. Bigots will not take my joy.)
Feel like I’ve absolutely zeroed in on my style though, and it’s not really shifting. It fits me so perfectly and I’m so happy with it. (see FINDING OUR TRANS STYLE for more)
And so let’s close out with the traditional timeline photo, which continues to amaze me in so many ways. Look at me getting more me with every passing year. Gosh.
One thing I only just recently noticed in looking at my timeline photo… look at my eye color change! They get greener every year! That’s wild (and yes, this can happen, there are estrogen receptors in the eyes… see HRT for more).
And that’s a wrap on year five of medical and social transition!
I never could’ve imagined the real me that was waiting on the other side, and how happy I’d be with her, and how delighted I’d be to see her in the mirror every day.
You owe it to yourself to find the real you that’s waiting for you, too.
Whatever it takes to get there.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
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