Me/transition/status
2000
I first discovered in January that gender-transitioning was a thing that humans could do[1]. The two things I immediately wanted most were SRS and facial depilation. If I could have pushed buttons to accomplish the various stages of transition instantaneously in any order I liked, it would have gone like this:
- facial depilation (electrolysis)
- SRS
- FFS (if it was that easy...)
- vocal surgery (same...)
- HRT (mostly unnecessary after SRS anyway)
I got started with therapy right away, but reality intervened and I had to stop after only a handful of sessions. It was 16 years before I could get started again.
2016
Of the items on my do-list, HRT was (and generally is) easiest to get started with, closely followed by depilation. SRS, however, is difficult, expensive, and painful. (Depilation is expensive and painful too, but a much lower order of magnitude... and the cost is paid in relatively small installments.) So I resumed therapy, got started on HRT (despite it being low priority) and depilation, and investigated options for SRS.
2017
SRS finally happened in July, almost exactly a year after getting started with HRT/depilation/therapy.
FFS and vocal surgery are things I'm going to wait on considering; I want at least another year of experience with the other improvements before I decide whether where I am is acceptable or not. (I know I'd like them; the question is whether I can tolerate living without.)
My existence was dominated by seemingly inexplicable feelings of misery and confusion up until 2000; after that they suddenly made sense, but only sharpened when I realized that a solution existed but was just out of reach. The 16-year delay in getting started (17 years to get to the key items on my list) often pushed me to the edge of despair and sometimes a little beyond.
I now find myself with this feeling of my life having been on hold for the better part of two decades or more; there's this very strange sense of time-displacement – like waking up from a dream in which all these things (world/life events) happened, except they really did happen. I remember them, but it's like I wasn't really there.
I feel like I'm finally trying to become a person, after decades of accepting that this was outside the scope of my abilities.
Footnote
- ↑ ...and that it could be that I'm actually female despite inhabiting a body that is biologically male; I often refer to this as The Great Regenderation of 2000.