It’s been a rough month for me health-wise, and as such I haven’t been able to get much writing done. One of the other admins on the trans Discord I help with has been posting weekly writing prompts about the positive aspects of transition, and so I’ve been easing myself back in by working on responses. Here’s what I wrote about the aspects of transition I wasn’t expecting when I started.
I had heard that transition would bring more emotional depth, but the unexpected breadth of emotions has proven to be more important for me. I’ve been able to better identify what I’m feeling rather than assign it to a limited palette. I was so frustrated about my inability to articulate what emotions I was experiencing pre-transition, and the only times I could bring them to the forefront before were occasionally when I was intoxicated. Now I can understand the nuance of my emotions more in my day-to-day and it’s massively eased my anger and anxiety. It’s not that I see the world in loud technicolor now, it’s that I can describe differences that weren’t apparent to me before.
I didn’t expect as much happiness about the changes HRT has brought to my body in transition. More than anything I wanted to see if starting hormones would change how my mind works. I felt weird about how many discussions on trans subreddits were like “when boobies,” as if that was the point, or as if that was what made someone a woman. But now that I’m here it’s apparent to me that parts of me were missing, and other parts not so much, and some parts of me have changed in terms of their importance to me. I didn’t realize how alienated I had been from my body as a whole.
Before transition I had searched for a long time for “my people.” I remember crying in my bedroom as a teenager, feeling isolated, unsure how to connect with anyone, and my mother telling me “[deadname], you have to find your people.” I felt like I made some headway in college pulling together a friend group (never mind that 99% of them turned out to be queer). After graduating I spent so much time looking for my people in meetups, chatrooms, hobby spaces, innovative startups, whatever. But things never seemed to stick. When I started transition and began attending trans spaces, I unexpectedly felt a pull and a sense of kinship for other trans folks so strong and so quick that I had never felt elsewhere. It was like being struck by lightning, and I’ve been charged ever since.