The How

Starting Electrolysis

I’ve passed the point of no return (queue Phantom of the Opera music). I’ve started electrolysis on my chin which means the beard is never coming back. I now have a quarter sized patch which is all inflamed at the moment where the hair has been permanently killed using a combination of electric current and heat to create a chemical reaction of lye to remove the whole follicle. And boy howdy was it painful!

I didn’t use a topical anesthetic this time and I definitely regret it. At first it wasn’t too bad. It was similar to tattoo needles but with the added weird sensation of radiating heat in your skin. But after a surprisingly short time, my body stopped ignoring the pain and by about 45 minutes I was begging for the hour to end. And the worst part was that it really wiped me out after. My body was just so exhausted that I came home and crashed.

Actually no, I take that back. The dysphoria caused by letting my stubble grow in for 5 days was the worst part. By this weekend I just felt gross and ugly in a visceral way. And when I added the pain to it on Sunday afternoon, it pushed me over the edge. All I could manage was getting high on pain relieving cannabis (legal here) and playing video games. Engaging my brain in Mass Effect Andromeda was the only way I kept from dissociating.

I feel much better today now that I’ve shaved. But it is odd to have a pink scabby spot on my chin that I’m acutely aware of. It is really going to take a long frickin’ time for that circle to grow to the size of my face. I’ve got a lot of sessions ahead of me but I’m glad that I found a trans esthetician to do it. I feel better about the sheer amount of money I’m going to be spending knowing I’m keeping it in the family. Hopefully next time with lidocane it will be better.

With the NYT article that is going around (which shows one valid point of view not representative of everyone), I think it is worth pointing out that the level of dysphoria I experience now is not something I expect to last forever. Starting my transition has made my dysphoria and mental health worse in some ways and better in others. It’s not a linear path but I do think that it is similar to facing any trauma – the only way out is through. The path to healing and authenticity is painful and dredges up a lot of feelings that have been buried. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it or that it is a disease that I am looking for sympathy for. Treatment does help reduce dysphoria significantly but it’s a long game. You don’t get fast results.

What it does mean is that we need to reduce barriers to care for trans people. I so often hear the argument that things like hair removal shouldn’t be covered because then all the cis people should get it too. But that comes from a lens of equality rather than equity. Trans people have the most barriers to healthcare of pretty much anyone as a group. There are not only barriers from gatekeeping but the added burden of increased rates of employment and housing discrimination that keep many trans people in low paying jobs without coverage. Hair removal for many trans people is a crucial step needed to reduce gender dysphoria and if I didn’t have the money and life circumstances to be able to afford it out of pocket I wouldn’t have the ability to improve that distress.

So today I’m thankful for all the people who have supported my journey thus far. And for my job with decent medical benefits that allows me to start planning for bottom surgery (after I save enough for all the travel and associated out of pocket costs). And for my incredible partner and chosen family I live and share costs with that makes it possible to live near Seattle and still have money for things like electrolysis. I hope every person can find the kind of unconditional love that I have.

The path to coming out can be long and winding

It’s been 7 years since I finished college but I’ve been thinking recently about why I was so closeted there, even to myself. And I think a lot of it is because my sexuality is so tied up in gender and I didn’t have the words even then to see or describe myself. There were also some major barriers that got in my way.

When I first came to University, I was probably one of the most conservative people there, even at my conservative evangelical college. I was just coming out of my fundamentalist homeschooling experience and starting to actually see parts of the world on my own for the first time. And while I was starting to be a little more open to HEARING new ideas, I definitely wasn’t very open to the prospect of changing what I believed. My parents didn’t want me to attend because it was clearly a “liberal” school where they taught evolution. So I came armed with an entire box of books on how to refute evolutionist teachers and “prove” 7 day creationism.

At that point in my life I had never knowingly met an out gay person and I had never even heard of trans people, much less the concept of nonbinary identity. But I was admittedly a very sensitive and naive kid who in part because I wasn’t exposed to a traditional schooling system, hadn’t had much of my gender nonconformity questioned.

My first year I had many hilarious mishaps because I desperately wanted to be friends with the women around me but every time I tried to get close in what I considered to be platonic ways, people always mistook that for attempts to date. Admittedly asking someone to go sing love songs from musicals in a practice room probably would be a date for most people. And when they found out that I wasn’t interested in dating, most people put that together with my sensitive nature and assumed I was gay. There were apparently bets going on about how long it would be before I came out.

And in some ways they were right. I was very gay but they were assuming I was gay for guys and it turns out I was just very gay for women because I mostly am one. But I sadly didn’t figure that out there.

My second year, I screwed up the courage to attend a couple events at the campus’ controversial LGBT discussion club, mostly because I am insatiably curious. And one of those events was a panel with trans people which is where I met my first out trans person who I am still friends with to this day. My mind was blown by the idea that you could reject the gender you were assigned at birth but still my only exposure at that point was to AFAB transmasculine people and binary trans women. And I didn’t think I could ever get to the point where people would believe I was a woman so I dismissed the idea pretty quickly.

When I joined the club the next year as a regular member I started identifying myself as a gender nonconforming ally since I didn’t know where else I fit. I knew I wasn’t gay for guys and I didn’t really know much about bisexuality so I assumed me being interested in women settled the matter. I also made the very terrible choice to get married to a cis woman the summer before my Junior year, mostly so I could pay for school since my dad was trying to use money as a leverage to keep me from becoming too liberal. And at that point I assumed that your sexuality was defined by who you dated and that marriage made me straight. Being in a marriage that I thought put the questions about my sexuality to bed also helped my confidence in being part of such a controversial group.

The next couple years where very chaotic for me, both as a member of the queer club and for my marriage. This was a campus that banned all “homosexual activity” so the group was constantly at risk of being shut down. My junior year they tried to kick us off campus but we eventually rebelled and kept meeting anyway. My senior year I joined the leadership team and it ended up being a pretty crucial year. They tried to shut us down completely by telling us that we didn’t exist anymore and that we absolutely could not reserve rooms. So of course we met in the common areas which made the group less safe but definitely made our point. We weren’t going away. A 6 week intense struggle with the administration ensued where I became the de facto spokesperson for the group, even as a “ally”, and was on the front page of the school paper 4 weeks in a row and interviewed by several news outlets. Eventually the alumni organized a successful letter writing campaign and once the administration realized there was donor money on both sides they backed off and offered a private apology with the permission to not only meet on campus but advertise for the first time. The focus on our mere existence as a group definitely effected how much we could think about our own identities though.

All that time I was also going through a crisis in my marriage that forced me to put any exploration of my gender and sexuality on the back burner. Since I had come out of fundamentalism I had never dated or even kissed anyone before my ex wife. And while we had experimented with some sexual acts before marriage, that all went away about the time I got engaged. It turns out she was likely somewhere on the asexuality spectrum but didn’t have the self awareness or even willingness to confront that to figure it out. So me, a very allosexual (opposite of asexual) person at the time, was very confused when once we were married we never had sex. (The first time I had “traditional” PIV sex wasn’t until 5 years later).

She also was treating me very poorly during this time and increasingly being emotionally and verbally abusive and controlling. So I focused all my emotional energy onto trying to find the solution to fixing my marriage instead of figuring out who I actually was. After college that kept up for far too long until I eventually had the courage to leave her after 6 years of marriage. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I did finally start to figure myself out and wanted to come out as genderqueer and pansexual and she didn’t want me to tell anyone because she didn’t want to have to answer questions about what that meant for her. She had some very deep set biphobia and it turns out her mom had been whispering in her ear the whole time that I was gay and was eventually going to leave her for a man.

The way I finally figured out my identity was through dating once I became polyamorous as a last ditch attempt to figure out how to make a sexless marriage work. I knew by that point I was not only attracted to women but also to nonbinary people and it was a fellow enby who pushed me to think about how to broaden the definitions of androgyny and think about myself in that context. And by realizing I was attracted to transmasculine people, it helped me unlock my queerness and realize that I was also attracted to a variety of body parts.

Anyway, the point of that story is that there are lots of barriers in life that can prevent you from discovering who you really are. And sometimes it requires addressing those barriers or figuring out the complex intertwining of gender and sex that unlocks that door. I really wish I had figured out who I was sooner but in the end it worked out for me.

You deserve love

The biggest thing I wish I’d know when I was 20 is that you deserve to be loved for who you are as a whole person, not despite it. And that is particularly true for trans and nonbinary people.
 
Don’t settle for someone who only loves a part of you. Don’t relegate yourself to people who only like your assigned gender. There are people out there who can and will love you for the complexity of who you are and who you are becoming. And yes, nothing is guaranteed to be permanent, but the biggest gift is finding someone that doesn’t expect you to be static but relishes the ways you grow and change.
 
For nonbinary people, sometimes that means not dating monosexuals like straight people or gays and lesbians. There is a whole big wide world out there of queers and pansexuals and bisexuals and more who don’t expect you to have a particular set of matching body parts and gender expressions.
 
You deserve to be loved for your gender, not despite it.

Getting creative with sex

Content warning: Description of sex and genitalia

This is a first for me. I don’t usually write so publicly about the actual details of how I have sex. But I had a moment I am really proud of this weekend that I thought other people mind find helpful.

So here goes.

Are you ready?

Lately I have been having difficulty having sex that involves my penis. Partly it is dysphoria but mostly with the estrogen and the low libido it is causing I am just having a difficult time getting and staying hard. I’ve used generic viagra for awhile now for ED because I had so many issues around sex anxiety that I was working through because of how my ex messed me up. But before I started E I was using less and less. Now I need to take any time I want to use that part of my body.

But this weekend I had a date with my spouse and I was feeling more sexy than usually and decided to take the viagra. Predictably as we were getting ready to have PIV intercourse my dysphoria kicked in which usually would have put a quick end to it. As I touched myself to put lube on, it literally felt like my penis wasn’t my own and wasn’t part of my body. But this time I found a way to work with that feeling.

Without even thinking too hard about it my brain decided to make that a part of the sex. I conceptualized my penis as the best strap-on dildo ever. It was both attached to me and not part of me at the same time in a really hot way instead of a disturbing one. I could feel what was happening but it felt like I was feeling that through something else instead of directly. The part that I’m most proud of is that I was able to make that switch so smoothly that it didn’t interrupt the flow and we had great sex and I told my partner about how I had done it afterwards.

I’m not sure if I can always do that but hopefully the memory and success of that moment is transferable. How do you find ways to use your body through dysphoria?

Libido changes – HRT week 6

Content Warning: Discussion of sex ahead

I’m now past the 6 week mark of starting estrogen and the changes are coming quite quickly now. My breasts are continuing to grow noticeably every week and my nipples are at least 50% larger and much more prominent. Whereas before my nipples used to lay flat about half the time, now they are pretty much always erect which means I have to cover them when I go out. Yesterday I almost had a very embarrassing moment where I arrived a professional conference I was helping host only to realize I had forgotten my nipple covers. Luckily I always keep band aids in my bag so I had to go and strap them down.

Some of the other changes have been less pleasant. Last week I was extremely moody, irritable, and depressed. There were times I wanted to strangle people who annoyed me and moments where I wished I could not exist (not the same as suicidal but close). Luckily I have an amazing chosen family who talked me down during my emotional breakdown where I felt like life wasn’t worth living if I couldn’t make a difference in the fight against greed and evil. Right now I’m taking a break from the news and some of my social justice communities until I can better handle the demoralizing parts.

This week has been more stable in terms of mood but I am really becoming aware of just how much my libido has changed. I was never a “think about sex all the time” kind of person. But I did have an active sex drive and sex life. Now I’ve realized that I haven’t masturbated in weeks and don’t even really miss it. And I haven’t been able to have sex without viagra in a very long time either.

What I’m not sure of is if this is truly a drop in libido or just me not being used to how that looks different. I am still very interested in other people’s bodies but I have almost no interest or even enjoyment in using my own. And whereas before I use to have more bisexual interests, I am definitely becoming more and more focused on just queer women and nonbinary femmes. Some of this started before estrogen but has continued to be more pronounced.

So the short version is that I’m not sure what sex looks like right now or how to relate to it. I am extremely lucky to have people in my life who don’t have expectations of exactly what that looks like either and the benefit of being polyamorous is that nobody is relying solely on me to have their sexual needs met. Having that pressure taken off is a huge relief while I am in this phase where I am essentially becoming a demisexual or gray ace.

Right now it is mostly confusing for me as I try to navigate this new feeling (or rather lack of feeling) and it is a lot less frustrating than I expected. But I know I will be sad if my libido doesn’t come back so I’m hoping this isn’t permanent or that my relationship to sex improves as I adjust.

How clothing revealed my gender

I started estrogen yesterday! Besides feeling a little fuzzy, no changes yet but I’m really enjoying the symbology of my rebirth being on the first day of Spring.

As I’m beginning a kind of transition that people seem to be taking more seriously, I am thinking about some of the ways that “I knew” I was transfeminine. And one of the biggest ones as an adult was clothing.

I have never been that comfortable in masculine clothing. I mean I’m perfectly fine wearing jeans and a t-shirt for doing dirty work or walking the dogs. But the more formal I had to dress, the more uncomfortable and out of place I felt. It felt like I was putting on clothing that didn’t belong to me and didn’t fit my body.

For years I experimented with options to see what felt comfortable. As a kid I didn’t really think about it too much because when I was allowed to choose, I wore the jeans and t-shirt uniform. Or something practical like cargo pants when I went hiking so I could store my camera lenses. I never felt like anything looked good on me so I went for utility instead. And it was hard to disentangle my discomfort with more formal clothing from the discomfort around the situations I had to wear them in such as fundamentalist churches and cult conferences. Although I did know that wearing ties made me feel like I was being strangled, and not just in the physical sense.

Once I started having office jobs where I had to wear collared shirts, I bounced around between styles for awhile trying to find something that worked. I eventually found I felt best wearing purple so I settled on a lot of that for awhile during my “preppy” phase. But it still didn’t feel natural. I also got really bored with how few options there were for masculine clothing without accessories so I found myself collecting more and more different outfits and shades of drab pants in order to mix things up as much as socially acceptable. Everyone already thought I was gay so I was afraid of getting too adventurous about bright colors at that point.

As I got farther away from fundamentalism and more involved in LGBTQ rights as what I called a “gender nonconforming ally” at that point, I lost some of that fear of being perceived as gay. I was in a straight monogamous marriage with a woman at that point so I guess I felt that people would stop questioning me. Though as I adopted more inclusive language like calling my spouse with her gender neutral name “partner,” it didn’t do much to allay the rumors at work.

I did eventually start wearing more and more bold colors. I got brightly colored pants and fun patterned shirts that ended up being read as pretty gay. And that was the closest I came to feeling comfortable in masculine clothing. I also enjoyed the increased compliments on my appearance I got as people started reading me as more gay. Part of that was definitely the quality of the outfits I was putting together but some of it was probably due to working in women dominated fields and dressing in ways that made it more socially acceptable to comment on clothing.

Then, as I got more involved in polyamorous community and started dating other queer people, I began to realize that there was more to my identity than I was allowing myself to consider. And as I began to see myself as genderqueer, I experimented with more androgynous outfits at work. The problem is that for someone whose body is read as male to look androgynous, it is hard to dress formal. So much of what we perceive as androgyny is white, thin, AFAB (assigned female at birth) people dressing dapper or masculine of center. So on days I wanted to dress androgynous I had to dress down. And whether it was because of that or because of the change in gender expression, I realized I was getting less compliments at work and it felt like people were less likely to talk to me in general the less I fit the binary.

So I stopped pushing the boundaries as much at work. But once I escaped my marriage with a person who was ostensibly fine with queer people around her but not with any expressions of queerness or transness in her spouse, I started dressing more femme at home. It took me a long time to find things that fit me and looked good on my body (and that I could afford) but I slowly began building a wardrobe of clothing that felt much more gender affirming. And the more I wore dresses and cowl neck sweaters and tight pants, the more comfortable I felt.

In the moments when I was dressing femme it felt like I had shed the exoskeleton that was too tight and constricting my body. It felt freeing not just in an emotional sense but in a very tangible physical release as well. And that’s when I knew I was making the right choice and that I could never go back.

Because of a terrible new boss, I had to switch jobs right around the time that it was getting pretty hard to keep dressing masculine. And based on the advice of some other trans women, I interviewed in clothing that was as masculine as I could stand at that point. Which pretty much meant my gayest outfits. It took 6 months but I finally found a job and on my last day at the old job I wore a dress to say goodbye.

On the first day of my new job I outed myself to my new team as nonbinary and was amazed at how quickly they started using my pronouns. But I kept dressing as masculine as I could tolerate while I settled in. After 7 weeks I finally got the courage to talk to my supervisor about clothing and started dressing in the more androgynous outfits again while I worked on building up a wardrobe of professional femme clothing. There was some initial shock as they realized just how trans I was but it quickly faded into normal for them and now I only get compliments at work.

So the moral of the story is, if you never feel comfortable in the options you are “allowed” to wear, there might be something under that you need to explore. I am in love with femme clothing and I am so glad I have a place where I am affirmed in that expression at home and at work.

Fertility and Hormones

The thing that I’ve had on my mind a lot lately is the question of when to begin my hormonal transition in relation to what to do about having a child. I’ve known I wanted a baby since I was pretty young, though in more of a maternal parenting role than a paternal one. The only times I’ve questioned that were when the pressures to be a father made me feel inadequate to the task. And especially since learning that induced lactation is possible, I’ve known that starting from infancy is definitely what I want to do.

But the thing is, I’m not in a place yet where I’m ready to start a family. Part of that is personal – I think I need to do more growth and self work before I am ready to devote that much time and attention on a mini human. And part of that is situational – my spouse doesn’t want to be a primary parent and I don’t have anyone else to co-parent with in my life right now.

The part that gives me pause is what to do about my sperm. Once I start hormones it is fairly likely that I will quickly become permanently infertile. There aren’t a lot of studies  about what happens when you stop hormones but the advice is to assume that it is a permanent change. I’ve looked into freezing my sperm but that is a very expensive procedure with no guarantee of success, and frankly, I don’t have the money right now dues to other high medical expenses. It also requires me to have good sperm count and motility to begin with and I’m becoming less and less sure that is the case. When my hormone levels were checked recently, my testosterone was low (no surprise) which doesn’t bode well. I also have many habits that tend to lower fertility such as wearing tight clothing, smoking pot, and taking ibuprofen.

So even if I was ready to make a baby right now, there is no guarantee I could do it without major changes that don’t really seem possible. I don’t want to take testosterone supplements because that’s the opposite of what I’m trying to do. It would be very difficult to wear loose clothing with my current style and wardrobe. And cannabis is the only thing I’ve found that makes my chronic pain even tolerable.

As I’ve come to accept that, I’ve realized that I can’t keep waiting on starting my transition. It’s harming my mental health to be stuck in this limbo waiting for a sign. So I’ve setup an appointment with my primary care physician, who luckily specializes in trans patients, to talk about starting hormones. I am going to have to trust that if the universe wants me to have a child, destiny is going to have to meet me halfway.

There are other options for the future. Being nonbinary and nonmonogamous with a nontraditional family structure means that adoption would be difficult, especially through an agency, but there are local places friends have recommended where the birth parent gets to make a choice. What I’m really hoping happens is that I find someone to co-parent with who has a working uterus and possibly another partner with sperm. If not there is always artificial insemination or surrogate parents.

Right now I need to focus on beginning my transition and hopefully along the way find the right way to build a family. If anyone is interested in starting conversations about co-parenting, platonically or otherwise, please let me know.

Nonbinary surgical transition

I’ve long dreamed of what it would be like to have a physical/surgical nonbinary transition. But in a world where gender affirmation surgery is hard to get in the first place and surgical interventions continue to be binary focused, it is hard to see where I fit and what is possible.

The body I’ve dreamed about long before I knew I was trans had breasts, smooth skin, a penis (that in my dreams is often detachable or retractable), a vagina, and no scrotum. But other than a few intersex people who didn’t have non-consensual surgical interventions as infants, I didn’t think that could exist. Over and over I’ve thought about and researched vaginoplasty only to come up frustrated by the limited options. The typical process involves deconstructing the penis and essentially turning it inside out to form the vagina with the tip becoming the clitoris. If you have a strong stomach, you can watch a digital visualization of the process.

The surgery has come a long way over the years and I know plenty of people who have had it done and are very happy with the results. I speak from personal experience when I say that the sex can be pretty amazing. But for me, it just doesn’t feel like the right solution. There are still frustrating issues because it doesn’t have the same kind of mucous membranes that internal tissue in a cisgender vagina has and quite a bit of work needs to be done to ensure that it doesn’t start growing hair again (ouch!). A few creative surgeons have tried creating vaginas out of sections of the colon but it apparently has a residual smell.

But today I learned that a brilliant trans woman researched on her own some of the techniques used on cisgender women in repairing vaginas and convinced her doctor in New York to create her vagina out of the peritoneum, the tissue in your abdomen that hold your guts in place. It apparently worked very successfully, at least from initial results, and hundreds of patients are already on the waiting list at Mount Sinai.

Discovering that, along with learning more about orchiectomy, removal of the testes, really has me thinking again. Is it possible for me to have both a vagina and a penis? So far I haven’t been able to find any writing on that but I’m definitely going to be digging deep and tapping some of my online nonbinary resources. There are a few forum questions proving that I’m not the only one seeking this but none that have any resolution from what I can tell. If anyone reading this has suggestions on where to start, please let me know in the comments or by contacting me.

Internal impostor

This has been one of those weeks where I’ve had to fight my internal impostor syndrome hard. There has been a lot of that nagging voice in my head telling me that I’m not really trans, that I’m just a pretentious dude trying to be more feminist by rejecting masculinity and wearing a dress. I’m not sure where it is coming from but I suppose I am just internalizing what I assume that people must be saying about me.

It is so exhausting being stared at EVERYWHERE I go. I know that not everyone is judging me but it sure feels like it. And there are definitely people who are. Yesterday I was walking down a busy street next to traffic and a guy in a truck was shamelessly videotaping me, probably to post in some online haters forum to make fun of me. It is really disheartening to know that there is no escape from that hypervisibility. It’s not like there is some end point where I am going to “pass” and not get stares anymore. This is my reality as long as I have energy to continue existing. Sometimes I wish that I was just a trans woman so I could shell out the thousands of dollars and be done with it.

I’m too far out of the closet now to go back and forward just means more of this never ending public gaze. It would be easier to handle if I could get rid of the damn voice in my head telling me I’m not who I know I am. I don’t need more people telling me it is just a phase or treating me like I’m just confused. I don’t do this for kicks, I do it because it is the only way I know how to be even close to comfortable and authentically present myself.

I’m trying to cheer myself up with playlists by some awesome trans artists like Jacob Tobia and Alok Vaid-Menon and thinking about the Trans Pride Festival tonight. But all I keep coming back to is this horrible feeling in my gut that this game I’m playing with gender is going to have to come to an end someday and I will have to return to reality. But the idea of having to face the world as a man again is even more terrifying than the idea of this future of scrutiny. *Sigh* I guess that’s the sign that I really am genderqueer.

When does this get easier?

EDIT: I went to Trans Pride Seattle after writing this and it was exactly the healing I needed. I was surrounded by hundreds of really cute and radical trans siblings and I got so many hugs. It was a particularly good reminder to see all the other bearded femmes in this city and know that I am not alone. I am so thankful for my queer and trans community in this city.

Resourcing myself

This winter was really rough for me. I wrote about my depression a little bit but mostly I didn’t have the mental energy to write a lot here since November. The short version is that the combination of the bleak political situation with the record rain and dark, long days we’ve had in Seattle forced me to confront the fact that my depression isn’t just situational. There are definitely things that make it worse but it’s clear that it is a bigger problem than just something wrong in my relationships or at work. My personal life is objectively better than it ever has been and yet I barely had the energy to get through the day most of the time.

But I did what I’m best at – I used my resources and courage to look for solutions. And luckily, I didn’t just look for a simple quick fix. It took a combination of a lot of factors to bring me out of it. I’m recording them here partly for my own sake so if/when this happens again I can recall what worked, but also to hopefully inspire others to take some steps towards radical self care.

First off, I have been seeing a great therapist since the beginning of last year who has helped me find ways to break patterns of anxiety and recognize my triggers early enough to help get out of the cycles. But even the best self soothing and awareness only seems to work for me when I’m dealing with the “normal” amount of mental health challenges for me. When I add the layer of depression on top of my anxiety, ADD, and PTSD, I get stuck.

So I found myself a psychiatrist (well technically an ARNP) and started working on finding the right antidepressant for brain. The first try with Lexapro was disastrous – I had a bunch of side effects including worsening anxiety. And even with the second try, Zoloft, it took a long time to find the right dose. But now things seem to have leveled out and I can tell there is a huge difference in my ability to self manage my mental health.

Another important factor was (re)engaging heavily in my core relationship building. Being depressed can take a heavy toll on the people around you and I know I was much more irritable for a long time and my libido was way out of wack. Things aren’t perfect but now I can confidently say I’m feeling a sense of secure attachment and I can see the growth and evolution of my relationships instead of stagnation. I have two romantic relationships that have passed the two year mark and I’ve built a chosen family around myself that can weather a lot of change.

One aspect I didn’t anticipate being such an important key was my physical health. I tend to be pretty good about going to the doctor but I had stopped going to the chiropractor last year due to money and schedules. My back and neck clearly weren’t ready for that though because as I was trying to track my mood for medications, I noticed an unusual pattern. My anxiety was peaking shortly after I arrived at work and again at the end of the day. It turns out that was when my neck pain was worst and it was so bad that it was breaking down my ability to manage my mental health. So I found a new chiropractor who I’ve been seeing weekly and it is making a world of difference.

Finally, at my therapist’s encouragement, I took steps to bring things back into my life that ignite my creativity and passion. I am starting a trans acapella group and even though we haven’t met yet, I can tell the excitement of that is giving my mental health a big boost.

The weather and longer days are of course helping too but between all these factors, I am radically better than I have been in months. My energy has returned, I don’t need to constantly take time every day for pain management, and I can be myself finally. This in turn gives me motivation to do more things that I love like open myself back up to new dating opportunities and see friends more. The positive feedback loop of well managed mental heath sure takes a long time to get going but I’m glad it has finally kicked in.