I am a trans woman and I have been off hormones for three months. My supply of estrogen and anti-androgens has been cut off, and thus my internal supply of testosterone, now unchecked, is assuming command of my endocrine system. My breasts are deflating. My skin is splotchy. I smell bad.
This is not by choice, but by mere admission of these facts, I subject myself to the subtle expulsion and ostracization of my community and otherwise “allies.”
For a long time, hormones have served as the litmus test for the sincerity of your gender; if you really want to be a woman, you’ll jump through the hoops, belly-flopping onto the finish line if you must.
A psychiatrist once tried to coerce me into giving up weed, losing 25 pounds and maybe “stop seeing girls and find myself a nice boyfriend instead” if I really wanted hormones; I was chided by other women for my bristling at “playing their game.” And any day I leave the house without shaving and plucking each and every hair on my face, I awaken to a reality awash in “sirs” and “oh, hey, what are your pronouns again.”
I left the tech sector eight months ago—there were better hills to die on, with nicer views. Facilitating a startup’s decline into the abyss of understaffed chaos came with a certain fleeting gratification—but also the subtraction of my medical support system.
Since leaving my past career I have attempted suicide twice, been institutionalized once—but this has not been enough to fast track my MediCal application, which is still waiting to be processed, eight months after I applied.
And after six months of chasing down the odd leftover Climara patch or blister pack of Spironolactone for $20, I have just the energy to document my decline into infinitesimal hideousness. And, ever the intrepid, I’ve been following my body into that good night every step of the way, to the tune of about 10 selfies a day. Sometimes more, when I have good nail polish.
I have become overtaken by thick black underbrush that is creeping through my pores and pulling myself apart. I began my medical transition when I was 22; I have never had chest hair, or facial hair above the jaw-line. And now it’s everywhere—and I’m angry about it, about everything, including my libido, which will know no release because I am gross and hideous and because the diminished estrogen in my system brands sex with me as less legitimately lesbionic. People pull away from you when your femininity is not “in progress.”
I don’t know if I’ve ever believed I was beautiful, even after estrogen gave me breasts and hips and blushing apple cheeks. But I was always “in progress”—if I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror that day, I knew there was more of something on the way. But now that progress has been halted; it's been told to go back the way it came.
Now I get to watch seven years of self-love and taking care of my body “in good faith” slowly degrade into masculine decay. Because the system is failing me and ultimately, by leaving behind a job I hated, I have in some small way failed myself.
I feel like I’m growing into the ground, away from the sun. I find myself shrinking away from other women. How can I convince a doctor to prescribe life-saving medication when I’m not even sure I’m a human anymore and not some listless Doppelganger on autopilot? I’m slowly submerged in a tank of psychic scorpions and the only thing keeping me from going completely dingo shit with sobbing is to accept other people’s ignorance that a tank of psychic scorpions is my reality.
Maybe this perceived loss of womanhood—much like the death rattle of my self-esteem—is all in my head, but it’s all in yours, too. Everything we know about gender is what we have been told, by parents, by teachers, doctors and Twitter activists who post my address on the Internet in the hopes of someone following me home to stab me.
Subjecting myself to the prodding and preying eyes of the medical establishment seems so large and I so small in the wake of my de-powering, but I am only getting smaller, and if I don’t act soon then I will be too small to scale this wall, even with help.
Fear is the mindkiller; I am losing my mind.
You will, at the end of this, be sent to bed without your triumphant crescendo of the human spirit. I don’t know if the ravages of the re-masculinization of my body will compel me enough to seek the help I need, or if I will crumble in its wake, like a dried out Oreo cookie left out of the packaging overnight that you eat anyway because the cream is effectively element proof.
I share this with you not to coddle your compassion and indulge in this fantasy that we will all be okay if we just believe in ourselves.
Gender transition does not “cure” dysphoria—it is an effervescent constant of the human condition. Anytime you avert your full body reflection in a store window or experience a pang-ed flinch where your heart ought to be when you see someone with the body you wish you had, that you know you deserve, that is dysphoria. You are dysphoric, or will be. As I am now. And will probably be tomorrow.
We are all managing the best we can. We all, in a way, do what we can to mold and fashion our physical forms into something that coalesces with the person we perceive as our “true selves.”
You experience this, even if only for a second or two at a time. You are not fluent, as such, in the lexicon of this sort of languish, but you know it—as do I. We know each other. I see you seeing me.
And if we don’t make it out together, learn what you can from my self-portraits. Or tape them to the toilet seats of people I hated. And maybe the people I loved, too.
