It's sweater weather during week 2 of testosterone.
If the Bay has taught me anything, it’s that opportunities can so often appear as disasters on the horizon until you’re close enough to see them clearly.
Testosterone Week 2: This Isn't So Scary After All
I knew that testosterone was important to me, but I never expected to be as emotional as I was when I finally started.
Even just waiting in line at the pharmacy reduced me to a teary, shaking mess.
Where did those emotions come from?
Part of it was remembering where I had been; how far I had come. I had left my home, family, and friends in Michigan behind — really, everything that I knew — to move to the San Francisco Bay Area, for no other reason than the lingering sense that there was something I was looking for that I hadn’t yet found.
Starting testosterone felt like finally grasping in my hands that very thing I had traveled thousands of miles to find. That elusive thing that promised to fill the emptiness, the alienation, the restless sense that there was something bigger out there waiting for me.
Is this it? I don’t actually know. But there’s only one way to find out.
I remember when the plane was touching down in California. For a moment, we were so near the water that I wondered if we were landing or crashing into the bay. That sense of wonder mixed with fear was actually a perfect representation of my life here. The uncertainty of whether it was a disaster or new beginning has been my exact experience of the last year and a half.
If the Bay has taught me anything, it’s that opportunities can so often appear as disasters on the horizon until you’re close enough to see them clearly.
Coming out as transgender to my family was something like that. I thought it was going to destroy our family and that I would be solely responsible for the devastation. As the day approached, I could see nothing but water beneath me. I was suspended in a free fall and my stomach was constantly turning.
On the horizon, yes, an unavoidable disaster. I braced myself for impact. But when that day came, I was met with unconditional and fierce love. The ground was solid underneath me, unwavering.
There was fear, but rising above that fear were two parents who wanted nothing but happiness for this human that they brought into this world. And thus, a new beginning.
An opportunity to begin again more honestly, more authentically, and more visibly.
Years prior, I spent many sleepless nights worrying that being transgender meant that I would live a troubled life.
This first week on testosterone has been something like the ground returning beneath me after years of fear. I know now that being transgender is not the terrifying catastrophe that I had prepared myself for.
I had associated transitioning with loss — loss of family, loss of the only body I ever lived in, loss of the “womanhood” that I never wanted but felt anchored to, and loss of the self as I knew it. All I had was what I had imagined. But I know now, now that I'm finally here, that transition is not about loss.
I am past the horizon and facing my future — holding promises as patches in a brown paper bag labeled “Testosterone” — and I see transitioning for what it is. It's the opportunity to see myself more clearly, to be known in my entirety, to find that elusive thing that I’ve always been looking for.
I have nothing to lose but everything to gain.
