OFFICIAL HORMONE-REPLACEMENT LOG, DAY THIRTY-TWO:
ONE MONTH!!! Woo Hoo!! It was officially one month ago that I started this journey! This calls for a celebration!!!
Anyway, originally I was thinking of making this the last post in this topic, using it to wrap up this topic so that I could start a new one that was about my gender transition instead of just the effects of hormones, but unfortunately I have been forced to decide that it's not quite time yet after some of the things that happened today.
So, basically what happened is that originally I was planning on making my official 4-week video from "girl mode" today, and it was going to be the official wrap-up video where I was going to be able to say "Hello, this is Carrie, my new self. Well, from now on I officially have a female identity, and as such it's time to move on from the hormone-trial period of this. It's been a great ride, here's my videos from the past four weeks, and it's time to move on." Well, unfortunately, it did NOT turn out that way. For the past few days, I've been feeling really confident, and really optimistic about my looks, thinking that maybe I was getting close to passing already, and that all I really needed to do was get the voice down, and voila! A girl is born! But it didn't turn out that way when I tried it for real. When I attempted recording myself in "girl mode" today, it did NOT look or sound good at all. I didn't even come CLOSE to passing in the video. As soon as I started talking, and as soon as I started filming myself in real-time rather than just taking still pictures where I could move around to get the best angles and the most feminine body positions before recording anything, I did NOT look feminine. At all. I just looked and sounded like a guy in a wig. So, yeah, MAJOR bummer. I'm nowhere near as far along as I thought I was. I still have a LONG way to go, months possibly, before I'll reasonably be able to go out as a girl in public.
Needless to say, this was a big blow to my self-esteem. It had been on the rise consistently for weeks now, where I was starting to love everything that I saw in the mirror, and really felt confident about
I was even getting a big head about how I was going to start telling people, and everything was going to be great. But now it's going to be really hard to get that same kind of self-confidence back after the events of today. At first, I just felt mildly disappointed about it, not really taking it too hard, but then I went out shopping. And it progressed. My mood just got worse and worse. On the very first week of this trial, I reported that whenever I saw a girl I smiled, because I was thinking "that could be me! It really could be!" Well, today, with every single "real" girl that I saw, I just got more and more depressed. My mind started going into a bunch of self-defeating thought streams like "I'm NEVER going to look like that," and "I'll NEVER be a real girl like her
etty much just felt like curling up into a ball and crying. It took a LONG time to get over those thoughts... lots of laying in bed feeling miserable, lots of listening to sad songs from Kate Wolf and the Carpenters, and a nice long nap to recover. I do feel a bit better now that it's night, but I'll be honest, this was still a very serious blow to my self-confidence. I didn't even feel like dressing up in "girl mode" today because I was feeling so depressed and so much like "why do I even bother? I don't look like a girl. I'm just kidding myself."
One positive thing about this, is that once again whenever I'm depressed, and feeling like it's impossible, it once again gives me a chance to test my convictions over this whole gender-transition thing. And now that I've felt this feeling enough times, I've realized that whenever I start having doubts like this, the reason isn't because I'm doubting that I want to be a girl, and not because I'm doubting that I want to continue with female hormones, it's because I'm afraid of NOT being a girl, and the hormones NOT having an effect. So really, it has nothing to do with actually wanting to stop, it has to do with my gender dysphoria being so bad, seeing so much maleness still in my face and my body, that I feel like it's impossible. And I've become increasingly convinced that all I really need to do is be more patient, and give it time. This is NOT a quick process. It's only been 1 month, and most of the changes have barely even started, so it is going to take a LOT longer before things really start to change at a significant rate. It really is like a second puberty. My first puberty was NOT fast either. Things happened gradually. I didn't go to sleep one day and then wake up taller than my mom, it took all the way from the beginning of 7th grade to the middle of 8th grade. It took at least a year for most of the effects of my original puberty to happen, and most of them weren't completely done until I was almost 18. I can't expect this second female puberty to be any faster. (Sigh... I wish it could be, though. I'm SO tired of looking like a guy. I really just want to be a girl right now, and it really hurts to know that I'm still not even close.)
In better news, this is the first day since re-starting estrogen that I have indeed been able to notice things once again starting to change. There had been pretty much no nipple progression or facial progression for the last week or so, but now it's started again. The tips of my nipples are now starting to get bigger. And in addition to that, there has actually been some extra slight facial feminization. I've especially started to notice that my eyes look a bit different. I don't know how to describe it, but somehow the lids have relaxed or something, so my eyes now always look like they are more open. And somehow, they appear to be looking upward now. When I first started, my eyes always looked like they were looking downward, in a kind of tough and threatening manner, where now there's a bit more of a starry-eyed appearance to them, where it looks like I'm looking upward, and I actually look nicer and more approachable rather than like I'm tough and threatening. (Yeah, I am indeed happy about this, I just wish it would happen faster. I REALLY want a completely female face right now...)
Of course, nothing that I say is worth anything without some visual evidence to go with it, so here's a few pictures of my face, for comparison purposes. (And these are all new. I haven't shown any of these yet.)
First of all, I am going to show one of the pictures that I HATE the most. This is, however, unfortunately what pretty much almost ALL of my pictures ended up looking like while I was still just living as a "normal" guy... eyes practically closed when I tried to smile, entire face just grossly out-of-proportion, fake smile, eyebrows just burying my eyes, and a host of other things that always made me look gross and dumb and disgusting. Here is the picture.
http://oi50.tinypic.com/2dqqzo0.jpg (Don't look directly into it. Blegh!!!) (My mom took this picture, about 5 years ago, while I was on vacation in South Africa with her and my uncle. This is the me that I was desperately trying to escape from in the first place. And again, sometimes it seemed like this was the exact way that I always looked in pictures, no matter how much I tried to smile and look happy. [God, is it any wonder I thought that transition was completely impossible at this age, considering how awful I looked?])
Secondly, here is a picture from the very first week of this hormone trial. It was taken only about 3 days after I started taking estrogen. And as you can see, not a lot had changed. I still had a muscular face, I still looked tough, and my eyes still were almost always just partially-closed, appearing to be constantly looking downward in a threatening manner.
http://oi47.tinypic.com/2ut3r7n.jpg
And finally
took tonight, which showcases all of the things that I have mentioned. My face is less muscular, my eyes look WAY more open and starry-eyed, it looks like I'm looking more upward rather than downward, my cheeks are fuller and rounder, my skin is softer, my lower face isn't so obnoxiously huge-looking (especially my jaw area,) and my smile actually looks genuine rather than either fake or non-existent.
http://oi48.tinypic.com/klysx.jpg
So, yeah, as you can see, I am definitely making progress, but it's agonizingly slow at times. (Here's an appropriate funny link on the situation, from the "trans girl diaries" webcomic...
http://transgirldiaries.com/?p=1835)
Okay, two more things before I call it a night:
Firstly, this morning I almost had a nocturnal orgasm in my dreams TWICE, and yet both times was interrupted RIGHT as I was about to reach the peak. (Thanks a lot for waking me up, Jenny...
) It was that same kind of orgasmic feeling where the pleasure is almost all in my head rather than my genitals. I really feel like this is going to become a thing over the next few months... my head, and my imagination, and "getting in the mood" is going to become much more important than the actual physical act itself. And there's something else that's really odd about this new arousal pattern. Although when Jenny first woke me up, I was REALLY annoyed, and really wanted to finish what was going on in my dream, suddenly after getting distracted with something else, looking at the "Trans Girl Diaries" webcomic, suddenly the desire just completely vanished. It was completely unlike my normal male pattern of arousal, where once I get started I can't make my mind shut up until it's been fulfilled, and it annoys me if I don't, to the point that it interrupts my daily life. Once I stopped thinking about it today, though, the desire just went away, and I pretty much just went about the day as normal, in complete control. (And as such, it is no longer a bother in any way, it's actually a pleasure!!! YAY!!!!! Sex drive, you officially do not control me anymore. I am your new master!!! HAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!)
And finally, I have noticed that as my skin is softening, there has been a bit of skin dryness to go with it. So this is yet another case of "I'm more sensitive to things now." Dry air in winter never really used to have any effect on my skin whatsoever, but now there's definitely some dry itchy patches that I'm going to have to buy skin-cream for. (And I've had to use a LOT of chap-stick over the last 2 weeks or so to keep my lips from cracking.) Again, becoming female really is like changing into a bit of a weaker state of existence. Things affect you in a way that they never did as just a guy. Your skin is more vulnerable, your muscles are weaker, you're more susceptible to feeling feelings of all kinds, whether happy or sad, and a host of other things. But as a tradeoff, you are also more "vulnerable" to pleasurable things... things taste better, smell better, and there is a greater serotonin pleasure response to pleasurable things. So it really is a matter of personal taste. When everything is evened out, women do have to put up with more physical annoyances, but they also get to experience stronger emotional highs than men. So the real question is, which do you want more? Do you feel like manly emotional-stoicism is wrong, and you want to feel like bad things are actually affecting you, and that good things are actually affecting you? Do you want to have to pay more attention to diet and other bodily things? Or do you want a more even-keeled existence, not experiencing emotional highs and lows, and not having to worry as much about how you're taking care of yourself? I really believe this a serious consideration. Me myself, I LOVE having things actually affect me. It feels like I'm truly experiencing life the way it was meant to be, and I always hated lacking a true emotional response to things, and having most things barely affect me at all. I LOVE having female hormones in me, and again just feel like this is what my life should have been like in the first place. But again, for others I can definitely see how it might be an annoyance.
Anyway, that's all I have. (Sorry about letting the length get out-of-control, but I had a rough day, so I had a lot to talk about.)
Looking forward to much future feminization! Here's hoping that I really will be able to pass as a girl soon!
-Carrie
(although I really don't feel much like Carrie anymore after today's episode with the video recording. I just feel like poor old stupid Charlie again physically, and am just feeling so depressed about still being stuck in this body, and still so far away from passing. Sigh...)
Anyway, later! This topic will indeed be continuing until such a time where I really can consider going outside in "girl mode" and actually look into gender transitioning.
(Side note: I will still be posting the "one-month wrap-up" posts, although they will no longer be "wrap-up" posts, they will just be "official" summaries of my feelings after one month. I will be splitting this one-month update into 3 or 4 different posts, each covering a different topic, spaced out over the next week or so. Look for the first one soon.)
(Side note 2: as of this morning, my initial supply of finasteride has finally run out, so now I am finally switching to dutasteride. Here's hoping that the hair changes will now accelerate along with it. More head hair, please, and less body hair! And I'd like them delivered on a silver platter with a nice dose of boobs and smooth skin to go with them. Well, what are you waiting for? Chop chop! Don't keep me waiting!)
It's so amazing to be shopping for clothes that I actually like for the first time! (I have ALWAYS hated male clothes, even as a kid. That is one of the few signs of transgenderism that I did have as a kid, is that whenever I had to dress up and wear a suit and tie, it felt TERRIBLE, and I would always envy the girls and their dresses, which looked so open and so free and non-restrictive compared to my encapsulation in heavy fabric all over. Plus I'd always imagine wearing a dress and being able to twirl around and watch the fabric flutter out to the sides. I always thought that was really cool, and I loved how beautiful it looked.))
) It was that same kind of orgasmic feeling where the pleasure is almost all in my head rather than my genitals. I really feel like this is going to become a thing over the next few months... my head, and my imagination, and "getting in the mood" is going to become much more important than the actual physical act itself. And there's something else that's really odd about this new arousal pattern. Although when Jenny first woke me up, I was REALLY annoyed, and really wanted to finish what was going on in my dream, suddenly after getting distracted with something else, looking at the "Trans Girl Diaries" webcomic, suddenly the desire just completely vanished. It was completely unlike my normal male pattern of arousal, where once I get started I can't make my mind shut up until it's been fulfilled, and it annoys me if I don't, to the point that it interrupts my daily life. Once I stopped thinking about it today, though, the desire just went away, and I pretty much just went about the day as normal, in complete control. (And as such, it is no longer a bother in any way, it's actually a pleasure!!! YAY!!!!! Sex drive, you officially do not control me anymore. I am your new master!!! HAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!)
