I'm thinking of my enby embodiment. I've been taking Testosterone for nearly 8 months.
I feel like I've been living with a cold for this entire time as my voice drops in fits and starts. I feel youthful embarrassment when my voice cracks, or fails to make any sound at all.
I'm starting to feel the changes to my hips and stomach as my fat redistributes itself. I have a jacket that now fits around my hips and shirts made so tight that the "belly button" never stays buttoned.
I see and feel the changes in my skin as it erupts in acne. Sometimes it erupts in places where it didn't erupt the first time I went through puberty.
My joints started aching as parts of my body that can still grow rub elbows with parts that finished growing decades ago.
My muscles are yearning, though I'm not quite sure what they want. They have gotten bigger. I think they've been working out without me, stealing away in the deepest part of night to pump iron while I sleep.
I feel with my whole body that it has now grown into a place where my previous knowledge of my body is not enough to take care of it. My body has changed enough that it feels like I moved and I have to figure the quirks of the new layout that is now my home.
A quiet part of me nags that I am not trans enough, that if I was truly trans, I would know what to do.
Shut up, Quiet Part! You don't know shit about this.
I will join you in letting your Quiet Part know that you are trans enough. And it's not because you take T, or are considering this surgery or that one. That's not what makes people trans. It's that place in your head that can't stay quiet about the differences between how other people see you and how you feel from the inside out. It's that voice that won't stay quiet about gender and identity and where you fit into it all.
ReplyDeleteAnd, to the physical things... it's weird at this point in our lives to have this much change going on from the inside out, physically. I find it kind of astonishing how much my body, face, and sense of embodiment have changed and this surprise comes even though I thought about it a long time before doing anything. The way we each react to T is so individual, you can't predict what will happen when, and how it will work in your body. It's definitely a journey of discovery.