The Happiness Rebound

Let's talk about some specifics to the trans experience that you might not realise or have considered.

This one's gonna be graphic, specific, and mention sex and genitalia so don't keep reading if you don't want to know. 

Taking spironolactone (testosterone blocker), estrogen, and progesterone will eventually modify your genitals.... There's shrinkage of the whole area, erections are a little less erect, it's a bit of an experience really... And it can cause quite a bit of sexual anxiety if you're still using it for that.

But... The other changes affect arousal and orgasm, you feel things in a more whole bodied way, the orgasms are more intense and last longer, and the delay between one orgasm and the next gets much shorter. 

It's a very different style of sex, if you can find the right partners that don't make you feel embarrassed about your changed genitals it can be really special.

Lately I've been so hurt, the inevitable panic and rejection by people I get close to that seems to happen every time I try, the state of the world becoming more openly hostile to trans people, the reduced opportunities, the self doubt and loneliness.... It's all so fucking much.  And then personal loss and tragedy one after the other this year too.  It's a miracle I'm still here. 

So there's been all these thoughts of detransition, should I do it, could I go back to living a male existence and improve my situation.  Dating would be easier, my health would improve, my job opportunities would be better. 

And just to confuse things I had some truly fucking euphoric sex with someone I wish could be mine.

And it was only as good as it was because I'm on hormones, as a boy I never once had the kind of sex where I felt like I died, floated outside time and space for ten minutes and resurrected into my body unable to think. 

Or where I felt so connected to the person I was with.  Or where it was so easy to do it again immediately after. 

I wish I could have it all, and that the universe could just let me win, and the world was a lot more kind.   But it's not. 

Instead I'm going to disassociate and let myself cry. 

Anxiety... but make it casual

I can't believe I haven't posted since January, I've wanted to so many times and just couldn't quite bring myself to write.

Anyone who has been following along knows that I've been really lonely and more than a little bit anxious about actually getting intimate with people.  

Sure, I fall in love so fast and so hard at times.. It's usually just me being hopeful that I mean as much to them as they mean to me. 

Lots of the time it's really confusing feeling like a really strong attraction that might be best friends, platonic soulmates, or future wife.... I tend to only really feel physical attraction long after I've decided I like a person's soul.

Anyway.... So all the romantic goo Abigail aside, I met a girl who is probably the most sexually liberated human I know.  Its a little intimidating even if I always considered myself pretty open minded. 

We got on, would hang out drinking, just bonding time... When she springs me with the "hey do you wanna have some zero commitment sex?"

It had been like six or seven years, and I feel really safe and understood by her, so I said yes.  And it was really fun, helped kill some of my anxiety about how things would work now and it was just really nice to feel wanted in that way again. 

We only had that one night though, it's not going to be a regular thing.  And it's actually really frustrating.  When you've gone that long you've just kinda given up on wanting it anymore.  You crave intimacy more. 

So suddenly I'm like dammit I want more.... 

I never even thought I was capable of unemotional unattached sex, so it's been a complex time in my head... Like I can see the appeal, it was really nice, but it wasn't meaningful and I feel like I betrayed my own profound longing for actual love. 

I don't like the idea that I could start accepting less than I want. 

But I'm also really tired of being alone and wanting more than I'll ever get from people, how many times can I end up hopelessly infatuated and hurt.  If there's a limit to that I must be getting close. Maybe occasional casual stuff could be enough to keep me happy. 

Right now, I've been spending lots of time with a girl I adore... And as usual I already know it wouldn't work.  She's not looking to date, she's pretty deep in no strings mode and has her own things to deal with. 

But it doesn't stop those smitten sighs of wishing it could, that somehow I'd be the right person and the choice. 

I'm so good at finding the people who can almost love me.  

Anyway that was the kinda core big thoughts lately.... Aside that I lost one of my best friends and don't even know why, I'm just being aggressively ghosted, and that's really hurt. 

My health is still in the gutter with no signs of ever getting better, which means I can't work, which means I can't escape this town and find some trans friendly community elsewhere. 

It's all a bit bleak and depressing honestly. 

But I keep giving tomorrow the chance to surprise me.  

Intimacy

For the past year or so I have been really struggling with intimacy, there were times a decade or so ago where most people would have said that I was inappropriately affectionate.
But I haven't really dated or had anyone touch me in years now, and the last girlfriend I had to break up with because the pressure to be intimate was a bit much.

But its really starting to bother me because I do miss personal contact, and sharing my life with somebody else, and all of those other things that come with being in a relationship.
I miss emotional intimacy more than physical intimacy I guess you could say, but thats not to say I am completely anti physical, I just need there to be enough emotional first.

I get anxious even thinking about it though, all the things I used to love the most about the start of a relationship scare the shit out of me now, those first awkward conversations and the first few times you touch one another used to be so exciting.

I really hope I can work this stuff out sometime soon.

I just needed to get this out.

Love,
Abigail

UPDATE: fuck okay I would be kinda negligent if I didn't update this a bit after my last weeks owch fest, so basically on my way to go to court I also stopped to visit one of my close friends and stay a few nights with her.  And it was seriously the nicest thing I had felt in literally years, just being that close to another human being, spending time around someone, sharing in life.
But the double edged knife of suck that we all kinda know is coming, is that I have had the biggest crush on her since the day I met her, so for me it actually kinda hurt, because it was like this amazing preview of what that life would be like.  And so here I am again at the end of that, just feeling kinda empty, don't know whether I should talk to her or not, don't even know how to have those kinds of conversations anymore.  I am beyond out of practice at these things, all I know is I really really miss feeling loved.

Notes from Prison

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Therapeutic Word Menagerie

I don't write as often as I actually should, writing has been my therapy for myself since I was about six years old and I really need to try and remind myself of that more often.

Anyway I have been going through some relatively simple and entirely complex things at the same time really.

So as most of you know I quit my job, moved cities, started university and I thought I had a pretty solid life plan organised you know? Get a psych degree, write some books, council LGBTQI folks...
What I probably didn't elaborate on was how I actually came to that decision, and it could best be described as the result of a serious head injury and a fucking ridiculous living situation.

I was working in a job where I felt incredibly undervalued, I was living with a flatmate going through her own fairly serious mental health concerns, and then to top it all off I needed to spend a few months essentially lying on my back with almost no stimulation.  So that was a LOT of thinking time.

So there I was lying in a dark room, with nobody but myself and my thoughts, and you'd think I had done enough of that in Germany being mostly isolated for a year.  But no...
And I basically came to the realisation I needed to be doing something more for my dreams, I needed to be taking steps towards my goal not away from it, and I needed to be away from all the things exacerbating my own depression.

And because I was depressed and recovering from a head injury, I did what I have been known to do on a number of occasions and made an incredibly impulsive decision to uproot myself and go chase the dream.  Relying on a LOT of things to work out in my favour along the way for it to work.

Here we are a few months later, and guess what... those things didn't work out in my favour.
Mostly monetary things to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, which has left me even more anxious, even more depressed, and of course not really committed to my studies to the extent that I really need to be.

Shits bleak... this is probably the lowest I have felt in a long time, but simultaneously the most free I have felt in a long time.... so let's get to some of the better things.

My appointment with the endocrinologist has been booked, so on December 17th I will be seeing them, and hopefully soon after I can be approved for hormone replacement therapy, assuming they don't find any crazy hormone/thyroid type issues which is entirely possible given that I have felt exhausted my entire life.  Not the "Uuuugh Mondays" kind of exhausted most people feel, but rather the "I can't face getting out of bed ever again" kind associated with the glandular fever I had when I was 20 that never really ended.

But anyway, its a positive... things are happening and I am really excited about it.  It has made me think about all kinds of weird things.  Once I start hormones its unlikely my penis will be useful for much within about a month.  And to be honest I haven't really used my penis for anything much in the past six years, but just knowing that soon I wouldn't be able to even if I wanted to sort of makes me want to go get rampant with it.  Like a disgusting genital montage, taking cute pictures by a lake with a picnic basket, scrapbooking memories of the peen, throwing a goodbye party like its going backpacking in Europe...

I probably won't do any of those things though, because any kind of sex that actually involves dealing with it is a bit weird in my own brain still..it has kinda been an issue the past few times I even tried.
Like there is a scrolling list of things making me feel uncomfortable going through my head at the time.  Penis... Stress....Money....Emotions.........and.....sorry I don't think this is going to work.

The other positive, is I feel really free, I think when you are so close to complete collapse you reach a really unhealthy but satisfying point of not really giving a single fuck about anything.  When bankruptcy is a very real possible outcome you can really just throw yourself at any scenario knowing whatever the outcome it won't be as bad as the potential shitstorm you are facing in the future.  It's fantastic.

More people than ever know about my plans, I have been really considering getting my name change out of the way as soon as I can actually afford to do it.  Just so that I have that extra step along the path covered, ticking a thing off a list for the endorphins, that kind of thing.

Anyway I guess that's all I really have to say for now...I am like the cat in the tree, hanging in there baby... and I will endeavour to let everyone know if that status slips much further.

"One could imagine a delight and a power of self-determining, and a freedom of will, whereby a spirit could bid farewell to every belief, to every wish for certainty, accustomed as it would be to support itself on slender cords and possibilities, and to dance even on the verge of abysses. Such a spirit would be the free spirit par excellence." Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book V, Aphorism 347