Now there’s only one month left before the half a year anniversary of beginning my hormone treatment. This means I have to contact the German surgeon whom I want to perform my srs. If this is arranged it would mean that I could be operated shortly after the official real-life experience period has ended in Spring of next year. There’s certain things I want to manage before that, like officially changing my name, so I’ll have the right name on my university diploma.
What’s bothering me now is that I am not really assertive in managing a lot things which I need to manage. It’s not only because of tiredness spells, which have become quite apparent this last month. I am struggling quite a bit to be myself, sometimes life feels heavy. It doesn’t depress me, it’s simply difficult and often tiresome to do the effort of being myself with this body I have. Most important thing probably is the issue of facial and body hair, the body hair isn’t retreating as fast as I wish it would do, and the facial hair is an issue of painful removal for which I have to contact a clinic, for which I need to be a little more assertive. It often feels absurd to stand in front of the bathroom mirror with shaving cream on my face, it sometimes feels like someone pulled a joke with me. Well, I can tell you, there’s nothing funny about shaving your face, getting up in the morning is every morning waking up with a hairy rash on my face. So yeah maybe I will, I really should, call the clinic tomorrow to start getting over this horrible rash!
The hormone treatment started banging on the wall which held back most of my emotions sometime last month, and it seems to have made some serious cracks in that wall. Luckily I don’t have moodswings, but there are certain issues which are very emtional to me, like the problem surrounding my motivation to study. I now know what it feels like to be unable to prevent myself from crying. Last time I had to confront myself with my study problem, I was simply forced to cry by my emotions although I totally didn’t want to cry. It is a bit weird, but obviously part of my transition, for years I had held back crying about emotional stuff, even though I was quite emotional in my younger years and cried easily. I had raised a wall to keep back most emotions, to not show my feelings of hurt, now this wall is being torn down. It makes me curious about how I’m going to handle my emotions from now on. I will learn to live with it that’s for sure.
Well despite all the tiresomeness and emotionalities, my life in transition has also learnt me to live with applying make-up on a daily basis. Did I look up to putting on foundation every day only months before the start of my real-life experience, now I apply it with an ease of ‘that’s done in a jiffy‘. That doesn’t deny the fact that I will be very glad to be rid of putting on foundation as soon as the facial hair removal reaches it’s goal. Make-up is now necessary, but I’m not anti-makeup, I prefer looking natural, that’s all.
I do think the make-up helps me in being more passable than if I wouldn’t use it. The reaction of random people on my appearance isn’t as if they’re abhorred by my appearance, but I’m not consequently ma’am-ed either. The reason behind that could be the local culture in which people hardly sir or ma’am one another if appropriate, it could also be my youth which makes it not that common to ma’am me. Or I simply don’t get myself involved in situation in which I could be ma’am-ed, it’s hard to say, but I don’t see it as a problem. You know why? Well nobody has sir-ed me since when I started my real-life experience. I know my voice isn’t worked well yet, but I don’t sound manly which helps, I think. Honestly I don’t need to be ma’am-ed to feel like a woman, I want to be myself and I can be myself, and I simply don’t get the feeling from my surroundiing that I’m being misread, that’s what it is about.
This month there’s no news on physical developments, my weight might be fluctuating, but I haven’t bought that scale yet so I can’t tell. Besides that nothing else seems to visibly be going on with my body, maybe I’d need feedback from others to tell me if someting has changed, though I won’t be showing anyone my bare breasts. No way!
Next diary update will be on April 20th, so as predicted by myself I will not do the half a month updates anymore. But don’t be sad, there’s more about I have to tell besides transition updates.





2 comments
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22 March, 2008 at 12:34 am
indiechouette
So I was using the “Next” feature on WordPress. And of course, this rarely yields interesting results. I mean, you get loads of blogs about tech stuff and rarely about real-life people with real emotions. But I landed on yours, and I saw some French, and that lured me to skim, since I’m the biggest francophile I know (sadly, I don’t know any other francophiles). And then I saw that you have a last.fm account and that encouraged me to see what music you listen to. And then once I’d checked that out, I was thoroughly impressed by your taste in music and decided that I must read some of your writing (shouldn’t that have been my first instinct?).
Anyway, I really enjoyed reading this entry. I have to agree with you when you said that it’s not that you’re against makeup…you just like the natural look. I generally find people prettier, anyway, when they don’t wear it. It just makes them more real and approachable.
Oh, and my mother hates it when people “ma’am” her. She says it makes her feel old. I find that funny, though, since I’ve always seen it as a symbol of manners myself. But ever since she and I had that conversation, I guess, yeah, it does feel a little weird to be young and “ma’am” at the same time.
I don’t know, for some reason, this entry conjured up images from Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, “Invisible Monsters.” I know that’s me being naive, since obviously, transgender women generally are not as dramatic as Brandy Alexander is, and I don’t think anyone in the world is as messed up as she is. But I plan to continue to read your blog and learn something from it.
22 March, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Sophie
Thank you for your sweet comment. Well my taste in music does say a lot about a person (i think), in a way, so it’s positive that it made you decide to read my blog ^-^. I am quite a selective francophile, admiring the language, the French fin-de-siècle, and of course chansons
.
You are right people are prettier when they look natural, that’s why I don’t use makeup which make my appearance look unnatural.
I only use “ma’am” when I address another woman whom I can’t look in the eyes, to catch their attention, much more polite than “hey you”. If I can look somebody in the eyes I somehow don’t find it that necessary o.O .
I haven’t read ‘Invisible Monsters’ but no I don’t think you’re naive, there can be similarities and my blog isn’t titled ‘Sophie sans scrupule’ for nothing, I sometimes dramatize a little bit XD … in which I can’t take myself seriously, but it’s fun
PS
I’ll be reading your blog with interest too, only skimmed it for now, and you caught my attention