Identity Crisis

Warning: Wangst ahead

tl;dr: Suddenly having trouble calling myself female instead of transfemale.

*sigh* I'm having an identity crisis. I choose to identify as just plain female, not transfemale, But now I'm not sure I can do that. I want to be just female, but wanting doesn't make it so. I was never socialized as a girl, I didn't have the experience of growing up as a girl or of living my adult life as one. The maleness of that is a part of me, however much I wish I didn't have it or wish I could jettison it.

Can I ever legitimately claim to just be female, not specifically transfemale? My therapist assures me that after 7-10 years or so (so when I'm 40, ugh) I'll reach a "post-trans" state where it doesn't even occur to me that I'm trans. I have my doubts about that; we'll see. For now, I just don't know that I can claim to actually be what I merely want to be.

This didn't quite come out of nowhere. I've been having crazy dreams this week. Some of them really drove this home for me, either because someone rejected my femininity and insisted I was male (which robbed me of my female voice and features - them saying it made them correct), or because I dreamed I was a cis woman and waking up felt like being snapped out of a happy delusion.

Still, as a transwoman, I'm a subcategory of just plain woman, not something separate and distinct. I just feel now like "female" carries too strong a connotation of cis or at least early transition. Not being either, having lived my whole life male, I feel like it's a lie, or at least misleading.

Not changing it on Facebook, though. I have to cling to the hope and desire to one day not be 'that trans girl' (which probably says more about my own insecurities than anyone's perception of me). *sigh*

Annals of Puberty 2.0: 5 months, Oh How the Time Flies

Boobies!

5 months. It seems like yesterday I walked into the doctor's office, nervous as hell, seeking medication (spiro and estrogen). Where has all the time gone?

So what's been going on with my transition, and what have the hormones changed? Well, for starters, I have boobs now. They're small and my nipples are still horribly male in appearance, but these are definitely boobs - they're starting to get shape, and they have completely the right texture. I spent, let's call it half an hour straight, playing with them yesterday - because I can - and discovered they also now make me feel funny in my tummy when they're adequately stimulated. Yay, boobies!

My body hair growth has been changing, too. The hairs on my arms are now about half very fine blond hair, not the coarse black it used to be (and half still is). Body hair grows slower, too. It now takes 3 or 4 days for my leg hair to grow in to the point it used to in just one day. I absolutely love this "never shave your arms and shave your legs twice a week" situation and can't wait for it to really get where it's going. It's nice when my transition lines up with my laziness.

I've been taking care of more things related to my name change. Wait, have I even posted since that happened? I don't think so. So I legally changed my name. For all official purposes, my name is no longer Ryan Patrick; now it's Rachel Lindsey. I also got a new driver's license to reflect that. Totally awesomesauce: my new license also correctly identifies me as female.

I got my new Social Security card and, much to my surprise, the wait at the SSA was short and they were helpful and efficient about it. I couldn't believe it. The biggest hassle was the security at the entrance. I then finally changed my name with UNM, which actually confused the hell out of me. I got a message at my Gmail account forwarded from my school account, listed as from Rachel Lindsey. I did a double take, like, wait, what?

I did give myself a little setback a week-and-a-half-ish ago. I became a bit of a shut-in and didn't speak for a whole week. I didn't speak at all. And when I decided to rejoin the world, I tried to warm up my voice before leaving and found I had completely lost it. My feminized voice was just gone. I found it again over the next few days, but it really drove home the fact that I need to keep practicing and keep doing in order to transition.

Something it's good I lost is the feeling that I'm "presenting" in public. I still get that feeling when I directly interact with people I don't know, but just out doing my thing? I'm just out doing my thing. I'm not all self-conscious about my clothes or makeup or (fake, bigger) boobs or mannerisms. I think I'm becoming more secure in my femininity. I'm not constantly plagued by fears and self-loathing: "tranny", "shemale", "pretending", "drag", "disguise", "transvestite", "autogynephilia"... These thoughts aren't gone, per se, but my brain now mostly reserves them for times of acute failure. Dresses, as much as I like them, still make me self-conscious, though.

Something that's helped is that I've been getting "ma'am"ed and "miss"ed more - as long as they see me before they hear my voice. (It may be back, but it still needs a lot of work.) "Miss" is pretty rare - it's usually "ma'am", but it's nice when I do get it. I'm not sure what the difference is that's caused this. Maybe it's the other way around and my security causes people to read me as more feminine / not an imposter.

NSFW change: My libido has been steadily climbing. At first it dropped when I started the hormones, but now I feel like I really am going through puberty again. I'm drooling over every remotely attractive woman I see. But I have no outlet for it, no relief. Masturbation is an iffy proposition. Thanks to the spironolactone, I don't have to worry about - and can't really get - erections. And I haven't figured out quite how to get myself off without one (yes, it is possible). I'm like a horny teenage girl who hasn't figured out how to operate her cooter yet. Now if I could just chow down on some pussy, the problem would be solved...

In summary:

• Boobies! have a discernible shape.
• My body hair is thinning out and slowing down.
• Boobies! have the right texture.
• I changed my name, officially and for pretty much everything that matters.
• Boobies! hang down when I lean forward.
• I changed my gender on my state ID.
• Boobies! make me feel happy and weird inside when I play with them.
• Oops, I accidentally my voice. But it's all better now - I just need to remember not to be a hermit.
• Boobies! have nipples less sensitive than their max sensitivity (i.e., the shower doesn't hurt), but still sensitive.
• I'm becoming more secure in my femininity.
• Boobies! are one of the greatest things ever.
• Holy hell have I been getting horny lately, and I have no outlet for it.
• Tits.

Full-Time

This is it. It's like my bat mitzvah or something. I am, as of yesterday, officially "full-time." After coming out to my boss, there's no one left in my life who doesn't know, so I no longer have any reason to present as Ryan to anyone, ever. The legalities of that will have to wait a few weeks, but now I can already be Rachel whenever, wherever, and to whomever, I want.

It snuck up on me, to be honest. I wasn't planning to start full-time until the fall semester, but with no one left to come out to, there's no reason not to start now. No more "boy mode" and "girl mode," just "me mode." Mind you, "me mode" (f.k.a. "girl mode") is a lot of work - a solid 2 hours every morning. You might even call this a full-time job now. But it's rewarding work, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Well, except getting the results without having to do the work. But I'm *ahem* working on that.

So I guess this is farewell to an old friend. Let's pour one out for my main man Ryan - RIP, buddy. Your work is done here.

Annals of Puberty 2.0: Month 2

This month brings less physical changes - those are mostly incremental - and more emotional changes. In a word, I feel: normal. But also:

• Watch out, Facebook censors! My nipples have been getting softer. They feel less like they used to and more like female nipples. One of these days one of you will have to report my #NipsOfFreedom
• There are times when my whole... I won't call them breasts yet, but my circumnipple regions, are sensitive to pressure. Like, scrubbing them with soap in the shower is like scrubbing a bruise.
• My appetite is up, and it's pissing me off. I know a growing girl needs her lunch, but dammit, there's plenty to repurpose hanging out around my gut already.
• I'm far less anxious, ridiculously so. I'm taking maybe 10% as much of my anti-anxiety meds compared to when I started. Used to be 3 pills a day on most days, now it's one maybe twice a week, if that. It's not like I'm anxiety-free, but it's reduced and easier to deal with. At least in spitting distance of normal-ish.
• What are these emotions I'm feeling? Is this was it is to be "normal"? I get excited without trembling and sweating, I get upset without flipping out, I get happy without feeling like an idiot. WTF? I mean, I can't convey just how much of a change this is. My computer blew up with sparks and smoke, then later that day I got a test back with a D on it, and though I was upset, sure, I wasn't anywhere near the end of my rope. I just dealt with it as best I could, moved on, and maybe grumbled a little. Apparently I'm a more normal, well-adjusted girl than I ever was a guy.
• Sleep is no longer alternating bouts of pathological insomnia and hypersomnia. It's not perfectly consistent, but it's whatever I make of it. "Wake up early, go to bed early"/"sleep in late, have trouble falling asleep" stuff. Normal.
• Intrusive thoughts I used to have are entirely gone. This is a welcome respite from their awful content (no details; you'd need a week on /r/aww do bleach your brain). I'm free of these disturbing and overwhelming thoughts for the first time since... geez, at least 6th grade. I feel normal for once, not all sick and broken inside.

Your Camera Has a Shutter? How Quaint.

In the course of my duties as a faithful minion of the mad scientists I'm apprenticing under, I've been privileged to learn about a few things hands-on. A year ago this post would have been about adapting boat radar about as strong as an iPhone to track aircraft. (As you might guess, this endeavor failed.) Now it gets to be about something way cooler: cameras with no shutter.

First, some quick background on why I'm using this bizarre contraption. I'm currently tasked with analyzing data from the Air Force's CCD/Transit Instrument (CTI); it sounds cutting edge, but the data I'm working with was taken when I was 4. It was cutting edge at the time, however - the first shutterless telescope ever. Usually with a telescope you want a deep (long exposure) image of a single patch of sky. Not so with this. The CTI was meant to be an unblinking eye gathering a continuous image of a particular declination (latitude) of sky. It would operate the whole night, just looking up, unmoving, and produce a continuous strip a couple degrees high and a whole night wide. Watching without interruption, night after night, gave unparalleled data on variability of stars. (Why this is so important would take a whole blog post of its own).

The very high-tech CTI

Keep in mind, these continuous exposures aren't a video; they're stacked to form one still image of the whole stretch of sky observed. So how the hell do you do this? A nifty trick called time-delayed integration (TDI).

The exact details of what happens on the chip aren't important. Just picture it like this: on the right you have a single column of pixels that's exposed to the sky; that's where you get your image. But next to it you have a bunch of columns not exposed - here's why. Each time the chip's clock cycles, it kicks all the electrons (light values in CCDs) accumulated to the left, from the exposed column to the first unexposed column. The electron count in that imaging column is reset to zero then - it's blank and free to record another image. The unexposed columns can then be used to read out the pixel values without mucking up the exposure itself. So what you get is a single column of pixels taking a constant exposure, but the exposure gets reset and read out every n milliseconds.

(Alas, I can't seem to find a good image illustrating this on the interwebz.)

The individual images I'm looking at are in some ways single exposures, the exposure is just broken up into bite-sized strips a tiny fraction of a degree wide. Of course, it's more complicated than just pulling up the image and looking at it. Right now what I'm focused on doing if fixing errors in the calibration of these images. Probably errors. Well, we think there's something wrong but can't prove it yet. At least, it looks suspicious.

Naturally, this means put the new girl on it. Whatever, I get to science with really cool data from really cool hardware. For science!

Why I'm keeping my gender unchanged on Facebook

In case you don't use Facebook (in which case, drop into comments and tell me how you found this) and have been living under an internet-rock, Facebook now has 58 gender options, not just male and female. These include a lot of terms that could refer to your bloghostess - transwoman, transfemale, MtF, and others. But I'm sticking to plain old "female."

Facebook made this change to accommodate people like me and to better capture the nuances of gender. And to people who choose to utilize these new options, because they feel something other than male or female better identifies them, I say great - I'm glad you have that option. (Admittedly, the only uses I've seen of the new gender and pronoun options "in the wild" are strictly novelty. But I know people who use them in earnest exist.) But I am not one of them, even if I'm in the target demographic. Here's why:

"Transwoman," (to pick an example) is a perfectly accurate description of me. I wouldn't bristle in the slightest if someone referred to me that way. However, the way I see it, I am only a transwoman by circumstance. I am not transitioning because I identify as a transwoman; I am a transwoman because I have to transition to be fully female. That is, I desire to be, and choose to define myself as, female; the trans- modifier simply specifies that I wasn't always that way.

I do not want an intrinsically trans femininity for myself. I'm trans and I'm not ashamed of that. But by defining my gender in terms of being trans, I feel I'd be preemptively alienating myself from my femininity. I'd be defining myself as a non-native female, in terms that anchor my identity to my past and set me apart from other women.

I choose to be a woman, and only an accident of birth makes me specifically a transwoman.

Annals of Puberty 2.0

I've been on hormones a little over a month now, and though I'm naturally impatient for round two of puberty to get going full force, there have already been some adjustments.

• This spironolactone is making me thirsty. Constantly thirsty. I shouldn't be surprised -- though I take spiro as an anti-androgen (anti-testosterone drug), it's primarily a diuretic. It's still a bit of an adjustment, considering how bad I was about staying hydrated before, even on a medication that gives me the shakes if I don't stay hydrated. 
• My nipples are getting a little nipply. By which I mean, they've gotten quite sensitive, including below the surface, and are erect a large fraction of the time. I'd like to think this means some growth around there is right around the corner, but I know that's still months off. Not complaining in the least, though.
•  ED. I don't get erections anymore, hallelujah. At all. It was very confusing at first and tricked me into thinking I'd lost my libido. One of the things about living my life as a guy is that arousal was inextricably linked to erections and the two weren't fully separate in my mind. So with no physiological aspect to it, it felt cold and abstract, like I was thinking about it without actually thinking or feeling it. Fortunately, my body found a replacement, of a sort.
• I literally drool instead now. I'm not even joking. I salivate until it drips out the corners of my mouth. I don't know how this started happening. I don't know why drooling specifically. But now I actually drool over women I'm attracted to instead of the previous physiological response. It manages to be awkward, amusing, reassuring, and a little guilty all at the same time.
• I can get choked up now. That was previously, outside particularly vulnerable mental states, impossible for me. I'm actually looking forward to more effect in this direction; my near-absolute inability to cry normally kinda sucked.

I've also learned a couple interesting things about how this may affect my eyes, of all things:

• Hormone therapy can alter your retinas. This can cause subtle changes in how colors and depth perception are experienced.
• Hormone therapy can alter eye lens shape (!). So there's a chance my vision won't be 20/15 anymore. I'm fine with that, even if I end up needing mild glasses.

So where does that all put me now? Taking my estrogen and spiro religiously. [actual pre-editing stop to take estrogen and spiro] Also working on including more girl mode features (like voice) when I have to be in boy mode. Though I skipped it this past month due to progress on this front being as slow as expected, #nipsoffreedom will continue as scheduled on April 26th (2 months in), and I'll start doing some photos to document my facial changes.