impulsiveingenue

I've posted here a lot about the subject of my transition. In fact, I've talked about it almost to the exclusion of everything else, which wasn't really my intent, but hey. I've hemmed and hawed and squee'd and freaked out and it's all led up to this moment.

I have, in my hands, a low-dose transdermal estradiol patch.

This is what I've been wanting for damn near eight months now. I decided sometime last summer that I was going to see a therapist and, as a result, most likely start taking hormones in order to properly transition from male to female. From there a two-month telephone dance ensued before I finally got in to see the therapist, and she helped me square away a lot of my expectations and worries. Not all of them, but enough that I was much more certain at the end of the experience that this was what I wanted.

Then I had to see a nurse about the actual hormones themselves, so cue another month of waiting, a short appointment, and then another month of waiting and one of the worst blood draws I've ever been subjected to. All of that was a road leading here, to this day, to this moment.

I still have worries. I worry that I won't be pleased with the outcome after all, that somehow I've completely psyched myself out. This is because I second-guess literally everything I do, and rarely trust my gut instinct on anything because I am convinced that I am wholly unreliable as a judge of situations. This is probably less true than I think it is, and while I'm intellectually aware of that, it's still a nagging discomfort I have to deal with.

I worry that this is going to cause serious health problems for me. This isn't such a stretch, as apparently my cholesterol is pretty high for someone my age and weight. This is a hereditary thing for me. Almost everyone on both sides of my family, except my mother, have or had very high cholesterol. Part of the reason I'm on such a low dose of estradiol is that my cholesterol is high enough to be a worry, so before I see the nurse again (in three months time) I need to make diet and lifestyle changes (read: get off my ass and exercise) to bring my numbers down.

I worry that I'm making a mistake in not paying scads of money to a fertility bank in case I ever change my mind about not wanting a squalling little me-spawn someday. At the same time, the only attraction this has ever held for me is a purely emotional one, and one which probably has more to do with a desire to be female (and giving birth is about as female as one can get, on a purely mechanical level) rather than actual desire to have children. There's also the fact that every day I go into work and some parent treats the library like it's their own personal babysitter, it only cements my desire to never interact with anyone under the age of 12 unless absolutely necessary. There's also the fact that if I do change my mind, there are plenty of children already who need parents and don't have them. I'd probably adopt even if I was a fertile ciswoman.

I'd also be a terrible mother, but that's an entirely different issue altogether.

And yet, these worries aren't a roadblock. They exist, and I'm aware of them, but I'm also very aware of why I started this whole process in the first place. I'm not happy with my body. I have probably waited too long for this, assuming all the while that I couldn't ever be a woman, at least not to anyone's satisfaction. I've proven that assumption wrong almost every time I've left my home for a purpose other than work for months now. And, more importantly, I've realized that what is much more important that meeting other people's definitions of "female" is meeting my own definition of myself.

It has been a long, long road getting here, and there is still a long, long road ahead of me. This is not an ending; this is a beginning.

Let's get this party started.