Now that I’m choosing to unpack and examine these feelings that I’m having, I’m finding it harder to not think about them nearly all the time. That moment when you start to notice the itch, you can’t stop noticing it.
I still have no idea what I want to do about them. Do I ask people to refer to me differently? But how do I want to be referred to? Do I start dressing differently? Again how? I’m not really one for fashion. Do I investigate hormones? I don’t know.
It’s hard to change my body and shape in the world into something that makes me happy when I don’t know what would make me happy.
It’s also hard when I have that constant anxiety nibbling at me. The fear that I’m an imposter. That I’m not dysphoric enough to be a “real” trans person. The fear that this is just my mental illnesses finding something to latch onto and it isn’t really who I am. The fear of how people will react if I do decide to change what shape I take up in the world.
Though I have some fear of how my friends and family with react, I am blessed to say that I don’t have much fear there. No, my fear is about everyone else. Work. Doctors. People on the street. New people I meet. People on the internet. Our government.
Now is not a safe time to be thinking these thoughts and having these feelings. But now is when I am. So how do I deal with that? That very valid fear that is mixed in with all the others.
And then of course is the fear that my anxiety and depression have latched onto this idea based on some fantasy that changing myself will fix me. But this isn’t likely to make my anxiety or depression go away. In fact, especially if I do take hormones, it is likely to make them worse, at least at first.
But where in the past, this kind of fear has caused me to shut down and stop thinking about whatever it is. Now I can’t stop thinking about it, despite the nearly full body panic it is keeping me in.
