My friend who recently got on testosterone told me yesterday that their mood has like, substantially improved since starting T and that they’ve started liking themselves more in just a few weeks… damn this HRT shit really is magic, huh. I can’t wait to try it out for myself.

"am i really trans?" i don't know what it means to be "really trans" but calling myself a girl in my head is the first time in 20+ years i have ever respected myself so fuck it I'll keep doing it

I may be trans, I think, but idk

Before I decided to transition, I was nervous that if I did it would change "me", but actually the opposite has happened. I realised earlier this week that I feel more like myself than I have in years. This is how I used to be before. Me without all the pretending and bitterness and fear and all the other bs that hid away the person I actually am.

It's nice. I used to like the person I was, and I'm realising that's always been me, just hiding away under a bunch of failed coping mechanism. I supressed so much of my behaviours and wants because they weren't "masculine". I'm not changing into someone else, I'm finally able to be my authentic self, and it's amazing to recognize that part of myself after so many years of denying it.

Whyyy am I dysphoic about my face this week. I haven't been dysphoric about my face in well over a year

Feeling like the least pretty girl frfr

It was a little jarring to get together with some of my guy friends and they were talking about weight/lifting and then they started teasing me for being small (I'm objectively not). I never realized how much being large was tied up in masculinity. Like obviously being tall would be, but I didn't realize how much weight was. They all just wanted to bulk up and get huge.

...and I just don't.

Yesterday, I felt gender euphoria for the first time in ages. My hair is constantly getting longer and longer, and my freeform dreads looked in a way that made me feel much more feminine than usual. I'm also 6 months into HRT, and I'm just noticing changes that are there, but I can't quite pinpoint what they are. My eyes are definitely seeing things differently. It was a good vibe even though I still have quite a long way to go before I'm truly as feminine as I want to be. It definitely, at the very least, is a nice break from how much I've been hating how "mannish" my eyes have been perceiving myself recently.

There are some good and some bad international news I'd like to talk about: In Germany, a self-id law is likely to pass parliament in the next days. It's not ideal (mandatory consultation for minors, no binary passports for nonbinary people, no transfem gender marker change during wartime, some dogwhistle-y sentences without legal meaning), but at least they struck the part about automatically reporting every gender marker change to the police. It replaces an older law which required two psychiatric evaluations costing thousands of Euros, so that's good.

On the bad side, in the UK the Cass review was published. It's a "systematic" review of gender care for minors and unsurprisingly, it comes to the conclusion that minors should not get gender-affirming care. Even social transition should not happen without a doctor supervising it. It was obviously planned as a hatchet job from the very beginning by choosing unqualified doctors with clear anti-trans position to write it. As always, the media is failing its duty to accurately report on institutional transphobia while Labour is loudly embracing it. The NHS is now planning to do the same thing with adult gender care, so I can only express my horror at the continuing decline of TERF island.

does anyone have any good resources on trying to look for housing as a trans person? like, i feel like i should put up a craigslist posting saying something like "pre everything trans femme looking for queer roommates" or something but idk what i should/shouldn't do or what to look out for

kind of want to "retire" this account for no other reason than i want to change my username to something aggressively transfemme. I have something in mind so far but I'm still kind of hesitant with it for some reason

is my voice supposed to be breathy during voice training? i feel like i'm targeting the right muscles for resonance but idk. wish there was a more understandable timeline for it

me bugging my friends after i've been feeling dysphoric all day

Back to work... aaaaaannnddddd my anxiety is back haha. I wish I could take a month off work.

On a totally seperare note the trader Joe's daily facial sunscreen is so comfortable. Not too expensive either my plan is to wear it for laser treatment but just a heads up!

Sometimes I look down when I'm reading a book or whatever and I'm like "ayo, boobs, incredible!" you would think after nearly a decade the novelty woulda worn off, but uh I guess I'll never get tired of the "soft curve". Hydrodynamic, as Maryam calls it...

Why though? I'm kinda like, if gender is hugely culturally constructed, why so pleased to have boobs? They do not do anything, they're arguably inconvenient? Idgi, but my brain sure does.

One of the weird things about my existence is that I didn't really spend a second thinking about it when I first discovered what transition was, I just went "k imma girl now" and followed my gut. Good instinct, very cool of me, but it means I have done almost zero critical thinking about my own gender, ig.