The Same Person Without Hormones Vs With Testosterone Vs With Estrogen

It’s never too late to start the right HRT

Fresh out of my egg, I faced a common fear.

It’s not just a fear people with trans experiences face.

Did I start too late?

In other words…is it too late to finally be yourself?

In a broad sense, we all transition. We figure out what our gender is and how to express it. Men pursue all sorts of gender affirming therapies. Women do, too.

Including weirdos like me.

(let’s not forget our GNC community who may not have any gender at all)

See Also: Let The Movie JUNO Speak For Trans Men And Non-Binary People (Transgender Soapbox)

I’d like to take you on a brief journey of just how weird my weird years were. Some of those years were baby faced but starved into androgyny. Some of those years were fueled by testosterone and rose to the top of Golden (but fake) powerlifting podiums. The best of those years were touched by estrogen and puppy snugs.

Without Hormones (Ages 0–22)

In the Fall of 1996, my dad drove me, his thirteen-year-old transgender daughter, to the mental institution I’d call home for the next two years.

No way out. But then again, no desire to leave. — from “I Am Trash”

Related Memoir Shorts

I Am Trash (Transgender Soapbox) Kite (Transgender Soapbox) I Was Today Years Old When I Understood My Family Sent Me to Trans Conversion Therapy (Prism & Pen) My Daily Routine In Trans Conversion Therapy Saved My Life

With Testosterone (Ages 22–35)

A lot of the guys helped me in ways beyond words. They accepted me as one of their own. They taught me how to train. How to thrive. Under their tutelage, I excelled to the point that I won that community’s most treasured award.

I became a symbol of what a normal person could achieve if they stuck to the plan. And as long as they never found out I was a girl, I believed I would be safe. -from “That One Time My Beard Saved My Life”

Related Memoir Shorts

The Book I Risked My Job To Publish (Transgender Soapbox) That One Time my Beard Saved my Life (Queerly Trans)

With Estrogen (Ages 35–Now)

I couldn’t bring myself to confess these secrets while I felt that persistent fear that my dad, my mom, my twin brother, my older sister modeled and trained me to reflect. All my life, showing them even a hint of the harm they’d done to me sent them into panicked, abusive rages.

How ironic that letting go of the need to ever be worthy of their love is what finally brought real love within my grasp. -from “What Do I Do Now That The World Didn’t End?”

Related Memoir Shorts

What Do I Do Now That The World Didn’t End? (Transgender Soapbox) Does Trans You Need a Trans Mom Today? (Transgender Soapbox) **** YOU!! Five Love Letters to Five Hateful People (Transgender Soapbox) The Book I Risked My Job To Publish (Transgender Soapbox) Wait…The Little Mermaid Was Trans? (Transgender Soapbox)

Is it too late for you?

If no one ever told you —

If you never told yourself —

If you just need to hear it one more time (and then another) —

It’s not too late for you.

It’s never too late for you.

Every breath is a gift that just as easily could never have been there. With but a slight shift in the cosmos, the opportunity for you to exist at all would have gone another direction.

You’d never have been born. Never existed. Not even as that part of yourself unbound by a body. That’s the part of you that deserves to exist simply because it does. The fact that you’re here at all deserves a moment of wonder. I’m glad you made it.

There was one point no one would have looked at my beard and my biceps and thought I was a girl. Not unless they talked to me for longer than five minutes. Those painful years hiding behind testosterone and weight lifting wounded me in a way I felt beyond repair.

I worried not just that I’d started too late, but that pursuing fitness with more zeal than the Spartan cast for 300 had ruined my body.

But a wonderful thing happened when I faced that fear. When I let go of the beard, the wrong hormones, the barbell that I promise was emptied of all plates before I put it back in the squat rack, I also let go of the heaviest weight of them all.

SEE ALSO: Dear Cisters, You (probably) Transitioned Too (Transgender Soapbox)

I let go of my own judgement to myself. I cultivated a reflection of who I see beyond who others reflect back at me. I cultivated an identity that tells them just as much about who I am as they tell me about who they see.

I used to feel ashamed and conflicted about the years that sorta made me look like a boy. Now I just see them and laugh at how many people knew all along but never said anything.

They were waiting until I had the courage to see myself.

I want you to know that me and the rest of your queer community will be here as you learn how to see yourself, too ❤

THE END (DAMN GIRL, THAT’S DARK)