Today I thought I'd write a little
about some of the ways that HRT has effected my emotions thus far.
I've only on estrogen for four months, so maybe things will change
down the road and of course your experience on HRT might be totally
different than mine.
The biggest change has been how I
process anger and sadness. Before estrogen when I'd get upset about
something I'd get pissed off. Now instead of getting pissed off I
cry. I mean, I fucking cry rivers. Uh, at least every other day in
fact. I mean, this is a very difficult time in my life and I have
some good things to cry about I think, but wow.
My gender therapist told me that I was
going to be crying a lot and holy shit was she right. The weird
thing is that going from T to E, crying instead of getting angry now
just seems like the natural thing for me to do, depending on what
gender I am at the moment. Here's a good example that happened today
-
I got out of work and I had to head
strait to my therapists office to attend a DBT group. Instead of
getting on the freeway I needed to, I went into auto pilot and
started driving to my house! When I realized what the hell I was
doing I was already at a point where the only thing I could do was to
head towards home and then take the route that I normally take to her
office if I'm leaving from my house.
I HATE being late. (The Navy beat that
into me pretty well.) So I arrived just a few minuets late, yet my
stress levels were climbing. So far I have hated my DBT classes and
today was no exception. I sit on my ass for eight hours at work and
then I have go to the meetings where I have to sit on my ass for
another two and a half hours. About 30 minuets into these things my
butt starts to hurt and I want to fucking get up and do something
constructive.
It takes forever to go over a simple
concept and we move at a snails pace through the lesson plan. I just
want to get the fuck up and leave. I have shit to do and I feel like
I'm wasting my time there. Every thing we go over I already know for
the most part and the skills we are learning are ones I already know.
Anyway, the fact that this is not
working for me makes me really sad as I had high hopes for DBT. So I
sit there for two and a half hours, feeling miserable. There was a
bunch of talk about the term, “Man up” for some reason, (act like
a man) which bothered me because it enforces the gender binary. Oh,
and I spoke up for myself and asked for the facilitator to call me
Paige for now on, which was good, but she replied, “yes ma’am”
which fucked me up because I was in male mode at the time. Yes,
bigender is complicated.
All these things were making me feel
worse and worse about myself and my situation. I toughed it out
until the end and then I went and sat in my car for an hour and a
half. Why? Because during our session on Monday my therapist told
me that she wouldn't be in next week and that she wanted to see me
one more time before then, so we scheduled an appointment at 1830. I
sat in my car and ate my crappy fast food sandwich until it was time
to be seen.
I went back inside, waited half and
hour past my appointment time and then I texted her asking what the
hell was up. She called and told me that we were scheduled for NEXT
Thursday, not today. I swear that she told me it was going to be for
today, but quite frankly, ever since I started E I've been even more
scatterbrained than I normally am, so she's most likely correct.
She tried to say some nice stuff to me
but I had to hang up on her because I had started to cry again. I
bolted out of the building and hid in my car for bit while I pulled
myself together.
Wow, that was a long tirade but here's
the thing – When I was on testosterone all of these little things
would have compounded until I'd have gotten extremity pissed off and
I would have brooded about them for a while. Then when I was tired
of being pissed I would just stop and forget about it. However,
every now and then that memory might have resurfaced and I would have
gotten angry again and felt the same level of anger I had previously
experienced when it actually happened to me.
On estrogen, I get sad instead. It's
confusing to me when I'm in guy mode but in female mode it feels
perfectly natural. By the time I was leaving my therapists office I
had flipped back into female mode and I was chocking back tears. I
started driving away, and all of the sudden, (I had no control over
this) I shouted, “this is fucking bullshit!” at the top of my
lungs and I punched the steering wheel. Urges to cry – gone. I
was pissed and I had flipped back to male mode.
So regarding my experience with
estrogen as a bigender MAAB person, hormones have had a huge impact
on my emotions, but what gender I am seems to have a significant
effect as well. Ha, I was originally going to go over some other
emotional stuff but this entry is long enough and quite frankly I'm
sleepy.
So goodnight! May you dream the dreams
that you dare not share.
Paige
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