Category HRT Adventures

24 posts

Birthday Feels/Survival Anxiety

Holy shit.
In light of everything else happening, like fascism, it seems silly that the thing plaguing my mind would be my birthday. On one hand I feel like I shouldn’t even bother celebrating something so frivolous because, fascism. On the other, I have this unshakeable feeling that we might be in nuclear fallout by the time it rolls around, and if I survive to my birthday, that will be An Achievement.
Although given the last year, making it to my birthday already feels like An Achievement. So much has happened. The floor has fallen out from under my feet too many times to count, I barely know which way is up. All I can manage to do is keep fighting and finding new ways to fight for the future that I want to exist.
Nothing feels stable. I feel like more shoes could drop at any minute and leave me homeless, bankrupt, or starving. There’s nothing in my life that is actually pointing towards this happening, it’s just that everything feels so topsy turvy right now that it’s playing on my survival level anxieties.
I re-evaluate my life and the past year around my birthday. February is basically an entire month of introspection with the hope of some kind of party with booze, cake, and people who love me at the end of it. I can celebrate the fact that my existence continued and the people I care about also care about me.
It seems silly, but it feels really important.
If we even get there.
I’ve come so far in a lot of ways since last year, so much has changed – personally and in general. This time last year I was starting ABE classes and actually learning algebra for the first time. Today I’m writing articles about how to combat fascism, talking to reporters and city council, and getting the next dose of testosterone while trying to remember that I deserve to be paid for things I do.
I’m completely me now, and it’s great. I guess that’s worth celebrating.

Remind me of this when we get to my actual birthday.

I’m worried that I’ll be killed having helped nothing.
I’m worried about my chosen family dying or disappearing.
I wake up to this anxiety and go to sleep with it.
it’s really hard.

Holy Shit 2k16

Evolution HRT Adventures Mental Health

Guess I’ll just start off with a list of Things I’ve Done this year and then talk about how I feel about them/the world in general, because holy fuck 2016.

This time last year I’d just enrolled at North Seattle and was starting ABE where I learned I’m actually good at math and I learn quickly, I thrive in school, I am Hermoine, and I aced writing while I did it.
uh, i got divorced and moved to California. Sometimes I feel like it’s somehow less valid because we’re still friends and still care about eachother deeply, it was just time for me to go and explore the things I needed to, to find myself.
I went to Burning Man and found myself. That was when I realized the truth about my trans-ness that I’d been fighting for so long didn’t need to be hidden anymore. That it was worth acknowledging that and doing with that….whatever I needed to.
I got swindled out of a home & I’m still fighting to get the deposit back, and also started and quit a job in a month because burn out.
I kinda help East Bay Forward run a little bit now.
I started Therapy, and that was a really fucking great decision. I feel like I’m finally starting to heal some of the bits I was too afraid to touch before.
I started HRT. Asian Pacific Wellness Center in San Francisco if you’re trans, poor, and uninsured. Also if you’re trans and fine and insured. They’re wonderful. I got a blood test (to check for HEP A&B immunity) and started T in the same week (!informed consent!). They have a sliding scale and I literally paid nothing for my shots. <3 <3
I traveled out of the Country for the first time. I’m on Holiday in Mex. resting a bit before wandering out to watch the fireworks. It’s beautiful here, and also everyone thinks I’m a local and then I disappoint them by not knowing Spanish very well.
I met some amazing people and love so many people and grew my chosen family by a lot.

Things I learned, or proved to myself, or things:

I am really fucking strong. On a lot of levels. Impressively, I’m actually strong physically which I learned at Burning Man when I was carrying metal around like it was nothing and single handedly holding up parts of a geodeisic dome. But also, I’m just actually a strong human. I’ve been through so fucking much, and the last year has had me scared shitless because I faced so many things for the first time: being on my own, being almost homeless, not having any other income to rely on than my own, getting on MediCal, starting a small claims case, figuring out T….
Transitioning is a good idea. I’ve never felt this much myself before. I have a body that is a barrier between me and the outside world and I have starting and endpoints, my body is….less of a prison now and more…mine? other things include feeling emotions infinitely more intensely but being able to handle them and push through things. I have so much more ability now, I feel like I’m the version of myself I really needed this year. The version of me that is wholly myself and seen.
I’ve been through a lot of legitimately hard shit and it’s okay to feel that.
I am valid as I am, and no one can take that from me
I am actually fast at learning
I can actually do anything and do it well – or at least well enough to get by
I’m really bad at asking for help, and I’m not that much better at taking care of myself
my needs are important too

Things I want/to do/etc in 2017

To be financially stable – because my credit score is sad and debt is not cool, but at least soon all of my health things will be covered including therapy, so that will make it easier
To get back into school, take more math and writing and science – I qualify for in-state tuition on June 8, assuming we still exist then.
Get some (paid) articles published
Take charge on a lot more things
Make art regularly
Fight Fascism where I find it (lately every time hate speech occurs at my bart stop I’ve been cleaning it up. I’d like to do more)
Get into photography/filmmaking again and scultping
Go to Burning Man
Go to 34C3
Do more professional writing
Actually make those projects I keep meaning to
Bike more and get less scared of rodes
mebbe abs

Things I really want but probably won’t happen:

A smol floofy doge.

Good things:

loving, healthy, autonomous relationships
taking care of myself
chocolate therapy ice cream with sprinkles after therapy
my own bed and stuffed animals
the terrifying freedom of being on your own
trusting my instincts

This Week in Trans

Evolution Gender HRT Adventures Mental Health

Apparently cooking is a skill I default to.
I can run?
Melons taste good?
I still dislike olives.
All my feelings live in my belly.
Everything is pain because my muscles are moving around so much.
I am always hungry.
And horny…and horniness feels different now? it comes from a different place so I don’t recognize it at first.
I feel in my body, and more capable and dextrous.
My curves went away
My face is fuzzy
My jawline has angles
My clit is a dick now
I think about myself and my abilities so differently now. I start from a place of “I’ve got this, what do I do” instead of “I suck, this is shit, I’m shit, what do I do” which is huge and makes functioning a billion times easier.
I feel right.

Eating Disorder

Evolution Gender HRT Adventures Mental Health

I never thought I had an eating disorder until this week. I thought maybe my relationship to food was not ideal but probably normal. I thought eating disorders had more to do with some personal needs being met with regards to food, like purity culture, society’s insistence on thinness, or coping with life. I didn’t know eating disorders could come from a place of self-sacrifice for the greater good.
And then I started testosterone, and I’m hungry every hour, and I fight.with.my.self.every.single.time.I.need.to.eat. I thought not letting myself eat out of guilt or self-sacrifice was normal? Not eating is still my instinct as opposed to eating. The problem is, now I can’t go 8 hours between meals without getting hungry, now I have to eat or I feel like I’m going to actually pass out, at some point my brain stops and feels dead because it ran out of food power.
Growing up, I was underfed and malnourished. My eating was actively under prioritized next to my siblings. During puberty, I was given one serving, and if I was still hungry, I had to wait until after all my other siblings had seconds or thirds before I was allowed to have any more, if there was any left. There wasn’t, usually. I learned to quell hunger, to ignore it, to not respond to it, to eat just enough to end the gnawing. I learned, through experience, that I, specifically, did not deserve to be well-fed, that my eating my fill was directly at the expense of others who needed it more.
I’ve carried this with me into adulthood as a habit. I go last (or at least not first. I don’t deserve that), I always wait for other people to have seconds before I even think about having any myself. I make sure everyone else has had enough to eat before I do, I have to convince myself that it’s okay to eat the last thing if it’s going to rot if I don’t.
But now I feel like if I don’t eat, I will quite literally pass out, and I don’t know how to cope with that. There’s a part of me that’s still frustrated about needing to eat because there are so many more interesting things to do, and then a large part of me that is still trying to convince myself that I am allowed and deserve to eat whenever I am even slightly hungry.
I was taught to hate myself and see myself as unworthy. All of those times I was told that as a human I was a piece of shit because Jesus was so perfect and good, really sunk in. Being taught that the best thing to do is to deny yourself everything all the time because others deserve it and need it more than you has really fucked me up.
There’s a part of me that very much lives in a place where food is scarce and not easily accessible (some of this is slightly grounded because freelancing isn’t exactly secure work and I need more food than usual to survive and the money aspect of this scares me) as if once the fridge is empty, it’s empty for good. Fun trauma times with my parents spending more on tithe than anything else and neglecting to make sure they had enough to provide food for their oodles of children.
The food scarcity and denial of my nourishment as a child still haunts me, apparently. More loudly now that I am facing this haunting every hour when my stomach growls, and I spend 3 more hours trying to convince myself that I don’t need food because I already ate and that should be enough, save food for later.
This is something I’ll talk with my therapist about this week. I’ve had a lot of intense feelings and anxiety about food lately because I’m facing this now, because hunger is such a huge part of my life – like it was when I was a pubescent kid, but now I’m the adult. I can feed myself. No one can tell me I don’t deserve to eat.
But I would really appreciate being told that I do.

This Is Not Normal

Evolution Gender Homeschooling HRT Adventures Mental Health School

I’m beginning to get anxious now that more than a month has passed since the ~~fall of our republic~~ election and things have started to quiet down. We’re normalizing.
We desperately want to return to normal, to stability, not to whatever the fuck this reality is. Collectively we do not do well with unrest, we don’t do well with unease, and we will do anything we can to get us back to the place where we feel secure and normal, where we can live in our bubble and pretend everything is okay.
Every time I’ve stepped foot in any chain store since the election this has hit me. The jarring normality of it all: as if our society isn’t falling apart at the seams, as if foreign countries interfering in our elections or being one tantrum away from nuclear war isn’t something that’s actually happening. As if all of the civil unrest in this country, all of the kids who are terrified to go to school out of fear they’ll lose their parents, as if the president elect inciting violence and spreading hate was something we were all making up. Walking into target feels like being gaslit by corporate society.
We want to desperately to live in a world where things weren’t as tumultuous. But that isn’t our reality. It’s tempting to bury our heads in the sand and wish it all away, to create as much of a bubble as we can to surround ourselves in. To create a new normal that adapts to fascism in this country just being a fact of life. We want to not have to fight.
None of those are bad feelings. I crave normalcy, I yearn to be able to live and not feel like my country has betrayed me, or that danger is at every turn because of the intersections of my identities. I long for stability.
But we elected a literal fascist who’s activating all the other fascist and fascist leaning types that have been preparing for this for 30 years; people I’ve grown up with, training I’ve had. They’ve been here all along and they’re ready now. We can’t have normal, we can’t have stability, we can’t be safe unless we fight back. Until we acknowledge and remind ourselves that this isn’t normal, that we have to fight, that we cannot let complacency overrun us, stability will be elusive.
We have to fight back on every front, wherever we can.
For me, this looks like local housing advocacy so we can actually be a sanctuary (if you want to get involved in building more housing, check out your local YIMBY cell). Working on advocating for homeschoolers locally and providing as many resources to homeschoolers as possible. It’s being involved with my local hackerspace & arts community, and building local coalitions. It’s writing, prolifically, while I still can, and making all of the art.
None of this is normal, as much as we desperately want to make it so. We need to remember that.

Kieryn Starts T

Evolution Gender HRT Adventures

Yesterday.

Yesterday I went to the wellness clinic in SF that does HRT and primary care on a sliding scale for uninsured people and I started my first dose of Testosterone.

HOLY SHIT.

Immediately prior to that I got my hair cut, and turns out I’m a super fucking cute boi.

As I was walking down the street I started noticing a lump in my throat, and then hunger like you wouldn’t believe. What is hunger, what does it want, why.

I feel alive, my voice is lowering, I have energy, I feel like I’m right in my skin for the first time. Everything is clearer, I feel capable and like I could take on the world.
And I will.

Also probably will start drawing adventures in T on Chronicles of a Bitch Goddess because my twitter stream for the last 36 hours has been discovery after discovery.

One of them, being even more confused when people call me she.

Expecto Patronum

Evolution Gender HRT Adventures Mental Health

I was talking to my therapist last night about the election and activism and something she poked at really struck me.
It is important for activism to come from a place that isn’t fear. Fear and panic spreads like wildfire and runs everyone down. The longevity of the fight depends on us being able to approach our activism from a place of okayness inside ourselves.
I woke up in a good mood this morning. My partner made coffee that we sipped quietly while working on our respective projects. I’m working on and lining up freelance projects to stay afloat and figuring out what of my personal projects I want to start on next.
I know everything is shit in the world but right now I feel okay. And I almost felt guilty about it, but here’s the thing.
It’s important – vitally important – that we make and keep and foster moments of happiness, that we take care of ourselves, that we love ourselves and each other, that we take our actions against facism from a place where we are emotionally okay and stable and not terrified.
Selfcare in the face of fascism is resistance. Finding ways to not live in a permanent state of anxiety while still fighting is revolutionary. Being happy and hopeful are not bad things in light of everything that’s going on, they are important, and they are the things we need to cling to, because those will keep us going.
Like I’ve been telling myself since election night, little things matter, they matter a lot. Find the little things that bring you peace and hold on to them. We have a long road ahead of us, and running on adrenaline isn’t sustainable.
You are allowed to be happy and feel okay and have good days. Fighting doesn’t mean you have to be afraid all the time, please don’t. Find the little things that matter, let them fill you up – like a patronus charm. We can resist best when we’re not letting fear rule our every waking moment.

Existing Is Resistance

Activism Evolution Gender Homeschooling HRT Adventures Mental Health School

So, we elected a facist.
I, like every other marginalized in-any-remote-way person have spent the last week utterly terrified. It’s an anxiety attack that won’t go away. I’m suddenly very aware of the intersection of my transness, queerness, afabness, and olive skin.
I am public about all of those, I’m public about being queer and poly, I exude queer vibes in person.
Nothing is normal anymore. My life is topsy-turvy. All of my plans jumped out the window right behind my hope for the future. I was a poll worker on election night and I told the voters not to tell me anything because I needed to get through closing the polls when voting was over. I got home and my partner hugged me and told me what happened.
I was in shock. I’m still in shock. Every day existential dread grows a little more. Every day the background level of constant anxiety grows a little more. I’m worried about my olive-toned siblings, I’m worried about my partners, I’m worried about my friends. I’m worried about everyone.
And there’s a part of me that feels super prepared for this. A switch activated.
I was made for this. I am a product of the conservative movement meant to fight in the culture war they’ve spent the last 30 years building for and I am fucking pissed. Don’t think the right didn’t see this, didn’t plan this, didn’t see the opportunity in hiding Mike Pence behind the intolerable senseless oaf that is Donald Trump. We have Hitler 2.0 and puppets. Trump is horrifying and charismatic – he can pull on hate and fuel it. Pence is worse. Pence will have control.
And I grew up in Pence’s world. I grew up in the world that said my purpose in life was to fight in this war and guess what, they were right.
But I am fighting for my life and the lives of those around me. The lives of those already and about to be targeted. I know now why I felt like I needed to be here, why following my instincts have taken me to this place in this community…because I need to be here, now, – the resistance.
Existing as myself is an act of resistance, empowering others to do the same is resistance. This is our reality now.
We elected a facist, and now we have to do everything we can to stop facism from taking hold, or WW2 will pale in comparison.
I am fucking terrified, I am angry, I can’t stop thinking about the future, if that even exists. But I am taking this existential dread and channeling it into everything I’m able. I’m fighting with every fiber of my being and reminding myself that this isn’t normal.

What’s Next?

I’ve spent the week updating the security on all of my devices and getting PGP setup on my email. If you haven’t installed Signal already, you should. The EFF has some good advice in their security starter pack that would be a good place to start.
I’m going to be adding a page where you can verify my ID by my PGP key and see what things I’ve also verified. In the meantime, I’m on keybase.io. CRHE is gearing up for our annual fundraiser and putting efforts into preparing to help people who start homeschooling because of the election. I’m getting involved in my local community and politics to make change here with East Bay Forward and on my own. I’m helping build a safe, open, hackerspace in my community as well.
I’m making rage art again, and some of that is in the form of banners for download. I’m not being quiet. I’m enjoying the last 62 days of First Amendment rights before everything really goes to shit.

How you can help me

Finding a 9-5 job at a startup seems ridiculous now. It seems normal. Nothing about now is normal. I am looking to spend my energy helping people, being an activist, doing whatever I can to provide safe haven and squash facism. I am an artist, activist, and organizer with mad web skills, I intend on using every skillset I have to get myself and others through the next 4+ years.
If you have the financial ability to help, I need enough to pay bills and acquire meds and eat – you can setup a recurring donation on patreon and also get cool art. Or just donate. I am an uninsured, unemployed, queer enby trying to get my documents together. I just spent $200 on my passport update and still need to get my license updated.

Things I learned in therapy

Evolution Gender HRT Adventures Mental Health

My therapist guesses that starting T will help with my hormone induced dysphoria too (just need insurance again).
We opened up the jar of trauma that is my relationship with my body when I’m bleeding and realized I’ve never healed from that. Surprising no one, I know. But I realized that the terror that I feel as soon as fluctuations occur stem from the first time and thinking I was going to die and being unprepared while my mom called everyone in the phone book and I was hurt and scared and confused. In addition that, the voices in my head that push me to never rest stem from trying to survive my childhood and be one step ahead of my mom so she wouldn’t get set off. Jerk brain is just trying to keep me safe and help me survive the environment it’s known the longest, and logic isn’t going to convince it that it’s safe.
So we did this exercise where I found that part of me and told myself it’s okay, no one is allowed to yell at us, no one can hurt us anymore, I’ve got this. And something clicked. And I found out how much that moment hurt me, while I was bleeding and alone and I just kinda hugged the little versions of me that were coming out and terrified and have been scared this whole time.
Jerk brain has been so much quieter since Thursday.

burnt out on week 4

Evolution Gender HRT Adventures Mental Health

“It is important for me to take care of my mental, emotional and physical health at work”
This was the takeaway from therapy last week. I don’t know that I’ve done particularly well with it so far.
I learned one of my coworkers supports Trump and I would be lying if I said that didn’t bother me and loom over my shoulder in the back of my mind all day every day. I try not to let it interfere, or get to me, or otherwise influence how I interact with him, but the fact is, it does bother me. I work remotely so I don’t have to see him and am guaranteed some kind of safety through that, but it’s still a lot…on top of an already demanding and stressful job where people have FEELINGS at me all day.
I am starting week 4 and burnt out as fuck. I’m unsure both how to fix it and if I want to spend that energy. My work sets us up for failure before we start every morning – as the story goes with a small, understaffed IT firm, I guess. We’re booked and every day there’s more. They changed how our ticketing system works so it’s even more obvious how utterly impossible it is to keep up with requests and clients and communicating. It makes it hard to feel like there’s any headway, and when a client loses their shit at me, it’s my fault for not calming them well enough.
There is only so much that humans can do, and the expectations here aren’t able to be met by mere mortals. It’s triggering and reminds me of my childhood where I was expected to be capable of more than is humanly possible and reprimanded when I failed regardless of how much I’d gotten done already. My parents set me up to fail in life and my work is setting me up to fail every day before it even starts.
It’s grating and draining and not tenable.
It’s hard and I’m tired and I just want to flip tables and run away.
But I can’t.