Excitement vs being happy

[seishun]

Last night in therapy, C. asked me if I was excited about my orchi. I've thought about this a bit so I was able to answer quickly that I wasn't. I'm a bit nervous, and I'm VERY happy about it, but excited? No. I'm definitely HAPPY about it, because after 33-ish years of testosterone HELL I am about to be liberated. T has left its mark on me, and it's one which not even surgery could erase, but estrogen is relieving a lot of the pain I've felt. But rather than be excited about surgery, I'm really rather sanguine about it. And this isn't the first time something which anyone might assume would be exciting has just left me flat. I felt about the same when I started hormones, and when I saw Dr Maddie for the first time. It's all been GOOD for me, and it's all made me terribly happy, but excited? Not so much. It's all felt like stuff I needed to do. OK, let's get this done and move on to the next step.

I kind of wish I WERE getting excited about this stuff, you know? I almost feel like there's something wrong with me. But I guess there's no point getting worked up over it. I'm happy, and that's enough for me. C.'s parting instruction—my homework for the week, she told me—was to hold on to that happiness as much as possible during the week and to use it to boost my spirits if ever I were feeling low. Not a problem. :)

Comments

[docbrite.livejournal.com]

I might not be the best judge since I haven't had any yet, but surgery itself strikes me as an odd thing to get excited about. It's expensive, painful, time-consuming, and, yeah, just a necessary step to get to where you need to be. If people can get excited about it, more power to them, but it's not something I particularly look forward to even though I really want it.

[hiddenheart]

Sounds really sensible to me, for what it's worth.

From my vantage over here in the prologue :), it seems like that while this is a big step, and a cool one, it's neither the end of the beginning nor the beginning of the end. You're in the midst of a process well and truly anchored in the deep foundations of your life; you have a lot you still want to do. This is a darned good thing but it's not precisely decisive, it seems to me. And for that, happiness over excitement seems right.

[paper_hand]

I can totally understand that. I'm only at the beginning of transition myself, but looking ahead, it's more like "getting rid of something unpleasant" than "getting something good". Excitement would be an odd feeling to have for something that FIXES something wrong. To me, that's a feeling I get for something that's a positive good. Fixing my body to where it should've been is more relief. Looking forward to transition, I feel, along with nervousness, anxiety, fear, a sense of anticipated relief. A sense of a weight being lifted from my shoulders. I'll only be stuck with this male body for a little while longer, rather than the rest of my life.

[gelasius]

I think my attitude towards most of the transition steps I've been taking have been relief rather than excitement. There were moments of excitement when I got my first vial of hormones, and I have a bit of excitement about my impending name change date, but for the most part I've felt this journey, and each step on it, as an unbuckling of tight straps on my metaphorical jacket that were making it difficult to breathe, and once the initial lung expansion happens I start to forget what the constriction felt like in the first place.