Alien Girlybrain

So yesterday was my first day on the new, reduced dose of estrogen. I just took a 2mg pill in the morning and that was it. And golly, wouldjalookitthat, I found myself deeply depressed in the evening. I did the same thing today, and again found myself entering a depressive state in the evening. I took another 2mg pill and that helped mitigate the depression somewhat. And it occurred to me that I was being stupid: I need to balance my doses. So I went through the rest of the week's estrogen and used a pill splitter on them. Now I'll be taking 1mg in the morning and 1mg in the evening, which is how I've been dosing myself since starting e back in August. I hope this helps because I am *SO* fucking tired of these crippling depressions. Spending several hours a day wishing I were dead* is no fun.


*Note that I'm not saying I want to kill myself. BIG difference and nothing whatsoever to joke about.

OK, I think I've resolved some of the pain, and figured out my identity issues (to a degree). Call me Carla, call me Bea, call me Irene, I don't care which name you use. And I'll take those female pronouns again, thank you. :)

I'm having a bit of an identity crisis. I don't know where I'm going to wind up when I get through this, but I'm not sure that I'll be female or male. I'd rather be NEITHER right now, if I'm honest. I don't know who or what I am anymore. This scares me.

Being feminine feels like too much work right now. I don't bother to feminise my voice. I shave only occasionally. And the real hell of that is that even when I've shaved it doesn't help much because I know it's just going to grow back again. And, obscenely, I feel more masculine today than I did before HRT. My position on the gender spectrum is sliding back toward the "M" end of things.

So what does this mean to you, dear reader? Well…it doesn't mean much. But I'm not entirely comfortable with the name Carla right now. It's too feminine for me right now. I'll probably come back to it, but for now I'd rather something more neutral. Bea isn't VERY neutral, but it's the first initial of my old name AND it's a female name so…let's go with that for now. Please use it rather than Carla if you need to refer to me by name. As for pronouns…I'm uncomfortable with feminine and masculine pronouns. Please use zie and zir for now. This also means I'm putting the brakes on my name change. I'm collecting the papers the Center's legal support team have prepared for me, but I'm not going to file them until I have a better idea of what I REALLY want to do.

The orchi seems to have opened a Pandora's box of emotional hell. Thank god it was just an orchi. How much worse would it have been if I'd had GRS? It seems increasingly obvious to me that I was not emotionally ready for this surgery. I foolishly believed the only recovery I would have to make was physical. How very, very wrong I was. If you are planning to have an orchi, PREPARE YOURSELF for emotional turmoil. If you're wondering how bad it's been, just go back a week. Last Thursday I was recovering from surgery and there was not an ounce of doubt or remorse in my heart. Today I'm wracked with anxiety and doubt. This is not fun. I think if I had it to do over again I would, but I'd try to spend more time coming to terms with the reality of what it was going to do to me BEFORE the op rather than AFTER. My hormones are wonky right now and that doesn't help anything AT ALL.

So anyway, quick tl;dr recap: Prefered name: Bea. Preferred pronouns: zie/zir. Thank you.

First off, I need to plug Dr Nguyen again. Both he and his office manager, Russann Royce, are exemplary human beings, engaged in work that changes peoples' lives for the better, and they are not at all stuck up about it. Yesterday I emailed Russann asking if I could get a refill on my percocet 'script and if the doctor would be willing to write me a letter stating that my medical transition was complete so that I could change my gender marker with the Social Security Administration. This morning I got a response in the affirmative on both counts. I love these people!

Russann has seriously made this experience SO much better than it might have been. When I was trying to find out how much Dr Kowalczyk charges for surgery, his office staff were evasive and unhelpful. They put me off, told me that someone would call me back, but no-one ever did. In the end, I decided that there was no way someone with such a useless office staff was going to be my doctor. It wouldn't matter in the least if he were the best doctor on the planet; if his office staff was this useless BEFORE they had my money, how much more useless would they be AFTER they had it? Russann, on the other hand, was responsive. No matter how mundane or outré the question, she answered it. She wanted me to have the best possible experience, and it showed. I cannot speak highly enough of her. I'm going to say this again: if you need an orchiectomy, GO TO DR NGUYEN.

So now I'd like to talk a bit more about what I'm experiencing. Today I noticed that I itch. Travis thinks this might be part of the healing process, and I suppose that's likely. I've had to change my pad several times today, too. Pain-wise I'm about the same. I think I'm a bit more swollen today than I was yesterday. I don't have any ice packs here at home though. I really need to buy a few so I can keep the swelling under control.

I noticed yesterday that my physical strength seems to have diminished again. When I was fully hormonally female before, I was pretty weak, since estrogen kills one's upper body strength. When I went off spiro, and then on the half dose, I recovered much of that strength (though not all of it—I was never as strong as I was before HRT). I actually seem weaker now than I was before, though of course that's impossible to quantify.

I also notice that I'm MUCH more prone to crying. I've cried several times today. I'm a little more emotional in general, though again, this is difficult to gauge accurately, so I could just be having One Of Those Days™. I've been having computer issues today, and while I've gotten quite angry (to the point where I was shaking with rage at one point) about it all, I never lost control or got depressed about it. And it faded pretty quickly. I count this as progress.

In non-orchi news, I'm considering bypassing the Center's legal assistance program and filling out my name change papers myself. I spoke with Drian Juarez the other day. She said it'd be mid-July before they were ready for ME to file myself. So I'd have to wait two or three more weeks, then go and collect the papers and bring them back to the Santa Monica court to file them myself, along with the fee waiver request. Then I would need to hope the court approved my waiver. Bear in mind I first went to them in late April to get this process started. At first they told me the papers would be ready by the end of May. Then by mid-June. Now it's mid-July? I really, *REALLY* want to start the fall semester as Carla, and that's looking less and less likely if I rely on the Center. I have plenty of free time right now, so I see no reason whatsoever to delay this. I'm reasonably certain I can get the papers filled in myself, and I know someone I can have look them over to make sure they're OK, so I think I'm better off taking matters into my own hands.

Got this from sanacrow. I like the idea.

You know how sometimes people on your friendslist post about stuff going on in their life, and all of a sudden you think “Wait a minute? Since when were they working THERE? Since when were they dating HIM/HER? Since when?” And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you should already know? It happens to all of us sometimes.

Please copy the topics below, erase my answers and put yours in their place, and then post it in your journal! Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration. One-Word-Answers seldom help anyone out.

( Questions and answers below the cut )

I've gotten three things done today.

1. I've demonstrated to myself that I CAN survive immersion in a church environment. I might not enjoy the experience, but it won't kill me.

2. I've (finally) gotten gelasius's new computer ready to ship. Calliope will be winging her way eastward tomorrow. I am very sad to see her go. Which brings me to...

3. Crying. It feels good, cleansing. It's not a purge of emotion, just a form of release. I love how easily I can cry now. It's like the barriers between me and my emotions are falling away. When I was hormonally male something had to be really devastating to make me cry. When my dog Puppy died eight years ago I bawled like a little baby. Anything less didn't even rate a sniffle. But now in the last week I've cried over Puppy (when telling alejandromagno about her), a stupid song about a flea (!) and a dozen other things I can't even remember. I've cried more in the last week - hell, the last HOUR than I have in the entire decade before that.

Well, after all those songs bringing me to the verge of tears it took Emmylou's bittersweet voice to drive me over the edge. I'm listening to Spyboy, and the song Calling My Children Home came on. This is one that always gives me a lump in my throat anyway, but this time... And then I watched that video and it happened again.

Damn. I'm really changing.