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I’ve been feeling the swift winds of change. The end of Winter/beginning of Spring brings about change in such a magical, serendipitous manner that I would disappoint myself for not dedicating this week to personal transformation. I mean, if I’m going to talk about social change and how we transition to new systems, I may as well talk about the ways my own life navigates change.

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Gender is Weird

Today, Thursday, the 27th, marks 6 years of medically transitioning with HRT. I don’t talk much about gender for many (obvious) reasons. But I guess it's okay to give a little of that story for a special occasion.

I actually think there were a great number of advantages to starting this journey about a year before things shut down for a while. I had a full year of the most absolutely horrendous cringe you could imagine. With zero idea of how to shop for myself, there was an abundance of messiness in those early days. Since I had a well-paying job at the time, I got into expensive “luxury” makeup while simultaneously figuring out how facial features even work. It was a disaster, a true stumbling through life moment.

Change is interesting in that, often, your mind is tricked into thinking a change is so massive (and sometimes it is) that it becomes almost an insurmountable task to overcome.

This happened when I spiraled during a surgery complication. I thought I was for sure going to die, but through help from supportive friends, I mostly got over it and still live with it today.

I, like many newly out people of any gender or sexuality, had this deep sinking fear of not just how others would perceive or judge me but also the possibility that my perceptions would change of my body, my interests, and my goals. As it turns out, few of those things actually changed all too much, and the fear and anxiety are mostly unwarranted emotions masking the excitement of feeling whole. After all, it is an exciting time to begin blossoming into yourself, especially during Spring.

The two main controversies I’ve seen around transness over the past 6 years revolve around the age of consent to alter one’s body (“we must protect the children”) and, well, doing it at all (conspiracy/admiration/confusion). As for my opinions on age, yes, I do not believe the decision to embark on this change—and it is a fundamental biological and scientific change to one’s body, not the self—super early in life is wise. From my personal experience as a child, even though there were patterns that would lead to this decision as an adult, there was no point at which I thought starting this process earlier would have been a good idea or was even at the front of my mind. I was simply not emotionally, mentally, socially, or financially prepared for it. At least in hindsight and with the lived experience I now have, I wasn’t really in the right space to tackle such challenges until I made the conscious decision as a fully functioning adult.

However, the anxiety of looking over one’s shoulder does come front and center of everyday life, particularly where I live (I had the opposite experience when I visited Portland, OR, but I suppose that’s to be expected). While that’s the experience of being a woman under patriarchy and a vane, sexualized, adversarial society, it’s a different kind of experience, that’s for sure. The early fears of being told you can’t go somewhere or do a normal human thing like visiting a bathroom where you feel you belong or being stared at with eyes that could cut through steel beams exist. That anxiety is extremely real.

And while we’re here, we should absolutely keep fighting for trans rights. US Democrats placating right-wing perceptions won’t win them the centrist brownie points they think they need. Sarah McBride, the first trans member of congress, giving in to this nonsense is beyond comprehension. “We have to create more space in our tent,” said Rep. Sarah McBride. I don’t buy it, not for those who would see me dead or invisible. But at the same time we must also have hard conversations about certain harms done to the social order at both extremes.

David Shapiro (AI guy, not trans) made interesting assertions this week in a piece about trans medical care, and frankly, I do agree with some of it.

Here are six things I’ve learned that may help someone on this life-changing journey—or a list that says essentially the same thing over and over again.

• Taking HRT is about reflection and the real daily inner work just as much if not far more than outward appearances, style, makeup, voice, and any amount of “passing” (dumb concept, by the way) will ever do. As we should know by now, vanity is fine in moderation, not in excess. In a society with one-tap access to Instagram for the past nearly 15 years, the way someone looks is how they are judged, but how they greet and love themselves is the most beautiful act of transition of all. Many in those beginning years find it difficult to love themselves due to a distorted view of how they “should” look on the outside rather than focusing first on how they actually look inside.

• As confidence grows and especially as more time passes, you really get to know yourself during this process. You come to understand that most people you pass on the street or meet at an event will likely never see you again. Their opinion matters far less than how you treat yourself. And why should I care how much space I take in someone else’s mind?

• Therapy and consistent medical care are essential for working through these things. It is disappointing that reliable, professional help isn’t accessible to everyone, but that’s a whole other beast to tackle. The path to loving yourself is fraught with frustration and anger at a life that feels “stolen,” as in years lost to time and biological changes due to puberty and aging. It takes a while to work through these things. The “hurry up and change me” approach never works the way you want it to.

• Time time time. That’s the name of the game: everything takes time. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve read the phrase, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” on a message board. You don’t fully believe it until you’re sitting alone for years at a time, faced with solitude, nothing to do but wait, and nowhere to go because there’s a raging pandemic—which, by the way, is still ongoing for those who’ve forgotten.

• As I mentioned above, most people you meet don’t think about you for more than a few seconds after they’re finished staring. Further, in general, the judgment others place is largely based on curiosity or the fact that your confusing appearance challenges their worldview, which is wholly unacceptable in an individualistic, adversarial society. I’m not sure the kind of rage we see on social sites will be solved anytime soon or that I know how it will be solved unless the way we use it is fundamentally altered in some form.

• It does get better. In fact, much better. I’ve never felt so happy or fulfilled. This is largely due to making new friends (Boys Club shoutout), accepting change as it comes, and beginning to deeply understand the experience of moving through the world as a different flavor of woman. That’s all it is, really. I simply experience life through this skin suit and its thoughts and appreciate its changes.

• Bonus: STAY OFF REDDIT!!! It is a psychic enemy in this process.

What Really Changed

When I came out, the phrase whose screams bounced off the walls of my mind was, “I just want to be normal,” and it was incredibly painful to navigate. “Normal,” in this sense, was a clear cry for nothing more than congruence. In my world at the time, I was met on two sides by friends and loved ones on one extreme alien-like version of queerness and, on the other, the endpoint I actually wanted to attain, which was simply to stop having to think about my own transness.

Thankfully, I do now feel welcome in my own body.

I went from experimenting with femininity to see what would stick to figuring out what felt natural to me, not necessarily what was “expected” of me as a woman.

I found that it takes a high sense of childlike wonder to connect with the self and its needs.

And to the point of womanhood, when I self-talk these days, it is not in response to being consumed by the identity of trans woman or trans person. I am more than my gender or sexuality, and it took a great deal of discipline to reach this place.

I am now much more in favor of letting a thousand sexes bloom than ever before.

As I’ve said a hundred times over now, the future is getting weird at exponential rates, and I’d rather humans be interesting and diverse than as boring as beige-colored walls.

Consumption Diet:

Yes, I really do spend many hours watching YouTube. Here’s what I got into this week.

• Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson (Spotify audiobook)

• Adam Curtis documentaries - all parts of each below

  • Hypernormalization

  • Can’t Get You Out of My Head

  • All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace

• The Road to Neoliberalism, compilation by IAI - the Institute of Art and Ideas

• Conspiracy, by Contrapoints

Kimiya Mag is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Thank you to my friend and Kimiya supporter, Kiana, for giving me the courage to send this post.