Thread by @SandalwoodEmily

I’m having kind of a bad dysphoria day, and the paradox of that is that I’m having a bad one because absolutely nothing is wrong. Nobody’s been a jerk to me. Everybody calls me Emily. I look cute as hell.

But I feel NORMAL, which feeds its own kind of dysphoria.

Most of my life has been defined by feeling like everything happening around me was a just barely out-of-tune radio station. I could make out what was happening, but I had to filter out a little fuzz. Some days were worse than others.

Now, I’m always tuned right in.

The thing is I didn’t realize the station was out of tune until I got the hormones that put my brain on the right track. And for the first six months or so, the change was dramatic.

But now, as I settle into myself, this new normal starts to feel like maybe nothing has changed.

The hardest thing for me to realize has been that nobody is going to make me stop being a woman. That even if my identity is somehow legally tied to my assigned sex at birth, nearly everyone I know and love will still treat me as the person they and I know I am.

I was so sure, for so long, that people would struggle to accept me as a woman as much as _I_ struggled to accept me as a woman that learning all I had to do was ask nicely feels like a cheat code for reality.

Trans narratives are all about struggle, right? That’s what Hollywood sells us. And, yeah, I get more weird bullshit now than I used to, but nothing I can’t handle.

So if I don’t struggle, am I trans? If I sit and enjoy an evening with friends, am I trans?

That’s the trap you set for yourself, when you are just there, having a nice time, and you start to wonder… do they see me? Or do they see a man in a dress?

And: Am I just a man in a dress?

To fight against yourself so long, to fight to turn the radio dial jussst the right distance to get the station to come in crystal clear, is to see your life as an unending frustration. Worse some days than others but always there.

When you don’t have the fight, who are you?

Well, you’re just YOU. But you’ve defined you as something that’s not quite right for so long. So to feel the absence of that is to almost feel an absence of self.

BUT. These days are fewer and further between. Most days, I feel more and more like myself. Sometimes I realize I spent most of my life trying to be a man, and it feels like a lie.

The woman I always was was just waiting to catch me.

Anyway, that’s what bad dysphoria days are all about, Charlie Brown.

OH addendum: I think for a lot of trans ladies, especially, there’s this low level, latent part of our lives where we’re just, like, “Of course most men would prefer to be women!” because we don’t give people AMAB the language to talk about this stuff.

This manifests in a lot of different ways. For me, it was, like, “Women are GREAT. Men are fine, but women are GREAT.” But we are just as shitty as everybody, tbh!

Don’t get me wrong: I love being a woman. And being in friendships with women, cis and trans, feels like a second language I didn’t know I knew how to speak until I suddenly did.

But it’s kinda hard to make that crossing and realize you still have to be a fuckin human being.

Update: The wild thing about the brain chemistry functioning as intended is that I can now boost my mood via something called "exercise." Scientists say my discovery warrants further exploration.