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I just figured out I'm a transwoman at 38, what now? Dos and Don'ts? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by HalfSalesman@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

64 comments fedilink hide all child comments

EDIT: For those concerned about how this story sounds: I'm leaving out a ton of detail for the sake of brevity. The history of how I've felt about possibly being trans technically goes back since I was a kid. And over the past years its been more notable and its intensified in the past few months. Past few days are just sort of a sudden cracking of the egg.

EDIT2: Also, HRT doesn't bring about any permanent effects for the first few months is what I've read. Just softening of the skin basically and emotional changes. Some of you freaking out about me immediately starting HRT are being alarmist. If by some incredibly unlikely situation I end up hating being on HRT I'll figure it out within the first month or three and stop. But I know that's not going to happen TBH.

So, let me give some quick explanation on how I got here: Last Thursday, a girl I was essentially obsessed with told me to fuck off forever, even as a friend. To be honest I alienated my entire friend group surrounding her. I deserved this by any conventional measure, but that's not what I want to litigate.

I had been on a mental loop essentially obsessing over her, and when it was clear I'd not get to even be her friend anymore, let alone be with her romantically, I realized I had absolutely nothing to think about or put my energy into. She was kind of part of my last (I'm autistic) hyper fixation of romance that had crumbled before me. I went from Video games to Politics to Romance. I cared about nothing for a few days, purely operating on survival mode, work was absolutely miserable and free time I sat around doing essentially nothing but thinking and watching garbage youtube. I did not want to live anymore, though I had suicidal ideation even before she rejected even my friendship.

Saturday night and Sunday morning, in bed I ruminated about the only thing left basically all night waking up randomly: myself. My identity. Who the fuck am I? I wont get to heavy into details but I realized I was in denial with my "gender ambivalence" I wasn't ambivalent. I'm a transwoman. I told a friend and they immediately called me "Girrl!" and called me by a feminine form of my name via text. I immediately liked this to an extreme degree. And I think this kind of confirms it. I literally had a strong emotional sense of pleasure. I've never been excited to be a guy.

I feel both amazingly good about this revelation but also extremely... sad. I'm 38. I feel like I missed out on literally the best possible years to be a woman and I'm about to go into the worst. And the years I lived as a man were pretty terrible. I feel like I've been cheated.

I've realized the only real way I'm going to manage any real romance is to embrace who I actually am and stop pretending. I thought all my masking was to appear allistic (I'm autistic) but I was also essentially masking my gender. Pretending to be a guy. And I fucking suck at it.

Fortunately, I've aged surprisingly well despite being 38. I have all my hair. I already have a somewhat elven-esque pretty boy face even today that I think will not really require facial work. I have a "sing-song" voice for a guy. I am naturally relatively lanky/thin. Because I'm an indoors and night time person I've suffered minimal to zero UV damage to my skin and I don't smoke.

This almost stings more though: god how cute I could have been! What an absolute waste. But there is something to be salvaged at least. I plan to start HRT ASAP. I intend to call Planned Parenthood today.

Anyway, the actual question is: Other than HRT, what do I do now? What do I need to be careful about? What should I avoid? What should I try?

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[–] Diva@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

i was in a similar situation to you physically, it's really never too late to start. i repped for over 20 years before starting transition in my 30s. i didn't have a huge crashout but hanging out with other trans women made it feel a lot more approachable. it finally got to me and i started hrt.

once you start and get used to hrt, i highly recommend getting on shots if you can tolerate it. multi-day cycles are way better than having swings during the day or based on your metabolism. injectable also doesn't hit your liver and is pretty easy to stockpile.

if you have any way to get laser or electrolysis, i found that made a huge difference in my mental health as well as how other people interpret my appearance and address me. you can find places to do it on the cheap, esthetician schools often let you get that work done for deep discounts. i started doing that as soon as i started hrt, the androgen suppression means you won't get as much regrowth.

eating food is another big one, you will get fat redistribution on hrt but it requires that you have some fat to redistribute. i really had to work through a lot of restrictive behavior patterns that i'd accumulated over the years, but it's been worth it to grow tits and ass.

[–] HalfSalesman@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

i didn’t have a huge crashout but hanging out with other trans women made it feel a lot more approachable. it finally got to me and i started hrt.

My old friend group hates me because of the fallout of my obsessing over a transwoman within the group. They are basically all LGBT. It kind of hurts that a huge swath of local LGBT people now basically hate me with basically no hope for them coming back around. That's going to make things difficult.

What is funny though is I kind of care less now? Like, as a guy my thoughts have also been very socially tactical because it was mostly a hollow mask anyway. Sure it was partially made up of aspects of me, but the presentation was purely extrinsically motivated. But now its like.... I'm just being me so fuck it you know? My north star is just being me. Let them be haters.

once you start and get used to hrt, i highly recommend getting on shots if you can tolerate it. multi-day cycles are way better than having swings during the day or based on your metabolism. injectable also doesn’t hit your liver and is pretty easy to stockpile.

I was thinking patches, I heard they're just as good? I'm not afraid of needles, I get every vaccination basically. Though I don't like the idea of administering such myself.

if you have any way to get laser or electrolysis, i found that made a huge difference in my mental health as well as how other people interpret my appearance and address me. you can find places to do it on the cheap, esthetician schools often let you get that work done for deep discounts. i started doing that as soon as i started hrt, the androgen suppression means you won’t get as much regrowth.

I intend to acquire HRT this Friday. I suppose I could look around for laser hair removal but I'm little worried about my budget. I'm not a rich transgirl. I'm not entirely broke either but man I know this shit is going to be expensive.

eating food is another big one, you will get fat redistribution on hrt but it requires that you have some fat to redistribute. i really had to work through a lot of restrictive behavior patterns that i’d accumulated over the years, but it’s been worth it to grow tits and ass.

Yeah that makes sense. Also exercise to my understanding can speed things up.

[–] Diva@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

I suppose I could look around for laser hair removal but I’m little worried about my budget.

i had saved up a bit in advance, but not a ton. doing it through a school definitely made that money stretch out a lot.

I was thinking patches, I heard they’re just as good?

they are okay, i used them very briefly when my insurance was giving me shit. too much skin irritation and the dose you end up with depends on how well it sticks to you. plus the dosing on those is more for cis women in menopause unless you use a bunch. to get to a therapeutic dose with those i'd need 3-5 of the largest patches, rotated twice a week. they are also relatively expensive and not always easy to source. compared to that i found sticking myself every 5 days is way easier.

you definitely don't need to start with that, but it's very easy to do subcutaneous injections. i rarely draw blood and barely feel a thing these days. i ended up injecting in my torso because i'm pretty thin and when i was doing it in my leg i'd always be hitting muscle.

It kind of hurts that a huge swath of local LGBT people now basically hate me with basically no hope for them coming back around.

that does hurt, i hope you are able to find some community. i do hope you are reflecting on this though, it's not fun having other people (including other trans people) obsessing over you. if someone in any friend group becomes the focus of someone else’s fixation, the group is going to close ranks around that person.

the reason i say to reflect on this is that if your takeaway is that they're 'haters' you’ll carry that and associated behaviors into the next community and it’ll happen again.

if the takeaway is ‘i did something that made someone uncomfortable and i need to understand what that was and not repeat it,’ that’s a thing you can actually work on. plus it leaves the door open to rebuilding somewhere, maybe even with some of these people eventually.

obsessing over a transwoman

i know you don’t mean anything by it, but in my experience 'transwoman' with no space is the preferred spelling of people who tend to argue that trans women aren't women. not passing judgement, just fyi. i prefer to use trans as an adjective, like 'tall' or 'loud' or 'annoying'.

I intend to acquire HRT this Friday.

good luck, i started via informed consent at pp and it was not difficult at all, but definitely recommend getting your primary care doctor in the loop for running ultrasensitive estradiol bloodwork routinely

[–] HalfSalesman@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

that does hurt, i hope you are able to find some community. i do hope you are reflecting on this though, it’s not fun having other people (including other trans people) obsessing over you. if someone in any friend group becomes the focus of someone else’s fixation, the group is going to close ranks around that person.

the reason i say to reflect on this is that if your takeaway is that they’re ‘haters’ you’ll carry that and associated behaviors into the next community and it’ll happen again.

One certain member really doesn't seem interested in giving me an another chance, to the point that they've told me they don't even want to see me again and called me a "miserable little creep". At this point they're at least specifically a hater. Its surreal to think they started off hitting on me when they first met me.

There is a few that are mostly just extremely annoyed with me or dislike me and a few that are still friendly that I can talk to. But they hang around the specific unforgiving individual and it makes it extremely difficult. And the woman herself started off pretty forgiving (more so than the main hater) but as I tried hanging with her thinking she was cool with me still I realized she was using the main angry hater as a sort of proxy shield because she finally told me to just go away.

if the takeaway is ‘i did something that made someone uncomfortable and i need to understand what that was and not repeat it,’ that’s a thing you can actually work on. plus it leaves the door open to rebuilding somewhere, maybe even with some of these people eventually.

I'm not entirely sure how I stop myself from obsessing that's just kind of how my brain works. There drugs for this maybe?

Its also how I engage with basically everything in life. I don't do "balance" lol. I go all in.

Which is what I intend to do with this transition.

i know you don’t mean anything by it, but in my experience ‘transwoman’ with no space is the preferred spelling of people who tend to argue that trans women aren’t women. not passing judgement, just fyi. i prefer to use trans as an adjective, like ‘tall’ or ‘loud’ or ‘annoying’.

Oh, no genuinely did not know that. Thank you for the heads up I'll avoid doing so in the future. I've always kind of swapped back and forth I think. Kind of makes sense. Its sort of like Autistic person vs person with Autism. (or Autist... lol)

good luck, i started via informed consent at pp and it was not difficult at all, but definitely recommend getting your primary care doctor in the loop for running ultrasensitive estradiol bloodwork routinely

Thank you <3

[–] AskewLord@piefed.social 42 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (16 children)

A woman rejected you and you decide that means you are trans?

Are you trolling? If not, you don't need to transition, you need a therapist you help you stop being so overly dramatic about mundane life experiences like rejection. The problem is on the inside, not the outside. This most makes you come across like a 16 year old, not a 38 year old...

[–] Kyrias@lemmy.ca 19 points 1 week ago (3 children)

People are bizarre.

Dude has an obsessive personality, admits it, and is excited to jump to his next obsession.

[–] TheOriginalMattman@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

I knew I couldn't be the only one thinking this.

[–] Cherry@piefed.social 6 points 1 week ago (4 children)

And also cannot stop to think critically how these obsessions could be harmful, and pushes objectional feedback away.

I am convinced some people actually fight against inner peace.

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[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Pretty sure Planned Parenthood has nothing to do with HRT prescriptions. You'd need a psychiatric doctor to prescribe something like that, and he'd probably insist on a pretty thorough examination. And since doctors don't generally like giving out prescriptions needlessly, he'd probably want to hear about some symptoms of illness first.

Preference alone would be insufficient, just like going to your doctor and insisting you want your stomach stapled for weight loss would be insufficient to get the surgery. He will most likely make you try other, less permanent things first.

[–] AskewLord@piefed.social 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (8 children)

Yeah, the vibe here is "I want an immediate solution to my identity/behavioral problems" and going to the most extreme route. Which is typical thinking of a person with a personality or other psych issue.

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[–] Witchfire@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

Planned Parenthood can prescribe HRT in some locations, but I'll warn the one time I called because I had run out and my Endo was being a butt they had something like a 3 month wait-list for any appointment

[–] Duchess@piefed.linenoise.vip 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Planned Parenthood handles HRT in many states. I have been getting my HRT through them for years with no issues at all.

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[–] Witchfire@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago (2 children)

38 is not too late to start. I've known people who started in their 40s and 50s

That said, you need therapy. Specifically a therapist knowledgeable in queer matters, otherwise they'll just abuse you.

[–] nicky7@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Definitely! Not too late! I'm even older and my egg only cracked 3 years ago. Then it was several months of self discovery before coming out to my wife and kids, followed by more self discovery and 2 years of therapy building tools for underlying trauma and anxiety. I finally started HRT 9 months ago. I'm 45!

It's never too late to be your true self!!

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[–] HalfSalesman@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Fortunately, while my therapist is not particular impressive in her credentials in general, she specifically does have experience with queer matters and is a strong LGBT ally. So I'm probably in decent hands.

[–] BauerBender@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

Last Thursday

👀

[–] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Self discovery is good. This is all very sudden. I suggest considering holding back on HRT and Planned Parenthood, temporarily, until you more fully digest your discovery. It's hard to hold back when you are excited about something, but please try your best.

First steps, before even making pronouncements to your friends and family, is to live as a transwoman. Does it feel right? It's not exactly an easy life, but neither is hiding who you are.

Let the initial euphoria wash over you and try a calm lived experience. Don't try to "act feminine", try to explore who you are and what feels right. Transwomen can be tomboyish, or feminine and be attracted to partners of any variety, or really anything else under the sun. Remove your preconceptions and discover more about yourself and who you really are. Just try to be honest with yourself. Explore, discretely at first and let your public image grow with your confidence in your self discovery and identity.

Once you know, temper even that with the knowledge that you are a living being who changes and grows. Over time your identity may as well, it may not. Time will tell.

Next steps, try living a day publicly as your true self, whatever that may be. Then another day, and another. Grow into it organically, then when you are ready, take the next steps like HRT, surgery or whatever else is right for you.

My caution is because your post highlighted that you didn't understand something important about yourself for 38 years. My suggestions are in the hope you don't prejudice your self discovery again by concluding who you are based on current taxonomic structures. Labels can hinder as much as help. If you are a transwoman, great. Find out what kind, then live your best life.

Good luck!

[–] HalfSalesman@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

I'm not super interested in too much procedures other than hair removal, and that requires multiple appointments. Surgeries scare me.

I don't think I can wait much on the HRT. But I will at take your words here and proceed with caution. I'll make sure to listen carefully to my therapist tomorrow and the planned Parenthood people. The reason I've put it off is I essentially blocked it out of my mind. I kind of did the same with being bisexual (finsexual) and I was super happy I figured that out.

Thank you for the earnest response.

[–] theherk@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I immediately liked this to an extreme degree. And I think this kind of confirms it.

I’m not certain about that part. Maybe. You know you best, but I think that is a lot about how reinforcement circuitry works. It felt good to be seen sure, but does that mean you do a 180 at 38? Maybe. If so, good for you.

[–] HalfSalesman@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Its not a 180. Its more like the trans-ness was stored in a locked box in the corner of my brain, and over time its taken a beating, its finally been smashed open.

[–] NotAHondaAccord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Join us you are not alone >>> !mtf@lemmy.blahaj.zone

[–] Cherry@piefed.social 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Don’t …be impulsive.
Do …learn inner peace.

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[–] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Do: be a woman

dont: Take shit from anyone.

[–] HalfSalesman@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Haha yeah. <3

[–] Duchess@piefed.linenoise.vip 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Hey congrats :) I went through a similar arc of obsession with women full of unqualified yearning that I struggled to understand and cope with. A lot of your ‘egg behavior’ is probably making a lot of sense right now.

Transitioning later in life does present its own challenges but I assure you that most of the trans women I know even ones who transitioned pretty young feel similar about missing out on some things. Just part and parcel of being in the wrong body.

You should talk to a therapist. planned parenthood is a perfect choice when you’re ready to discuss HRT. Also look up and read the Gender Dysphoria Bible. Most importantly start finding your community both online and IRL. There are lots of active ‘ trans later’ communities where you will find support and guidance.

It is never too late to find yourself and live your truth. I wouldn’t trade a single year of living as the woman I was meant to be for a dozen extra years living miserably in the wrong body. Good luck and congrats again.

[–] HalfSalesman@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Thank you! <3

[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

As others have said, the very first step should be therapy. 1 week after a hard breakup is not the time to be making major life decisions if you can avoid it. I know it sucks but you're going to need time to heal. The way you wrote this it sounds less like discovering yourself and more like a form of rebound.

Since it sounds like you're really grasping for something real to do right now, I'd suggest picking up a hobby, ideally something working with your hands/body in the real world like drawing or painting or sewing or running or biking or something

I also wonder if you need to spend more time figuring yourself out. Go to the mall and try on some clothing and see how it feels. Play with your hair a little. But mostly I'd suggest focusing more on a hobby for a few weeks and let your questions about yourself linger for a bit while you get through the roughest first part of the healing process

1 week after a breakup is again not the time to make life changing decisions. 1 week after a breakup is definitely the time to start therapy, poke at some new hobbies, go outside and move more and maybe go clothing shopping if you have the budget.

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[–] sloppy_diffuser@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm hearing a lot of similarities to my own story.

On the spectrum. Obsessive personality traits. Manic once I get an idea in my head that clicks. Fantisized about being female since adolescent. Super interested when I discovered it was an option to be trans in college. Took until my 40s to own it. Regret I didnt do something about it back then.

My plan last year was to start HRT this year. Like it was some gate I needed to pass through (obsessive personality). I never officially decided not to do it now that the year is ending, but I've found contentment without it after two years of deep exploration.

Like a half dozen wigs, few pairs of prosthetic breasts, more women's clothing in my wardrobe than the sum of all male clothing I've owned my whole adult life, like 50 pairs of heels (I really really fucking love heals), make up, galons of professional nail polish, laser hair removal, small fortune in GLP-1 meds to reach the body figure I wanted, etc, etc.

I don't know when the switch happened, but eventually the obsession with getting HRT fizzled out. I wear almost exclusively women's clothing today. Most of it passes as gender neutral, but its distinctly more feminine color pallets or the way it fits. Outside of professional settings I'll wear my beloved heals out. In safe spaces I'll go full cross dressed.

You know what? I'm happier not having to identify as one label or the other and stressing about this gate that needs to be crossed. I'm just me and that's enough. Anyways, just wanted to play devil's advocate here as I heard a lot of myself in your post. Journey before destination or some shit like that.

Best wishes with whatever you choose.

[–] HalfSalesman@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

Having the face and body is more important to me than the clothes and accessories, at least for the moment. I want to be able to wear men's clothing but still be obviously a woman in appearance.

But yes I will try out women's clothes now though and I'm kind of excited (if nervous) about trying it all. I've only done drag once. I did like it.

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