The Emotional Aspect

[mochimash]

What is the most emotional aspect of being transgender?

 

[Komugi]

Terrible all-consuming loneliness. It’s a constant, in fact, the only constant, companion. It’s such a fixture of my day-to-day existence, I’ve turned it into a little Chibi anime monster in my head. It’s like a pet. That sometimes gnaws my arm off. Which, in this metaphor, are those nights I cry myself to sleep.

Also, there’s the ever-present sense of injustice. I shouldn’t be able to look a store manager in the eye and immediately tell him that my employment application won’t even make it to the pile.

 

[Honeyclover]

What is the most emotional aspect of being transgender?

Feeling what normal feels like is such an incredibly emotional experience.

When I first went on HRT, I couldn’t believe how calm, focused, and subtly happy I felt all the time. No wonder I was always known for never smiling or ever being happy! I always felt agitated, stressed, borderline angry, and depressed. HRT changed all of that rapidly.

Have you ever tried to have a conversation with a friend in a very noisy restaurant? The background noise makes it hard to understand and enjoy your friend and the dining experience. Gender dysphoria is a lot like that background noise, and it’s always there, every waking hour of your life. HRT was like turning the background noise down to a barely audible level. The frustration of constantly straining to understand what your friend is saying and not being able to enjoy the dining experience was suddenly removed.

I spent the first few weeks in sheer amazement. I was able to stay focused on tasks longer than ever before, I had more energy, and I was enjoying things that I used to not even notice. I remember one particular experience where I was driving down the street one sunny spring day and being overwhelmed at how beautiful the trees looked that day. It sounds cliche, but it was literally like the sun was sunnier, the grass was greener, and life had become livelier.