Deciding to actually transition was a huge step for me, and I'm kind of proud of myself. I'd known I was trans for a very long time but transitioning always felt like something impossible and always out of reach. When I was younger, I desperately wished I could transition, it was the only thing I really wanted, and the only way I could imagine a future for myself. But when I finished puberty, the shame, both over what had happened to my body and that I hadn't been strong enough to stop it, combined with the fact that "the worst had already happened" and metastasized into this kind of indifference. Transitioning never stopped being something that I knew I needed and wanted, but it was no longer something that I felt I needed in the immediate future, and I learned how to just passively live with my AGAB and to ignore what made me uncomfortable.

Eventually I realized what I was really doing was neglecting myself, and that I couldn't keep putting it off. When I realized that, and when I realized that I was now closer to 30 than 20 and had been living basically my entire life "on pause", that desperate need to transition came back and stronger than before. It was like I had been living in a filthy, dilapidated hovel the entire time but not realizing it until I turned on the lights.

So with all the courage and discipline I could muster, I climbed myself out of that mental hole and asked my physician for a referral. He said the wait time for gender services was about 1-2 years. When I heard that, part of me was devastated, but the other part was like "I know how to handle this", and I climbed back in that hole, turned the lights off again in my metaphorical hovel, and waited patiently.

It didn't work as well that time, and I made it 6 months before deciding to order diy off the internet. The day it arrived I received a phone call from the doctors office the gender clinic had begun offloading their wait list onto, asking to schedule an appointment. It was two more weeks of excruciating waiting and another week of getting blood tests and scheduling follow-up appointments before I finally started hormones.

It's been a month now, and I know I shouldn't be expecting much, but that burning desire to transition hasn't left and it's making me sad that not much has happened yet. On top of that, now that I'm actually paying attention to myself and my body, my coping mechanisms if dissociating or just ignoring or repressing my feelings aren't working and my dysphoria's worse than it's been in years. And that's good, those aren't healthy coping mechanisms and I don't want to rely on them and I don't want to hide from who I am anymore, but it's still hard.

But transitioning is self-care and self-care is hard. Even so, it's something I deserve and something I owe myself.

Part of the problem is that I live with my parents, and even though they know and are supportive, I still haven't properly come out to them, and I'm too scared to present more fem at home, which makes relieving the dysphoria harder, but writing this post I think I've figured out what I need to do.

At least now when I'm sad I can actually cry, which, as weird as it sounds, is wonderful.