self-love

Grace Notes

  • Reading time:6 mins read

So after a stuttering indecision as to whether we’d actually do spring this year, it seems we’ve gone straight to summer. And, well. Fuck. But okay, fine. Normally summer is a special kind of a hell for someone so wan and brittle and northerly inclined. But, we’ve now been on HRT for close to 16 months. All that dissociation I lived with for 40-years began to clear up last August. This is the first full summer in my life where I actually like my body.

If I have to take my clothes off to make it to fall, for once I think I can handle that.

Dumping a fuckin Mariana trench of shame from my checksum has all these unexpected perks. I got nothing to hide anymore. Certainly not from myself. Instead of suffering the heat, I get to just shrug off the shrouds and enjoy the minimalism in a way unavailable to me at any other time of year—not without getting me in a shiver.

I mean I absolutely cannot fucking tolerate hot weather. Even moderately warm makes my brain short circuit. Give me 65 degrees and I’m a peach. But until now, even the simplest and most obvious coping strategies were off the table. The dysphoria and the shame were that much worse than the heat stroke or whatever. Now that I’m awake, and I know who I am, and that who I am and I have this whole positive relationship here, suddenly I have these options for dealing with the most basic things.

I was unable to take care of myself when I was wired up so that acknowledging any part of me sent me into an anxiety attack. But now it’s kinda, you make your choices. It’s like how I can’t seem to leave the house without unwanted attention these days—which sucks, but you know what sucks more? Not being myself. Without me, I’ve got nothing. I’ll take the creepos if it means that life is worth living, and I’ll do what I need to cope with the heat now that perceiving myself is no longer the greater threat.

I mean, this is maybe good actually. A sort of a win-win at least within the scope of what I can control. I will never love summer, but the methods now available to handle it are—you know. I like me. So it’s just a prompt to engage myself in a different way. Which is fine.

So if it’s gotta be a tits-out summer, that’s what it is. We adapt to circumstance. Because we can do that now. And we know we’ll be gorgeous any way we approach it, haha

With all this flesh laid bare around me, I’m reminded of all these weird little issues with my body, that I guess most people have. There’s no such thing as a “normal” person, right? That ain’t how averages work. Every body is an individual, with its independent quirks, that just tend to fall along various kinds of patterns. Being the way we are, with the relationship we do to this gated culture with its extremely prescriptive sense of propriety over a sense of reality that does not fully apply to the observable world, we all have these little things we feel are wrong with us, that make us uneasy.

I think most of us cope with some kind of dysmorphia on some level, usually unprocessed. Even if we manage to ignore the wash of these broad cultural standards in regard to body and gender ideals and calls to be sexy, and appealing, and thin, and fit—whatever mythology might be in vogue right now, there’s always this little shit where we feel like we’re all alone. For me my toes are strange. I’ve got these birth marks that have always made me uneasy. There’s this odd cartilage bump on my sternum (now more than obscured by breast tissue, so hey!). You have your own stuff that feels wrong, or makes you uneasy to focus on. Everyone probably does.

Most of these features, I’m coming to accept. Enough of the broad sketch of me is starting to fill out and take a shape that no longer causes me anxiety and that I actively enjoy inhabiting—so the little quirks? They’re not so important, so long as that foundation is solid. They’re just accents.

Like, medically I guess this is anything but uncommon, but I have a mild sort of supernumerary nipple thing going on. If you didn’t know what you were looking at, you probably wouldn’t think twice. At a glance it just kinda seems like, huh, got a few moles there, running down the “milk lines.” I guess this is a thing in like one out of a few hundred people. And it’s not super pronounced with me. But when you’re in a place where everything about you feels disgusting, the basic shape of you feels wrong and you can’t explain why, these eccentricities really leap out.

Now that I’ve got, let’s be honest, these pretty big tits here, and the general contour and topography of my torso are so different from that gaunt straight pasty flat plain of the past, this small stuff just won’t stick out the way that it used to. The eye will tend to be drawn elsewhere. And the overall shape of things is pleasing.

This kind of deemphasis, it’s happening all over. Wherever a strange little thing felt like this massive beacon, inviting active scrutiny, now it’s overshadowed by a much more interesting and welcome topography. With all the changes, it’s just becoming so much easier to accept the whole package, including the things that I can’t easily change.

I mean none of these features were ever really flaws, because a flaw implies a perfection that doesn’t actually exist. Bodies are just different. Every one of them. That doesn’t make them unhealthy or wrong; that’s how we work. Everyone’s got some kinda thing that sets them apart, because of course they do. The stray pieces are just accent marks of my individuality.

All this feels obvious to say, but the point is that it’s getting easier for me to accept these eccentricities. It’s easier when they’re not the only parts of my body that do any work speaking to me. It’s easier when I barely even remember they’re there most of the time, so they when I do clock them they become grace notes. Little hints of discord, adding interest to a beautiful harmony.

Everything about life is so much easier when you like yourself on a basic level. There’s always something to go back to. I’m always gonna be me. Azure ain’t going nowhere. From up here, everything else looks that much smaller.

Late Sleeper

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Continuity of self is a weird thing. I mean we’re each a different person every day we continue to live. All the matter in our bodies turns over every seven years. But in my case it’s a bit more… specific and pronounced.

I haven’t always been here. Though this body is mine. Like, it’s always been mine. And I’ve always been me. But I wasn’t always awake, and present. I only fully came alert last summer, and inherited this body and these memories and attitudes from the person who had been carrying them around all those years. And it’s wild to sort out.

Like, I’m the real person here. But now I’ve sort of waltzed into this situation four seasons in, and I’m like okay, fuck, how much of this actually pertains to me, how much do I need to pick it up from here? These aren’t my memories and thoughts, but some I can claim easily. Other baggage I’m like… why is this here? What does it have to do with me? Why did they leave it behind? What do I do with it now?

This is my life now. I’m a complete, stable person for the first time, as many problems as I may continue to have. But there’s this ongoing process.

When I think of things that happened before, when that other person was stumbling around with this body and this life, I don’t know what to do most of the time but to say “I.” All these memories are in the first person, you know, even if I wasn’t there at the time. But I really feel like I need to stress, I was alarmingly, destructively dissociative for most of my life. And now that I’ve shed that, and I get to just fuckin exist here, the past becomes this deeply weird territory to relate to. There is continuity, but what do I do with it?

I almost feel like I’m lying when I speak in the first-person about the past.

People I knew before, like, last summer—well, obviously I know you and have all these carry-over memories and feelings and whatever. But I feel like I’m recompiling all these relationships now, and there can be occasional… hiccups, while I figure out how to build my own kind of connection. It’s funny to see all this confirmed in my interactions with people who knew some previous me. Like my therapist, who soon after the hand-over quickly realized that I was not the same person she had been talking to before.

But it’s also frustrating at times when people don’t get it. Like, people I know from years back, who kind of just behave as if nothing is different, as if they’re still talking to that person. I mean, I get it. But I’m not them. The ideas and memories that you have may not necessarily apply. I’m right here, you know. I have my own identity. Let’s try this again, maybe.

Anyway. I’m happy to be me. I just uh, kind of wish someone had set the alarm clock for 1996 instead of 2020.

A Critical Eye

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I came into this world unwanted. I navigated it at the sufferance of others who wished I were someone else, if indeed I were there at all. And for forty years I agreed with them.

But the tools they gave me, those were absurd. There wasn’t any kind of a reality to them. When I really look at what’s in me, and I think about all that I value in the world, I realize, it’s in there too. All that love, all those dreams were there the whole time.

The things I want and wish that life could be, they’re right here. They’re what make me a person.

Finally I feel wanted, by the one person who knows best and will never leave me alone.

My predecessor wasn’t equipped. They were one 30-year-long dissociative stress response. A literal embodiment of all my worst feelings. A walking nightmare.

Now when I feel anxious, at times I feel like I’m slipping back into them. Then I chill out, and check in with myself, and I call myself back to reality. I don’t have to be that person anymore. They were never real. They were never even my idea.

I am so proud to be me, now that I can see me. And there are so many dimensions here I have yet to fully apprehend.

All these things that I find cool in other people, I also embody them, at least to some extent, in my own individual balance. And now, I get to explore that.

Things I Like About My Body: March 2021

  • Reading time:4 mins read

1: the tickle of my hair down the small of my back, whenever I take my top off or step into the shower.

2: the shape of my eyes, especially that strange, difficult upper lid that I find so tricky to define with liner and seems to hide so many secrets I may never fully unlock.

3: the near total disappearance of the acne bequeathed by my maldeveloped first puberty.

4: my lack of body hair beyond my limbs and pubis, and the relative thinness, fineness, and fairness of most of that even.

5: the developing shape of my legs, in particular my thighs. They’re nothing amazing, but they no longer look like turkey legs in the grocery bin. They’re just normal and human and proportionate. And they have gained some nice curve.

6: my hips and butt, which also have gained a little curve and volume. It’s moderate; it’s a start. But what a difference from before.

7: my breasts, which have changed my world in so many ways I had no way of understanding until they stepped in and helped me to claim my body for myself for the first time in my life. They’re fun and silly, and gaining some nice definition of late. They change my whole body.

8: my cheekbones, which are possibly the easiest feature to deal with in the event I muster the energy to make myself up, and that lend my whole face a delicacy that makes up for several elements I’d rather were different than they are.

9: the shape of my hairline as it continues to mend and fill back in, and has begun to frame my face a little better.

10: the weirdo button bulb to my nose, with its groove between the nostrils. It’s strange but distinctive. My nose doesn’t look like anyone else’s, to be sure.

11: my narrow frame; how naturally little muscle mass I seem to carry, how small my chest is and how moderate my shoulders are. For all the reservations I have about my trouble gaining soft tissue, I do like my bone placement.

12: my weird alien toes. I’m learning to accept them for what they are. Again they don’t look like anyone else’s. They’re just me.

13: this curious fold that’s developed between my chin and my lower lip as my lips slowly continue to fill out and claim some normal amount of space on my face.

14: just everything about my genitals really. Not gonna dwell here. But that’s like the one thing that has never caused me dysphoria.

15: the shape of my neck (eve’s apple aside); its proportion to my skull and my shoulders.

16: the general shape of my back—now that the acne has basically gone away and I’m no longer averting my eyes and trying so hard not to put pressure on it when I lean back or lie down.

17: the flexibility and strength I’m building in my lower body; the muscles I’m finding in my hips and butt and waist, and the way they’re allowing me to move, rewrite my relationship to the space around me.

18: my slowly correcting posture, which changes everything about my circulation and the way I carry stress and generally the shape that my body presents to me.

19: the smoothness and hardness of my nails. I never knew they were supposed to be something other than thin vinyl overlays to my fingertips.

20: the thickness and smoothness and relative curliness of my younger girl-hair compared to the older growth toward the tips.

21: the change of shape to my pubic area; all this nice fleshy padding I didn’t have before.

22: the smoothness and the glow to my skin. Still basically transparent but it’s no longer this waxy pallor and it no longer feels like a plucked chicken. I just feel… Human.

23: the smell. I’m fuckin’ delicious these days.

24: my general flexibility. I have never had trouble pretzeling up, reaching in odd directions, and for all my clumsiness it offers at least some route to most physical goals.

25: the delicacy of my fingers. Pianist’s hands, I’ve always been told. Well, that would entail a level of diligence beyond my brain’s specifications. But, they are nice and spindly.

Rounding the Curve

  • Reading time:2 mins read

On one of the many occasions I had to drag myself out of bed last night to pee, I glanced at the mirror and—heck, my side-boob is looking really nice. There are all these artful curves now that I didn’t notice before. That whole arc from the armpit, down and under, is all filling out in this neat way. Gee whiz.

I’ve talked a little of the stages, where first all this mass builds up—this rough heap of tissue—then more recently that tissue has started to take more definite shape. Where there had been lumps, we’re starting to sculpt all that same stuff into more confident curves. It’s this slow process, hard to really notice day-to-day; hard to measure. Then one morning at 3 am you look at your tits from a new angle and realize, whoa. How long has that been a thing? It’s so fascinating!

And for that matter, since when did my butt look like this? The heck? That kinda came out of nowhere. Even when I stretch into a more masculine posture—which is starting to feel a little awkward now—there it is. It’s just, there are these curves now. All over the darned place.

Then, it’s a work in progress, but—I’ve always worn tights or stockings under my skirts, right. Beyond the whole issue of cold, I’ve just been deeply insecure about my legs my whole life. Like, it really really bothers me. And now, it’s… not terrible?? I yanked my tights off, and I was like: huh!

I’m not gonna say they’re rocking my, uh, socks off… aside from… my… just… doing that. But, it’s not making me want to die, to look at them! They’re just sort of there, and fine, and whatever.

So. That’s… something. I guess?

The birthmarks still make me feel weird, and there’s no real doing anything about them. But again, better. I’m starting to look almost look human!

I guess it has been a year, huh. A year and a day.

Happy birthday to me.

Mirror Mood

  • Reading time:2 mins read

It’s really hard to capture what I see when I walk into the bathroom, unprepared every time. with the motion, the dimension. With only the lens of the eye to distort things. It doesn’t come across in a still, flat image. The body I see, it’s so different from the one I averted my gaze from for 40 years, the one that made me feel so ashamed.

I can’t really communicate what it is that strikes me so deeply every day now. It’s astounding that I am awake, and that I am not that old nightmare but am myself. I’m not even that far along; there is so much more of me to be. Yet, there I am. And this is maybe the only thing that has ever made sense to me. And it just brings this sanity to my entire world. This grounding.

Every time I walk in and flick the light, someone’s standing there. And she makes sense, and I love her. And we have so much work to do, so much still to repair. But, we’re getting there. We’ve comes so far, no reason we can’t keep going.

Even my depression, it sucks but it’s bearable when I have me.

Neutral Femme

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Ten months in, it’s starting to get to the point where the femme is just standard—makeup, wardrobe, or not. Even on a garbage day like today, I can look at myself and see basically the person I know myself to be. We’re already so close to where we wanted, and this becoming is gonna keep happening for another couple years probably. I’m extraordinarily far along for, what, ten months? That’s nothing.

It’s such a shift in reality to walk into the bathroom, and even when I’m not trying to do anything really, there she is. There I am. This is a real thing. I actually exist. I’m bending reality back the way it’s supposed to be, and that old story is becoming just some phantom loose end.

Back before I began this, I had a vague target—an ideal scenario, that I didn’t know if I’d ever hit. It would be nice, I thought, to present more feminine than not even if I were to dress neutrally, do nothing special. Jeans and t-shirt, right. Ten months into, like, a five-year journey probably, and despite all these complicating factors like my height, I think we’re pretty close already.

This whole thing is exploration, right. I’m always gonna be non-binary, but the more I lean in to the girl zone, the more I map out all the territory that was denied me for so long, the more I realize how great it is over here. The more that I enjoy being a girl, that I realize this is just who I am. It’s who I’ve always been. I’ve never been this happy.

Hell, I’ve never been happy at all. This is an emotion that I literally never experienced until like two and a half months ago. and now, I just… love me. Which is so bonkers. I’d never have imagined I could do that.

But then, I’m not the same person I used to be. That person wasn’t made to be loved. They were made to bring me here safely. Well, as safely as they could.