Trans woman here, been on HRT for a couple of weeks now. (No effects yet of course, I know that’s normal, that’s not what this post is about) Of course I am glad to have that opportunity as a young adult but I keep having this uncomfortable thought that this is not going to be what I hope it to, the final puzzle piece for liking my own body and finally feeling good about myself. A bit of a background info: I look terrible. Not just in the regular mtf dysphoria i-don’t-look-female terrible, but also the just generally ugly human being way. I die inside a little everytime I look into the mirror and avoid cameras like the plague. Everything from terrible skin quality to weird looking chin and cheeks, wide shoulders while looking like a stick that’s barely over the healthy weight minimum. And it’s not like I don’t do anything for my physical health, quite the contrary: I do daily workouts, get enough sleep, eat healthy and sleep enough, don’t drink, smoke or consume anything with much sugar or fat and I spend a lot of time outside. Additionally I have a hygiene and skincare routine that’s probably more intense than the ones that some beauty influencers promote. All of that amounts to me barely avoiding looking like one of those zombies from Left for Dead. And then I look at people around me living the most unhealthy of lifestyles while looking 10 times as good as me, that’s goddamn frustrating, let me tell you. Sometimes I visit those trans timeline subreddits and I don’t even have to look at the post-transition images to feel like shit. Literally everyone of these people already looked pretty decent at least even before they transitioned, which doesn’t give me any idea if I can even remotely achieve what they have.

And that’s just the physical part of things. Saying that I’m dead inside doesn’t seem fitting, it sounds too negatively connotated. I just got nothing inside, it feels like. I just do stuff in autopilot, not feeling anything about it in any way. In retrospect I don’t know when the last time was that I sincerely laughed about something or was really sad or angry about stuff, it seems like I just go auto-pretend in order to act appropriately or look interesting to others. And once again, I checked what might be the issue there and found nothing I could do to improve the situation. I ain’t depressed or anything and there weren’t any traumatising experiences in my life. So you know, I figure it’s just one of these dysphoria things.

Where did/does that leave me? I arrived at the conclusion a while ago that I did everything I could to feel/look better and the only thing left to do was get on HRT to deal with the gender dysphoria that causes this. And that’s where the doubts come in. HRT in theory is nice and all, it slowly helps shape your body in a better form, improves quality of your skin, makes you more emotional and whatever every second trans hangout seems to have written on their digital pamphlets. The only issue is the metaphorical fine print. Changes vary in their presence and intensity. So yeah, I see those incredible transitions on the mentioned subreddits, I read about people finally enjoying their mental state (shoutout to cows_are_underrated, I hope your transition goes well), and all this other hrt positivity. I’m not a determinist or anything, but I just don’t see all of these things happening to me. I don’t know, maybe I won’t sweat all the time anymore, maybe I’ll grow some small tits or perhaps I’ll feel emotions besides frustration for the first time in ages.

That’s all good and well and I’d rather have it than not, but that brings me back to the title of my post. I don’t think HRT is gonna fix me, and if it doesn’t, I’m simply fucked. This is my last chance it seems, I’ve tried all other options that are usually recommended for looking and feeling better and that thought is honestly scaring me (make that a plus one for emotions felt). So yeah, sorry about that bigass rant, it ended up being longer than expected. This obviously isn’t supposed to be some fishing for compliments bullshit, you don’t know me and never will, I just had to get this out of my system. Anyway, if you actually read through all this, thanks for paying attention to my yapping I suppose, and have a great day.