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| I'm the one on the left. Yeah, go Packers! |
- My state of health
- Therapy stuff
- Testosterone stuff
So today I'm feeling good. Based on the picture to the right and comments made by my friend Tina (also pictured) I am starting to be able to conceptualize how much weight I've really lost.
April 2010: 270 pounds.
February 2011: 215 pounds.
Which is a loss of 55 pounds that is generally not noticeable to me until I look at old pictures:
Yeah, I decided the first picture of me looking like I'm sulking at Thanksgiving dinner with a terrible hair that makes me look like my Aunt Sue kind of was cheating so I added one where I am legit happy and surrounded by supportive friends. Can one be fat and happy? Of course. But Christ, I look different, and I'm not convinced all of it was my sudden realization that "Fuck, I can't read road signs, I should go to an optometrist" who subsequently told me I have freak eyes (one is nearsighted, one is farsighted, also astigmatism).
This is exciting to me for many testosterone-related reasons.
See, I've been clawing to get testosterone for a few months. I've wanted it, vaguely, for years, but I haven't had the ambition to go for it both because my finances were low and because I have so many supportive friends who understand that my right to be called a "man" has nothing to do with how long I've been sticking needles in my ass that I wasn't as utterly dysphoric as I am now.
And yes, the dysphoria has been terrible. Part of the reason I feel like I look so God-damned sexy in that first picture is because you can only really see me from the collarbone up. And even then, my predominating thought is "God, when I get on testosterone, I'm going to be really hot."
I'm narcissistic, in case you didn't know. I'm also health-conscious, which is how I got fat to begin with. It's a delicious irony, right? The way I eat now makes people assume I don't care what I eat, but all that really happened was that I have a different opinion of what constitutes healthy food than most people. The result is a substantially smaller second chin.
And yes, I'm narcissistic, so part of this is vanity, but the rest of it is this: I am scared to death of becoming my father. Testosterone can raise your risk of a lot of things that run in my family and which are already starting to affect me, things like type two diabetes and high blood pressure. I will seek testosterone regardless, but until I get it I want to try reducing my risk of these things further. So far I've pulled my blood pressure from around 140/100 to about 125/77 which is probably largely due to the weight loss but also due to the lack of sugar I eat. It was partially incidental... my doctor told me "You're afraid of diabetes? Eat this way." And I did. And I happened to lose weight and drop my blood pressure in the progress. That was a win on all sides.
I'm babbling, though. You know why I'm excited? Because even though I'm so extremely dysphoric and even though I am crying out for emotional attention from people, I left a message on my chosen therapist's answering machine.
It took quite a bit of nerve-enhancement much like the time I called an LGBT health center for the same thing and was rejected because I didn't have insurance ("We serve the low-income trans community... if you have insurance!"). The person I want to go to has a sliding scale, I'm not sure how that works when you have no income... but I have a nice chunk of cash, somewhere around $1,000 once my birthday comes on the 28th, and so even if I don't qualify for any assistance whatsoever I should be able to swing several of the required therapy sessions if not all of them. Then I just need to worry about the blood panels, doctor appointments, needles, and testosterone. And I have a few months to worry about that.
(Fist pump!)
I tried calling her office several times to get through, but kept getting the same sympathetic "I'm a psychiatrist and I know how to talk to people" voice mail message. I left an email after the first one, mostly to obligate me to keep calling, but never got through. So finally I wrote a script, a very simple one, and said I was looking for a transgender program and would like her to call me back.
We emailed back and forth a few months ago and she explained a few things, then when my finances dried up (due to my own stupidity, to be honest) I stopped contacting her. But my family now sees my desperation and my urgency and I have a feeling that they are going to do what they can to help me through it.
Anyway, although I don't have class until like 5:30 in the afternoon tomorrow, I am feeling compelled to get my excited ass to bed.
Goodnight,
-- Jack
