[Blog] T-time: Prologue

 I used to insist that I wasn't interested in going on testosterone. Vocal changes were 'a dealbreaker', I 'didn't really want to', it was something I only gave consideration for 'all the wrong reasons'.

Anyway, I'm hopefully starting T in a month or two!

I'm very, very excited.

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For a long time, I very much treated it like I needed to be This Trans To Ride The T-Train. Or, at times, like maybe if I rode the T-Train, it would deliver me to the destination of finally being This Trans. I knew the latter was a terrible reason to pursue physical transition, and it took me a very long time to realise that someone like me (read: only nominally masc, mostly likes their body, not even particularly dysphoric) was not doing gender crimes by claiming to have some kind of gender going on?

 Like, when your gender situation is 'a bone deep longing to be allowed to play in the entire pool, unconstrained, a playful little shapeshifter', it's easy for that to feel...frivolous.

When other people are pursuing Actual Transition because it's life-saving realignment of their body with their self-concept, years of idle curiosity don't feel quite so justified as a reason.

Like, after all, I didn't *need* it. I didn't know if I'd even like it. And what would other people think? Especially if I decided to head down that path and then decided, 'nah, not for me' and doubled back? 

All because I wanted a bigger dick, to get fluffier, and muddle my gendered signals a bit? 

I have since realised the frivolity, the curiosity, and the exploration is kind of the bedrock of my whole deal.

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 My relationship with my gender has always been playful and exploratory and fluid. It has resisted being pinned down for as long as I'd cared enough to try. The mistake I was making, approaching hormones, was trying to make them part of the pinning. What I want, I've realised, is more room to play in.  

I used to think that necessitated sacrifice - that I'd have to give something up, trade something in. After all, people say it all the time. You can't pick and choose what you get. Certain effects are permanent. That's true, of course, but people tend to say it to people like me with an air of, 'don't do something you'll be disappointed by or regret'.

However, I've come to the conclusion that I'd way rather fuck around and find out. 

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I genuinely know I don't want top surgery. I know this because, as much as I'd love a more ambiguous chest than my humongous dobonhonkeros, my rooster's bust to fend off rivals... I just straight up don't want surgery.  I want my body to just do the thing I'd like it to do. And also, my dreams about top surgery are nightmares.

Weird medical dubcon, vivid reinforcement of how much I'd fucking hate to lose nipple sensation. (A flatter chest is simply not a worth-it trade for one of my favourite erogenous zones for me.)

My dreams about T, by contrast...

Oh, delight. Surprise. The therapist in my dream says they can get me on it and my answer is, 'Oh! Sweet!'

I find a stash of long-forgotten t-gel (for some reason in squishy little blue caplets) in the snack cupboard of my house, and my dreamself's response is a delighted little thrill - oh, it's still in date! How exciting! A sneaky treat, just for me!

A friend offers to share a little of their own with me, and I leap at the opportunity.

...yeah, very different subconscious feelings.

There's also, uh, this thing I've been saying for years and years and years. A joke that's never been a joke. It goes like this:

'I mean, I don't want to go on T now. It's fine, anyway. I'll just wait until I'm menopausal and then go to the doctor and say: doctor, my libido is so dead, is there A N Y T H I N G you can do.... [bigging my eyes, twirling my hair, kicking my feet]?'

Which could mean nothing, right? 

I was a sillybilly about it, but that was always dead serious. Oh, no T now, but when it'd be *easy*, when it'd be *accessible*, when it'd be *cheap*, when all I'd have to do is game the system...

I guess I realised that if my game plan was 'just wait until I'm old enough'... 

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 When I was first trying to fathom out my gender situation - or, okay, when I was second trying to fathom it out (listen, the timeline's complicated, I'll post about that another post), the spaces I was in were mostly very very transmasculine.

I felt kind of an odd one out in that sense. Everyone was, simply put, More Boy Than Me? I had left my dudely aspirations back in my teen years. Even the enbiest enbies were still seeking something more Masculine, in the circles I was in. 

My comfort in exploring testosterone is, honestly, something made so much easier by having since cultivated a space where there's more transfems in it! What is there to fear from vocal changes, from more masculinisation than I'd like, when I see women all around me showing exactly how one can get Less Of That if I want. 

Surrounded by women, girls, girlthings and femmes whose trajectory comes from having lived through masculinising puberty and travelling in the opposite direction from me to undo testosterone's work, I find a great deal of reassurance. I cannot fret about loss of vocal range when I've seen the magic voice training can work. You can't undo pubescing t-style? Yes you can, I've watched time and time again!

 If I decide it's not for me, I'll be in good company.

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It's hard to say what tipped the scales from 'refusing to consider it' to 'booking an appointment with a private provider and impatiently waiting to get my blood tests arranged'.

Maybe it's that I had mutuals on tumblr making very salient points on my smutblog posts - usually it's me going 'we have the technology...' when my friends yearn for changes HRT would gladly grant? I suppose I was out here loudly posting things like this:

which could mean nothing

Maybe it was just a mindset shift - I don't think I want to 'transition' per se. Or at least, to think of it as 'transition'. I just want to modify my body to have traits I'm interested in having. That I no longer have a destination, but would like to embark on the journey.

Maybe it's that going on SSRIs has chilled my nervous system out enough that I no longer freak out when I contemplate doing something that I used to really, really worry would make other people judge me. Maybe I'm just less scared of being judged.

 Maybe it's that as I settle into myself, and no longer anxiously attempt to present in a way that'll get people to read me correctly (a doomed endeavour), I find comfort in the idea of staking a claim on my own body. Of there being changes that, even once I stop, will remain. Something that will always be with me, even under my clothes. 

Maybe it's just that my phantom dick commands me to provide a host for its spirit louder and louder with each passing year.

Maybe I just want soooo bad to try toys that will only work for me if I have bottom growth. 

Maybe I've just been pining for a happy trail since I was fifteen.  

Maybe there's just been too many cases of me revelling in my vocal resonance when I get ill, and too many cases of me hearing the pitch of my own voice and scrunging at the sound of it. 

Maybe me losing my high notes out of nowhere in 2023 deleted one of my reservations. 

And like, I don't know what the genetic lottery's gonna offer. Maybe I won't get the happy trail, or the cute little delta of chest hair betwixt the breasts that I find so captivating on people of all genders. Maybe I'll get hardly any bottom growth. Maybe I am as attached to my voice as I thought I was.

But I don't want to live my entire life not knowing what it would be like!

The curiosity burns in me.

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 So that leaves me here, now, checking my email inbox like I'm waiting for package updates. (I mean, I guess in one way, I am!) 

My GP seems to be supportive - all that's needed is a letter from my provider requesting blood tests, and she'll order them. Once I've ordered them, I only need to get the results to my provider. I've already paid. The only thing between me and a bottle of Testogel is time, some bloodtheft, and one more videocall appointment. (And then a little more time.)

It feels surreal that it's all so close at hand. In a month or two, I will have The Goo that lets me tell my body to start rearranging things. I will be able to embark on the journey, the experiment, the exploration!!

I never expected to be as excited as I have been. After a long time being kind of furtive and weird, it's incredible to get to bounce around, telling my friends: hey, guess who's getting some **~~testosteronieeee~**! To joke about it, to have my housemate ask intrigued questions, to have my friends congratulate me.

Even getting this far is wild.

I'm excited, I'm impatient, I'm so eager to get started.

But... ah. A month or two to go. 

For now, we wait.

 :)